Macro paradise here is more a transition between scala 2.10 and scala 2.11. Since quasiquotes are natively supported by scalac starting from 2.11-M4, we'll be able to remove that dependency as soon as we migrates to scala next version. This compiler plugin does not affect the users in any way since it's only used to compile play itself. Assuming we run test each time we ship a version, there's no impact on them.

Overall it's really just a tradeoff. Do we prefer to manually write AST code, which is hard understand, write and maintain or de we prefer to rely on this plugin.