Of two minds on the quest text thing:
On the one hand, it reeks of time saver nonsense on their end.
On the other hand: Nobody reads them, and I think merely by having EVERY quest have mountains of text, encourages people not to read the fairly important ones either.
It's kind of a case where it both lets them focus their efforts where it's more important, AND it will cause at least some percentage of players to give more of a shit when it is there.
I enjoy the lore, but I absolutely will not read quests as they have been for 10 years, unless I know ahead of time HEY THIS IS A MAJOR QUEST for some reason, which typically involves spoilers and thus not reading it anyway. If there are like 10 I have to read in a zone I probably will do it. Don't need to know your grandma is dying and needs bear ass stew, but I would like to know that Voljin has been poisoned by an assassin and we think it was Sylvannas or whatever.