Theoretically speaking...

1. It was supposed to remove some of the advantage of ooc-info-sharing vets, who knew where to get barrier-on-a-stick before even rolling a character. For a total newbie, finding wands is theoretically easier now (with detect artifact) than ever before.

2. Attaching more "effort" to getting wands means mages are less likely to have a/s/b up for a given fight. Or, if they insist on having it up for every fight, they're going to spend an inordinate amount of time just gathering wands, which is less time spent kicking some poor shmuck warrior's junk.

At least, that was my understanding. So, while the changes may make the game "less fun" for a vet who already knows a ton of wand locations and plays mostly mages, they theoretically make the game "more fun" for non-mages and for the players of mages who don't already know a ton of wands.