I think blue quests added some flavor to the leveling experience, especially for newcomers, not to mention that some were entertaining and fun.
Taking away options is, in my opinion, a bad thing and leads to a lesser experience.
A cool, and more elegant, way to get these quests handled would be the way they did in swtor. In that game they hid this quests, called "exploration quests", under a tick box, in the map screen, so you could access, or avoid, them at will.
I still love the gameplay but seems that, every new update, is taking away things that made the game unique and fun.