Imagine a game with no levels

[Shai]

I dont recall any of that being said lol.
As far as "no leveling" that is not a correct translation. He meant that instead of having standard exp like we see in xi, we would have classes that equal weapons, and that we would level weapons like we do in ffxi. It's basically a system built around skill ups, hence the new community re-name "SP".
As far as some of the other things you mentioned. SE did try those options, and they sounded good on paper, but they obviously did not have lasting effects. You can't have an MMO with a system that does not have a lasting effect =/

I know he meant we'd have weapon skill up parties instead of levels, but last I checked... I also have a level. So translation or not, they compromised on that idea and many, many, many others that I was excited about until I played retail. Even told myself in Beta they were waiting for launch to pull out the big punches. Sigh.

What's most amusing is how the original site still has stuff that ... will presumably never exist.

Miner being my personal favorite. I check it every now and then to see if they'll even bother to ninja edit their wrong information.