I do not believe any part of this game was ever intended to be played afk, those are simply exploits of a system in progress that we probably all used to maintain sanity.
Due to the monotony of gathering some resources, we all couldn't help from starting the process and leaving to do something else, but I think this is an excellent fix and adds life to the game.
As any change they make to the game, there will probably be some balancing and fixing to find the best end result. But overall, I find it to be a welcome improvement that adds life to the tasks, and helps randomize quality and thus makes the high tier items more rare and thus more valuable, and makes the low-mid grade items more viable for longer.
With some balancing, it will also make some late tier skills like good armorsmiths and tailors and such harder to come by and more valuable for a guild to retain, which again will make lower quality and tier items more viable for longer, instead of everything but the best items being completely worthless and a player able to max himself out in a relatively short time in what is meant to be a long term game.
Just my two cents, but we all have our own viewpoint