Yup. But that's what everyone wants. But the people with rank 50 Gladiators will still have Rank 50 Gladiators after the job system kicks in, from what I understand. They will have to then go and unlock jobs relating to their classes via quests. I suppose you could see classes as base jobs from FFXI (eg. Warrior, Monk, etc) and jobs as advanced jobs from FFXI (eg. Paladin, Summoner, etc) when it comes to what you have at the start and how you unlock the new jobs.

But I'm unsure whether you can be both a class and a job at the same time, eg. You have the Gladiator class (to dictate your weapon type and, therefore, weapon skills) and then the Paladin job (which would increase vitality, defence, etc). We really don't have a huge amount of information just yet... but I think it'll work something like this. Still, I'm just guessing.

EDIT: Oh, wait, I think I get your original question. I thought you were talking about the new jobs that are going to come in, but you're actually talking about the physical ranks being removed and point allocations being made different. From what I understand, everyone is looking forward to the change and people seem fairly optimistic. No doubt a bunch of people will end up ragequitting the day of the change, but those with sanity intact will understand that it will take a little while to get right. As for making classes more unique, it seems a key part of this is restricting what skills you can use on other classes once you unlock them. They have stated they will (once 1.19 is live) be seeking a lot of fan feedback before they do this, so it'll certainly be interesting.

EDIT: RECIPE CHANGES: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/276 (thank God)