As the previous two people have stated, Ishgard seems to be the focus of the large scale pvp free company content we'll be getting. So Ishgard will most likely be ready at 2.0 or soon after, since if not, free companies would barely have content. I'm sure the grand companies being for the three starter nations, means free companies might have some quests tied to ishgard like "we don't have a grand company but we'll allow the free companies to help us with protection of the city"

Also thanks to the OP for starting a thread with discussion value, too many threads of just useless opinion, this thread was refreshing.