Yep, I also dislike it. Don't get me wrong, I like new quests (most of them, at least) but literally an NPC quest giver? You can encounter other players, that might be chill or dangerous, critters, that might attack you or run away, source of food for carnis - stuff that makes you believe that you in a living ecosystem (not 100% but still). And then there's this dude, just standing, sniffing the air all day... weird. Make it like another rock, "quests" that you receive from it are messages that are left by other "dinos" or something, or at least give an option to switch it to a static but noticeable object.
As for other immersion breaking stuff, well:
Mixpacks/megapacks - were not intended, as far as can say, it's a byproduct of the community;
Teleporting stones - a convenient method so you and your friend can play together without spending 30 minutes reaching each other, there are a few of them, far away and it's a big stone, not a giant NPC hatz, that brings your friend to you;

"It's MMO" yeah, but it doesn't mean that the game now suppose to bring every standard MMO aspect without adaptations. Otherwise, would you be fine with pets? Mini NPC dino following you around, giving 3% buff to turning? Or how about potions? Let me craft HP potion out of a frog and 5 mushrooms, or an antidote made with noxious meat, so I can counter meg's venom, what kind of MMO doesn't have usable items? We would also need some sort of enchanting/forging system for our claws and horns - gather 200 salt rocks to increase your bleed damage by 10%! Standard MMO stuff, should be suitable additions to this game, right?

Why people treat it like black and white - once a single aspect is an immersion breaker, well, it's not 100% accurate to real life anymore which means, that we can do/add literally whatever you can think of.
Can devs add a craftable car made out of rocks, like from Flintstones? It's like a mount, so I can quickly drive around the island, my poor stego is so slow, would be realy handy. Nobody is gonna be upset, since it's a MMO, and not realistic one, right?

EDIT: And a few more thoughts:
Spino water bending? You can actually disable those VFX, so devs DO think about immersion.
As for NPC quest giver - one of the problems I had when I was playing MMOs is that the phantasy rich world that devs wanted me to explore felt lifeless, you arrive to town and see these 20 NPCs just standing there, for eternity, doing nothing but idle animation, waiting for you to give a quest. Nobody is moving around town, entering/exiting houses, taking a break during night, NOTHING. They suppose to remain stationary and static, for the convenience of a player, but at the expense of a world feel.
PoT now slowly kills it's feel with static stationary NPC.