Ok i will make a new report if there is still a problem without optifine
I tried to load the world in 20w51a and go into the nether. Then i loaded the world in 1.16.4 optifine, but the villagers were still gone.
Confirmed in 20w51a, noticed this when I was in my gold farm. I got a lot of 0 durability gold swords. So its still in the game
Ok but how can i get my villagers back if i want to play with an earlier version because it also happened without optifine. So how can i get my villagers back with optifine?