I played around with characters starting at the different cities and have noticed something unexpected.
Sidequests for main class are not always necessary but they do provide pieces of armor.

Sidequests are abundant for main class areas but when starting a different class on a different city those sidequests are not available.

For example, I started this character as ARC but when I unlocked GLD in Uldah there were no sidequests available in the surrounding Uldah area, but they were there when I created a character with GLD as starting class.

Is there a way to unlock these sidequests?