too many posts here that i would like to quote, too much time consuming, so i just put in few of my cents here.

i have played lots of games that are on the market in indefenate OBT, or the games that are free to play but to have e-shop for all the nice items you would want and can't get any other way. i have also plaied GW:factions, WoW (all the way from obt), Aion, L1 & 2. and i say that all of them are set up with auto-attack plus instant cust skills/spells. as it was mentioned above, the AAs do not intefear with any of the skills you are using. you engage in battle and they go off on their on regardless you want them or not. in WoW i was playing hunter, i had a set bar of skills i was using in a chain the way i like it and wanted. AA was shooting on its on, good steady dmg, while i keep clicking just my skills when CD is up. and in L1 the strategy was to buy a polymorph scroll of mob that can swing its arm the fastest it possibly can and then you just start clicking on your spell as fast you can click on that mouse.
So the idea of AA + instant casting in no way should be affecting the server load. and if it will. then they would have to go back to basic programming and figure out what they wrote in the program that does not need to be there in the first place.

This idea of using using a skill everytime you want to hit something i saw only for the first time here in FFXIV. it surprised me to be honest, it was something new. it is something you can work with defently. if they really want, they can even keep it this way, but the Stanima bar has go to go. I am all up for keep on hitting skills every time i want to hit the mob, but it still should be converted into instant casting w/CD.