They haven't said they are removing basic attacks yet.. theres not a dev post in this thread yet. All they said is they have things planned, and without implementing auto attack the future battle system would be impossible.

here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-system/page20

As they said, they cant really 'add' auto attack without changing other things first or at the same time.

There haven't been any posts form devs about auto attack since then, because there is too much to consider.