Quote Originally Posted by Khalithar View Post
The entire notion of the individual GC's has been abandoned to focus on them as a united front with faction differences meaning little to nothing anymore outside of a few changes in dialogue here and there like if you're part of a specific GC the NPC's of the same GC often refer to you by rank instead of name.
The entire point of the GC's in 2.x is for PvP reasons. Nothing else. Think about why they exist and why the existing city guards and field NPC's aren't part of it. Brightly colored uniforms for events meant to have the GC's fight each other. Even the crystal braves have a brightly colored uniform. You can see what the direction was and then it seems like it was abandoned.

There's no story-relevant reason for the GC's to exist as they are. They were something that was retro-fitted into 1.18 and created after Yoshi-P started working on 1.x, as they didn't exist in 1.00.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...tch-1.18-Notes

[dev1003] Grand Company quests for all three city-states have been implemented.
Grand Company headquarters for each city-state can be accessed via the same entrances used to enter market areas.
* The first Grand Company quests for each city-state require adventurers to have achieved rank 22 in any Discipline of War or Magic.
Hence, any item, gear or blessing given by the GC is something may have originally been intended for PvP elements that were then discarded.