I think instead of reading into Tanaka's interview too much where he said there won't be levels, we should look to the past. It's obvious to me that Tanaka was trying to mold the game after FF2, a game where you literally didn't have a level, you just had stronger skills the more you used them. More powerful hand to hand attacks, or fire magic. I do believe that was the original basis for FFXIV and only after compromise did they add in Ranks and Physical Levels. In other words I think that originally, there were no ranks, just skills that increased from the skill points. But just like everything else in this game they couldn't see the whole picture and just compromised so they could get something that would run live.