A lot of people in Red Dot were also in various other linkshells, as is the norm for FF MMOs, so as some shells reform as FCs in ARR we're not sure what our membership is going to look like. Most gaffers quit the game or drifted to other shells. By the time I joined, I think we were less than half neogaf (I didn't even have a neogaf account at the time). By the time I became part of the leadership team, most of our active members weren't from gaf or even knew what it was, and those are the members that stuck together until the end of the world as we knew it. Some people who were in RD didn't really do stuff with us. Some RD members did and may be bringing friends in once ARR launches. One of our (non-gaf-member) leaders has had talks with another shell leader and we'll probably be absorbing them and their mostly-endgame group into our FC (if they're still planning to do that). It's kinda all up in the air at this point still. Except the part about being the official gaf group in ARR.
Linkshells will still likely be used as "sub communities" of a sort, but from what SE has said it sounds like they're really going to have incentives for actually doing events/dungeons/raids with your FC, not with people you know via linkshells.
Next phase or two of beta will help us get a better idea of how we're gonna organize things. Free Companies are gonna be in p3, right?