Gamespy is featuring an interview with EA Mythic's Mark Jacobs. The discussion focuses on two big issues with players: Gold farming and Crafting.

GameSpy: What else have you done to discourage gold farmers from gaming the system?

Jacobs: One of the really nice things about (this system) is that it's timed. Let's just take WoW as an example. When you've been in the high level areas, you've seen the guys who do nothing but run around the world getting minerals. You know they're farmers. They don't talk to you, they don't interact, they just go around and around and around. The nice thing about this system is you can't do that. Let's just say that you have a plot of land, and it can produce one high-level seed every 30 minutes. Again, you're not sitting there doing nothing for thirty minutes because that would just be unbelievable tedium. But let's just say that for the various steps you have to do, it takes a total of 30 minutes. You do that once. Let's say you do that twice an hour. In the real world, if you use a plot of land too often, what happens to it? Well, the land goes bad. Farmers have to rotate their crops.

It's going to be the same thing in this system. It will have no effect whatsoever on normal players -- but if you're one of those farmers who wants to run an account 24/7, you can't! Your plot will not produce. Simple and easy. Now, (the farmers') number one asset is time - they can do this forever. Time is irrelevant to them because they're getting paid. All of a sudden, they can't do that with that same character.

It's an enormous article with lots more to read. Pop over to Gamespy for a look.