When you have these sorts of features in a game, you have to ask yourself: How does this enhance/improve the experience for the player?

In this case, the answer is: It does not. At all.

It's almost there arbitrarily, it seems to serve no purpose. If people want a grind in pve, whether it be for gear or just glamour, that's what wolf marks are for. There is your grind, bam, DONE. How in the world does ranking up multiple times make them game better for ME, or anyone else for that matter? In fact, all it seems to do is make the experience WORSE overall. If I want to do frontline with a friend from a different GC, one of us has to be willing to sacrifice our gear and rank to do it, that's not fun at all. It's literally unfun.

I think even the people that are "meh" on the issue can agree that at the very least, GC rank is not fun. It's just there, it's annoying.

Why have it?