Well there are several opinions regaring this, if you look here: What should Fatshark focus on? - #66 by se1z I already did that discussion before.
I’m not trying to mix it up, I’m just trying to find a solution for the OP’s problem, without, as i said before, making the whole questing some kind of cherrypicking. So the problem right now is that the questing wants you to carry books and do QP but there are few QP lobbies and players on Cataclysm take no books (and I think the reason for that is, that it’s pointless for most of them, even if your and the devs opinion on that is different)
look at the last line: without having to do the other lame stuff
I mean, that has smth to do with your own approach to the game but also with how the game handles it’s own content. In this case the books, if their only purpose on Cataclysm is to increase difficulty you could simply erase them on Cata and add Cata2 and Cata3 as @se1z said in the other thread i linked above.
After all I was just trying to offer a better way to deal with that problem (not the first time ppl asked for changes regarding the questing, prob. not the last time) and I think it needs to be tackled someday either with changes to how Cataclysm works or to the Questing System. But yeah, might be easier to say “git gud” without any attempt of solution finding 