Personally I had more fun spearfishing than actually fishing in 1.0. It at least had me moving around instead of zombie like eyeballing that fail mini game that actual fishing had. From the small amount of details he gave its almost sounding like the fishing from back in the NA FFXI launch days. My memory is a bit fuzzy on the fine details but I remember it being equip and cast. Yet it actually was fun in that I could relax with friends and chat while fishing. There was fishing gear, bait and poles. You could technically use whatever but you really wanted to use proper pole for the water type you were casting into and also bait to target the fish.

Before anyone knocks it you need to realize that if this is exactly the system they are going for then they have actual statistics and feedback from XI on how many people used and liked/disliked that system. From what I remember they added some mini game to it after a while (for bots?) but it was just lame and killed fishing chat.

I'm a bit dubious on exactly how much they are unlinking it from the crafting though. In XI I can only really remember it being cooking and turn in only in XI but am to lazy to check if there wasn't a random alch use. It worked though.

Going to have to look and see if there are any youtube vids from launch.