Concerning RMT, I don't understand how anything said for fishing can't be applied to botany and mining. If they are afraid of a repeat of FFXI's gil inflation, just make it impossible to sell fish to NPCs (using player markets instead - if that is a problem, then you have bigger problems than fishing). Moreover, do they think people will have a hard time chatting while logging or mining? Crafting (which has plenty of actions)? Let's be real here: People will be chatting away on their LSs and FCs (and, if allowed, /tells) while doing anything and everything up to serious end-game raids. Even deadly combat is not too "stressful". That's how 1.x worked. That's how FFXI worked. That's how every MMO works. When given the option, people will chat and do something that progresses them in the main areas of the game. By making it less interesting, you are only hurting the people who want to fish for fun.
We will see how it turns out, but the reasoning is pretty terrible. I mean, YoshiP is a breath of fresh air from the usual SE stuff, but he still has the nonsensical interview rhetoric locked down. I do feel bad for people who invested hours and hours into fishing thinking it would be a real class on the level of botanist and miner, if not a class in all respects.
EDIT: Since it was brought up earlier, I will agree that what they did with attributes is unfortunate. Gear and food (and materia) is just boring, even when effective (more so since a lot of it isn't effective, see: skill/spell speed). There is no real thought involved in creating a set with multiple choices in each slot. I really hope artifact armor at least doesn't have their full attributes, because if they do then it is fair to say gear remains boring from level 1 to 50.