Starting City?Follow

I was fortunate enough to finally get a PS3 key and my initial impression of the game is that it's gorgeous. I'm still fiddling around with character creation and the different cities, and it seems to me as if you can't choose your starting city but it is chosen for you based on your starting class? Is that true, or am I just missing something? If so, will it only be this way for the beta, so that you can access your classes guild more easily and the actual release will allow you to choose? It seems silly to be so restricted, to me. I would really like to give it a go in Limsa but the only class starting there is Marauder. I really don't want to do Ul'Dah because that's where I was from originally in version 1.0 and I don't want to start someplace familiar and talk to Momodi and stuff. I want a whole new experience.

No you can choose any one of the three grand companies doesn't matter from where you started.

what are the differences in grand company's? Gear related from the currency? Different story? And is grand company able to be changed after the storyline of it is finished?

I hadn't really thought about any of the GC differences before this post so any info is helpful...