It is getting ridiculous. A lot of group games will become just a thrashing, a non contest as a sporting event. But hey, it is all good cos more money will be made by getting a new country in their first ever world cup. No one seems to care about the 10-0 score line that just happened.
I initially thought the same as you but when you think about it properly I don't think that would be the case.
Football is developing in the poorer countries more and more. Asia can put forward Australia, Japan, South Korea, Qatar and Iran as very strong sides. Syria are decent as well currently as are Saudi. That's 7 sides that wouldn't get hammered. China are improving also.
Africa can easily put forward 9 solid enough sides. They go in phases though in terms of who is good at the time but on the whole they would certainly have 5/6 teams who would have a chance at going through the groups, if not more.
Concacaf have Mexico, USA and Canada who would be fine. After that it is a bit of a push. 6 places would be too much for them, unsure if they would have that much though if they weren't hosts? 4/5 is probably fair for them. Costa Rica are occasionally okay, usually theres the big 3 + 1 other doing well at any one time. Additional sides from this Confed are probably most likely to be the weakest of any added sides. Panama a decent indicator I guess. Fortunate to qualify instead of USA and got hammered. Would probably be a common theme with 3 additional spaces.
South America is pretty straight forward, easily the hardest of any qualifying phase.
I'm not a fan of extending the number of places but I don't think it'll lessen the quality that much. It will detract from the competition though as groups of 3 sounds awful to me.