Thanks for all the links. It sounded to me like the new crafting token system would be akin to what we have now, though implemented a bit differently. Basically you can earn tokens (though he did jokingly say Allagan tomes of crafting) through some method to purchase gear (though perhaps materials) that would be pretty good, but the best gear would still be crafted and melded (like our 2 different artisan sets now). Of course those both use a token system, just with different limitations.

As much as I like being able to do everything, I think that the introduction of stricter (though not permanent) specialization would really help the economy. To me it sounded like gatherers will have to choose which areas they want to gather especially rare items from (and presumably not turn around and change to another area immediately) and crafters can specialize in a particular discipline (or all of them, just not simultaneously) for the highest end items.