I'm kind of skeptical about this and view it from 2 different perspectives.

On one hand, like many others have pointed out, this seems to be the "official" recruitment for Grand Companies. With the dates they have mentioned, it's easy to assume that patch 1.19 will release between the 21st and 22nd. This would mean patch 1.19 meets their end of summer deadline, something they seemed pretty strict about for this patch.

On the other hand, the only info we really got about the event itself was that recruitment NPCs would be stationed in the three city states. This doesn't necessarily mean that they will actually recruit us now. For all we know, they might just give us a little sneak preview of each company before we make our permanent decision in which company we join. It seems strange that Grand Company recruitment would be done through an event that has an end date (10/11/11). What happens when the event is over, no more recruitment?

I don't know what to think. I'm definitely not going to set myself up for disappointment by assuming that 1.19 will definitely be released together with this event. I will however remain optimistic about it, and hope that this is the case.