I havent played 1.0 so to me this doesnt feel like a drastic change. So to me it doesnt feel like its taking away anything. I actually like it - for two major reasons:

1) We all know that past level 30, when you get your job, your class is useless, so there is no point in keeping it. You'll never play your class again and wether you level up a class or a job doesnt matter to met, its just a different name in the end. More so: removing the classes actually makes sure everyone is playing their job - since a lot of major and important abilities are lokced behind your jobcrystal (for example: the tank-stances - imagine a gladiator in DD or AV) I think its actually good to "force" people into that.
2) The current dev-team has THEIR (or Yoshis) vision of the game now - its not 1.0 anymore and even though I understand all the sentiment from your old vets, I can also see why the new dev-team wants to make this their game with their ideas. And if classes and guilds doesnt fit in there anymore, I think we're better of with scrapping them alltogether instead of half-assing something that doesnt make anyone happy.

The only thing I really liked about the class/job-system (not saying I hated it or anything, just neutral on the rest) is that it made you try a second class before you could unlock your job, so you'd get to try something new. Even though its extremly annoying to level the first 15 levels (without quests...) I always liked that encouragment.

But I dont really see this as a big change - they're STILL inlcuding lore and stories in the jobquests (and it makes more sense to me to just add a new job-master instead of adding new guilds "Oh, look, a guild we never noticed before!" - granted, they could be in the new areas, but anyways) so for me nothing gets really lost here.