This is not that long ago. I am thinking maybe it was decided then that $numeric is to return 0 when these ACCOUNT/AWAY/etc events trigger?
That is certainly possible but... the only way to be sure would be to download older versions of mIRC to see how they work.
That is always the first step if you think something has changed. It usually only takes a few minutes and will answer your question quite quickly.
If you find that something has changed, I will then need to look at the source code changes between different versions, and possibly add debugging information, recompile them, create a test environment, get more information from you about a minimal script that reproduces the issue, the server command you are using to reproduce it, the server address you are using in case it is network/server-specific, and so on.
