So. What's First?

[finiteHP]

I think their point is choosing the city you want to start in and the questline story to experience rather than let arcanist dictate that it must be Limsa's story. They want to level arcanist, but they'd rather Gridania be their hometown.

This is exactly my reason. I am too loyal to Grid to start in Limsa just for Arcanist.

1.0 characters will start in a different location than we did in the last few phases; a new area to "pop" back in, so I'm not even 100% sure that our starting class will affect much (But yeah, story-wise I think you're right).

That was my assumption up until I saw how they had 1.0 characters appear in phase 3. In phase 3 we chose what class we wanted to be and then got a special opening of our arrival in the city that was different than the new character arrival. We'll find out soon, but I don't think they'd make a special 1.0 opening if it was just going to be for one beta phase.