Doing it this way gives an advantage to those that can play much more than others.

Now, where as I think folks that put in the effort should gain the rewards, atm its a very mindless method.

All anyone has to do is level a craft or skill. Most crafts can be leveled very quickly and this leads to folks using programmable keyboards to afk craft. Get a bunch 100 and you are very hard to kill.

Let's also think about what will happen with stat/skill decay.

If it is like that talked about in Beta, then I would expect that as your skills decay and you settle on the ones you really want to maintain, that your HP would decay along with skills so that those with HIGH HP will be brought more in line with those that cannot play as much.

However, Has there been ANY mention of HP decaying? It's been assumed that it would decay, but is that actually the plan? If not, then what is the point? It still leaves a few players with inflated HP running around.

I sure don't want to play a game that is supposed to be a survival game, and know that some guy with no life outside of playing computer games, can run over me just because he can play more than I.

It should require skill and knowledge. As it is, with a person like that, there is no real change for success against them nor is it a fun competition... it is just boring.