I haven't seen anything about AF-like gear coming to FFXIV, but for me the forums here are confusing to get around and I say that mostly out of the fact of who's players, admins and these dev tags that I don't fully understand.

Also to add to what Anty wrote, which I think is a wonderful idea to option 1, where every AF-like gear for that class displays the city-state you had started from. Other than this idea, there is no way to know who started where as this was not the case in XI. Simply /check'ing an individual would display his title and starting city.