It boils down to marketing. They probably still need to figure out a way to release mod tools but block modders from creating mods that work online, so that way they won't have to patch the game on a daily basis, which requires a lot of man power. If they can't find a way to do that, then they will likely not release mod tools at all, and that is probably the reason they haven't mentioned it in the interview, because that would bring bad PR.
I'm guessing they have no plans to release any modding tools as it's entirely possible that the existing 3rd party ones like OpenIV work with minor modifications. However we have to see if they have done something to prevent modding. I truly hope they've made something simple like modded game = no online and that's all. Then people could just cram two copies of the game on the hard drive or alternatively use something like JSGME to toggle mods off when they want to play online.