BW has been listening. From Georg Zoeller:
Major changes are currently on schedule for the next major content patch, such as extractable basemods (armoring, barrel, etc.) from purple items, critical crafting successes on orange outfits, more bind-on-equip schematic drops for artifice and other professions, increased relevance of augments, better reverse engineering chance, and other improvements. We want to create significant incentive for players to engage in the crafting economy – as provider of goods or supplier - without requiring players to take up a specific profession as a ticket into endgame.
Thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=2417047#edit2417047
It is a thief skill and is designed to make you money (but not as much as it used to). So instead of gathering you would use this to get money and then buy the ingredients you need.
It is better in 1 respect in that you will find stuff to slice every where you go instead of having to go to a specific place to gather the correct ingredients for whatever you want to craft.
After you have selected your crafting skill you can get recipes from talking to the trainer again and more recipes after you gain levels.
(There have been quite a few people who have started threads after missing this piece of info (yes, I missed it too on my first toon) so I thought I'd post it).
Spacebar, Spacebar, Spacebar, Spacebar, hover mouse on 1, if netral click 1, Spacebar, Spacebar, Spacebar, Spacebar, if blue or red find the appropriate response for your toon and done.
How about odds and evens. You appoint someone referee and 1 player calls either odds or evens and then both players whisper a number between 1 and 10 and then the referee adds them up and declares the winner.
I played Alderaan yesterday and went straight to the center and shot some missiles, used my stun, ran around kiting, used flame thrower even and then suddenly the round finished and I was second overall on the leaderboard.
I was level 13.
It has been done before quite successfully. I wouldn't be surprised if they put some functionality in the software for it from the start in case they want to do it later on.