Quest Helper Functionality On PTR

Blizzard Entertainment is well known for tapping their addon community for ideas.  They have implemented pieces of CT_RaidAssist, Omen Threat Meter, Deadly Boss Mods, SCT (Scrolling Combat Text), the various mods that allow chat customization and even the third party application of Ventrilo.  If changes to the mob tooltips on the PTR are anything to go by, the latest mod that the User Interface team has borrowed from is QuestHelper.  Quest information, which quest the target mob applies to and how many are needed, will now be displayed on applicable tooltips.

The discovery of this change has already sparked off a bit of controversy - as will any change when dealing with such a large community.  Which side of the camp do you fall on?  Do you feel that this addition to the standard UI is dumbing down the game further?  Or, is the modification a common sense, time saving change?  Is your immersion ruined?

I’ll admit that I use Quest Helper to its fullest potential.  The mod enables me to get the most out of my playtime, which can be limited windows depending on that thing called life.  But I will agree that it is almost cheating, with its pinpoint mob locations and all.  At the same time, I always read the quest text for the story, even if the more important information - mob location hints - becomes redundant.

I believe that Blizzard found a perfect middle ground by implementing just one of Quest Helper’s many features.  Players still have to do the hard work of finding a mob’s location (for the love of god, read the quest text three times before you ask in General chat) before the tweak offers any benefit.  In its current implementation, I can’t see how it could be “dumbing down” the game.  Is going to your quest log, jumping to the associated quest and reading the summary at the bottom difficult?  Not by any means.  When the changes go so far as to put a giant X on your map and say “You need to kill the mobs right here!” then the opposing camp can complain their heads off.

Till that time, it’s just a friendly time saver to me.

Other games - notably Warhammer Online and their Tome of Knowledge - actually have Quest Helper-type functionality built into their basic UI.  WAR’s implementation was heralded as one of the title’s key features.  Heck, people went so far as to consider it innovative!  It seems that just because WoW didn’t launch with it, adding it now would sully the “hardcore” memory.  Would it really be that horrible?