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I have mixed views on this. On the one hand, it can be incredibly useful to know that your opponent is on 34% health- for example, you might be considering whether a fireball would finish it off, and if you know its health value then you can be certain of this.
On the other hand, it does make things seem more like a game and less like an alternate universe. I don't know if anyone's played the offline demo of Neocron yet- it's an MMORPG, apparently- but in that when you hit something, a little red number pops off its head showing how much damage you dealt. And somehow, that pulls you out of the world and makes you realise that you're not actually thwapping a zombie upside the head with a lead pipe in a dark sewer. You're sitting in front of a keyboard staring at a monitor and frantically pressing keys.
On the mud I play, we don't have numbers. In fact, the hitpoints of mobs are largely unknown. We run via a system of attack messages- for example, 'your spell barely scratches a golem', or 'your bite ***SMITES*** a street peddler!'- and also messages used when examining the mob which can be put into your prompt- 'leaking guts' or 'DYING'. These give a sense of realism and at the same time allow you to know how close your opponent is to death.
In light of this, I'd say numbers are bad, and messages are good. But only to an extent- when you get to things like 'You swing your broadsword to the left, slashing the bat across the ear, blood spurts through the side of its head and it looks like it is in immense pain' as an attack message, it's just silly.
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