I like not seeing vote count, but agree with you that it's a handy metric to sift through the cruft. How about a color scheme to show popularity instead of the specific vote count?
Sure - to be clear I'm not tied to upvotes as a number specifically, and I doubt anyone else is. But give us SOMETHING.
How about sorting comments in any subtree by the number of votes? That way hierarchy indicates the comments with the highest number of votes, while hiding the actual number itself.
That's the easiest and most effective solution, I think. But we could also do with an optional visual cue, since a lot of people want it.