How much time have passed since ARR?

I was wondering how much time passed since ARR in game.

I have no idea and was curious.

I'm actually impressed that it's almost been a year since the last time I had to copy/paste the last bubble post. We're making good progress!
(Some variation of "what year is it" / "how much time since..." used to be a weekly kind of question, lol.)

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Originally Posted by Fernehalwes

This is a dilemma faced by a lot of MMOs. To allow everyone that joins the game, regardless of when they do, to experience the full story, there simply has to be a stoppage of time. Okay, not really a stoppage, but more of a time bubble in which a span of about a year is contained. This is why that for the duration of 1.0, Eorzea was in a perpetual 1572. Think of it as the same thing that’s happening in the Simpsons. 23 seasons gone and Lisa’s still 8, Maggie’s still a baby, and the gummy Venus still tastes oh, so sacrelicious. Pushing time along would also mean changing 1000s of lines of NPC dialogue, updating quests, webpages, etc. with every patch. Meaning it would take more than double the time to release updates, and I’m sure most people wouldn’t want to wait. In a book, movie, offline game, a strict timeline can be set without too many complications. In an online title, there are just too many variables, so we ask that you bear with our bending of space-time. It’s for the greater good!

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Anwyll
Long ago, you mentioned that 1.0 took place in a “Simpsons Time Bubble.” Are we still in a bubble? Or does time move now that we know Patch = Canon?

Koji Fox (Fernehalwes)
It’s still a bubble; you have to have a bubble. There are players joining in Heavensward that are starting at the beginning. The bubble’s just gotten bigger.

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Time passes, but it does not move; it never adds up to anything. Even if you can prove that 5,000 days passed, the year does not change. It is, and will always be, 5 Seventh Umbral Era [into/also known as] 1 Seventh Astral Era. (Until they say it's not.)

You can find some lines in the game that make this confusing. Some NPCs will make meta-jokes about real-world time or deliberately say "How many moons has it been!? Oh, it doesn't matter!", but so long as the NPCs are still saying the Calamity was five years ago, the Calamity was five years ago. (Please look forward to the Rising!)

Even after spending months at sea, the Calamity? Still 5 years ago. Silvertear skies? Still 15 years ago. Ala Mhigo? Still 20 years ago. Doma? Still 25 years ago. (Aside from this one thing I don't even want to get into, lol.)

That said, feel free to make up your own timeline for yourself; no one's gonna stop you and no one can say you're wrong.

Okay, thanks for your answer.

I don't understand why there has to be a bubble. For example, time passes in WoW just fine. Just have the game say that the ARR content takes place 5 years after the Calamity, Heavensward 6 years, Stormblood 7 years, etc etc. Players aren't stupid.

Edit: At some point "it's five years after the Calamity" is going to look pretty dumb, given all we've done and are going to do. They mention the Simpson as an example, but then I can't stand that show. :P

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Originally Posted by Karthak

I don't understand why there has to be a bubble. For example, time passes in WoW just fine. Just have the game say that the ARR content takes place 5 years after the Calamity, Heavensward 6 years, Stormblood 7 years, etc etc. Players aren't stupid.

Edit: At some point "it's five years after the Calamity" is going to look pretty dumb, given all we've done and are going to do. They mention the Simpson as an example, but then I can't stand that show. :P

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It's mostly a cost-saving measure. Updating key characters' models every expansion just isn't practical, and by keeping the year stuck at "7UE 5 / 7AE 1" that particular issue can be side-stepped. Now character models are only updated when key events occur, such as Raubahn losing his arm, instead of giving every character who appears in a major cutscene a model update every expansion. (WoW can get away with doing what it does because it never shows the PC in a cutscene proper, and what cutscenes it has (which were pretty recently implemented) are pre-rendered instead of being in-engine like here. Its lower graphical fidelity is also a boon in this case - because the graphics aren't as high-quality, it takes less time and resources to update or make a new model.)

If you really must have a concrete date, just take the starting date of ARR (7UE 5 / 7AE 1) and add all of the real-world time that's passed since then on, using the Rising as a year marker. Considering ARR launched in August 2013, that would mean we've had 5 Rising events with a few months tacked on, so it's been ~5.7 years since ARR.

... if you really must.

The time bubble does mean they can to things like never update what NPCs are doing - they haven't been having the same conversation for five years, we're just permanently seeing them at "minute 1" of the time bubble and not progressing.

It does also allow for those optional quests to take place in their designated place in the timeline a little less strangely. It's still odd to play things out of order and see "earlier versions" of characters than you've previously been dealing with, but it make a bit more sense when you've just moved into a different zone of the time bubble. The overall world hasn't moved to a different state where that earlier story can't take place any more.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

(Aside from this one thing I don't even want to get into, lol.)

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You mean that one NPC in the Enclave who says it's been a year since the failed rebellion or some such?

Indeed, as the voice in Shadowbringers trailer says: "How many years have passed since that day?"

None, I started my journey as a fledgling marauder this morning, was slaying primals left and right by lunchtime and became a legend and a master or many forms of combat who has liberated several countries by afternoon.

The bubble answer is logical on the surface, but gonzo when you look deeper. Why should a quest in Heavensward take place in the same span of time as a quest in ARR? Sequentially, one happens after the other. Saying B happens after A does not change the position or shape of A, not even if you're just learning how to read.

Having Shadowbringers take place eight years on shouldn't have any affect at all on past quests, or change them. Quests from the old expansions can be treated as having happened in the past. Players moving through those quests are moving forward through time, playing out events as they happened, and eliding over the necessary time skips.

If time can be a bubble, it can also be a foggy gray expanse inside that bubble. And bubbles that contain more mass do tend to get larger.

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Originally Posted by Floortank

The bubble answer is logical on the surface, but gonzo when you look deeper. Why should a quest in Heavensward take place in the same span of time as a quest in ARR? Sequentially, one happens after the other. Saying B happens after A does not change the position or shape of A, not even if you're just learning how to read.

Having Shadowbringers take place eight years on shouldn't have any affect at all on past quests, or change them. Quests from the old expansions can be treated as having happened in the past. Players moving through those quests are moving forward through time, playing out events as they happened, and eliding over the necessary time skips.

If time can be a bubble, it can also be a foggy gray expanse inside that bubble. And bubbles that contain more mass do tend to get larger.

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I mean, you're correctly interpreting the bubble: everything happens in release order, but the numerical amount of time it takes is left utterly ambiguous for simplicity's sake. Like, there's the infamous example of the CUL 50 quest that features Nanamo, which takes place in 2.0 but could be completed post-2.55, and thus logically must be set in the past before 255.

I think the time being static is part of what makes eorzea so bland, lifeless and inconsequential. its just a static world in which nothing really matters.

they could allow time to flow without having any significant impact on the story or actual timeline. XI as old and archaic as it was even managed this. what you did one day would have some actual effect on the world the next. the balance of power between nations under constant flux, the variety of goods available from vendors constantly changing based on the state of the world. places like sacrarium where the maze was different every game day..

loads of these little things all bought the world alive and made it feel like it was moving forwards. makes a big difference in comparison to eorzea where you can sit there eat popcorn while a bunch of beast men run rampage on a settlement in some fate or other and pooooffff! it never happened..... which is often stated as a big reason why fates are so boring and tedious because nothing actually happens.

you could consider beseiged in XI to be basically 1 big fate. but it was a million times better simply because its outcome had a real impact on the game world...

you can create the sense of time actually progressing by such small and simple things

Yet even in XI those things didn't change the overall story or like with beseiged it didn't make you unable to go to a zone. XIV has two where those things do happen one is the note which tells you coral to interact with in Sastasha and what the one npc sells in Highbridge. I guess you could say the difficulty spike that HW and SB fates have depending on how many people have been doing them is another thing. Another is which color is the good buff to get during the 2nd boss of Wander's Palace Hard as it changes every time you fight them.

In fairness, all the stuff we've gone through COULD have happened in a pretty short space of time, if it was packed back-to-back and we disregard time spent doing optional stuff like fishing or bumming around the Gold Saucer. I think of it a bit like the TV show "24". Jack Bauer packs a ridiculous amount of activity into a single day. I mean, there's a logical upper bound of six years on everything we've done since ARR. Subtract all the stuff we've done that are just bards' tales (most Extremes, all Savages), subtract all the time just grinding tomes, subtract all the time just faffing about with side activities, and you can likely condense what's left into well under a year. Perhaps tack on a couple months to account for travel time that's not actually shown.

"The Calamity was five years ago... well, five years and ten months, really, but 'five' has a much better ring to it, don't you think?"

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Originally Posted by Dzian

they could allow time to flow without having any significant impact on the story or actual timeline. XI as old and archaic as it was even managed this.

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Honestly, I consider FFXI to be a MUCH more static game than FFXIV is. Stuff like Aht Urhgan's Beseiged, or Adoulin's Rieve barriers - yes, the world changed, but only through extremely limited gimick mechanics localized to specific expansions that can and will be undone and redone again and again.

Aside from these rare gimmicks, zones never changed shape. NPCs never appeared, or disappeared - the EXACT SAME NPCs in every zone appeared in the same places in each zone, no matter how far along you were in the storyline. In most cases, their dialog stayed the same, as well. In fact, being a zone NPC guaranteed immortality - no one ever worried that Nanaa Mhigo would get killed in a quest she appeared in, because a player could go talk to her at any time in Windurst. (The closest the game ever came to bucking this trend was the "puppet Shantotto" that took her NPC's place during the mini-expansion "A Shantotto Ascension".)

By comparison, the world of FFXIV is far more dynamic. The Scions have changed headquarters. Haurchefant is no longer in Coerthas Central Highlands, and never will be again. Crafters can witness the restoration of the plaza in the Churning Mists through the Moogle crafting quests, and ANYONE can help rebuild the Enclave in Yanxia.

We even have universal world changes, independent of storyline or quest progression - stuff that older players have seen, but newer never will, such as the evolution of Revenant's Toll from a collection of tents into a thriving town. (And that's to say nothing of the changes that occurred during the transition from 1.0 to ARR - but that's a special case.)

No, when it comes to a changing and evolving world with permanent consequences, FFXI is not a good counterexample! Certainly, I wouldn't mind seeing something like Beseiged in FFXIV, but I don't see it as any kind of "real" world-impacting stuff.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

I think the time being static is part of what makes eorzea so bland, lifeless and inconsequential. its just a static world in which nothing really matters.

they could allow time to flow without having any significant impact on the story or actual timeline. XI as old and archaic as it was even managed this. what you did one day would have some actual effect on the world the next. the balance of power between nations under constant flux, the variety of goods available from vendors constantly changing based on the state of the world. places like sacrarium where the maze was different every game day..

loads of these little things all bought the world alive and made it feel like it was moving forwards. makes a big difference in comparison to eorzea where you can sit there eat popcorn while a bunch of beast men run rampage on a settlement in some fate or other and pooooffff! it never happened..... which is often stated as a big reason why fates are so boring and tedious because nothing actually happens.

you could consider beseiged in XI to be basically 1 big fate. but it was a million times better simply because its outcome had a real impact on the game world...

you can create the sense of time actually progressing by such small and simple things

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XI had a bubble too though, its entirety takes place within the same year in-game.

I'd also say time passes in every which way but fine in WoW because time travel shenanigans have been a thing since Crusade. On top of that, due to its open structure it doesn't even follow the A to B to C sequencing of a plot unless you really hold yourself to it. Mag'har orcs can time paradox themselves into joining decades after the fall of the Iron Horde, back in time and to a parallel dimension to the days of Cataclysm where they were not present, face the Lich King, see the rise of Iron Horde and then be the very hero who inspires them to join the Horde in the first place.

Bizarrely, Nightborn Elves come to their racial faction with max reputation specifically to avoid this same manner of paradox.

WoW's also got the world NPC issue where unless the instance of a locale is changed to reflect some kind of change, NPCs there won't be affected by events like their own death. Conversely in 14, so long as you've completed content where they need to be present on the world, injured or dead NPCs will be removed from the world if they're normally there.

14 holds fast to its sequencing of events which I think is more important than getting deeply involved in how much time has explicitly passed.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

loads of these little things all bought the world alive and made it feel like it was moving forwards. makes a big difference in comparison to eorzea where you can sit there eat popcorn while a bunch of beast men run rampage on a settlement in some fate or other and pooooffff! it never happened..... which is often stated as a big reason why fates are so boring and tedious because nothing actually happens.

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They tried to do this, especially in ARR.

Highbridge - what I assume you're talking about where "beastmen run rampage but then it never happened" - actually is a good example of how they tried to have FATEs dynamically affecting the setting.

There are two paths that the Highbridge FATE chain can take: players can successfully fight off the invading Qiqirn, then launch an attack on the Qiqirn camp to fight their Amalj'aa leader. Or players can fail (or ignore or not be present to attempt) to defend the settlement, the Qiqirn kidnap all the residents, and you have to invade the camp to rescue them.

Unfortunately in practice, people rarely fend off the initial attack - it seems to require more than one player, even if you're there at the right time, and it will often go entirely ignored. So everyone is kidnapped, the timer for for the "rescue phase" FATE is an entire hour, and the result is that 90% of the time Highbridge is a ghost town.


Similarly, the Redbelly Hive FATE chain in the South Shroud. You can fight your way through the Redbellies, defeat their leader and kick them out of Boughbury, and then wait and defend it when they try to re-invade. (The Hive can be cleared solo if you get there at the very beginning, but doesn't seem to be defendable solo. I assume if you could beat them off, you could continue to hold the location.)

Again, it falls down in practice because there is little to no incentive to actually keep the Redbellies out, unless access to a single vendor (and the ability to purchase Baby Raptors) is worth sticking around to fight over.


The frequency of FATEs just doesn't mesh well with giving players an ongoing reason to get involved in them.

What I would find interesting is, despite the time bubble, how much time actually could have passed, according to time references in the story or by NPCs.
There is the comment that the Doman rebellion was about a year ago or so, for example. What exactly has been said here again?
We also travel 2-3 months to Kugane.
When I did the Heavensward story with an alt character, I also noticed an NPC say something along the lines of some weeks or months have passed since XY. I thought it was really interesting, but I just cannot remember which NPC it was and what he said. I think it was either directly in a story cutscene/dialogue, or some important NPC, or else I wouldn't have talked to him with my alt character, as I usually don't talk to every NPC when I don't have so much time to play. Does anyone remember this one? Or other references to how much time actually could have passed, were we not in a time bubble?

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Originally Posted by Jollyy5

Indeed, as the voice in Shadowbringers trailer says: "How many years have passed since that day?"

None, I started my journey as a fledgling marauder this morning, was slaying primals left and right by lunchtime and became a legend and a master or many forms of combat who has liberated several countries by afternoon.

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LOL this made my day!
Like, mor dhona was never a dirt pit, idyllshire was reconstructed in a second, ishgard got a full government reform within hours, doma was liberated just a second ago and now we live on another shard and it just happened like 10 seconds ago!

I get the bubble idea, it works when you can just buy a potion to make 8 years become today, but its not viable for lore references. To me its
and like the trailer states "years since that day" but we can always look at past content being the echo.

I think they could use expansions as measurable time spent. 3.0 to 3.55 took X amount of months, 4.0 to 4.56 took X amount of time. And if a year passes, then go for it. I understand that the events can be quite rushed (the whole doman ark of 4.2 and 4.3 could happen in 24 hours), but major events like rebuilding Doma, Idyllshire, yeah it breaks the immersion a bit.

Just to keep my sanity over the subject, I just headcanon it to be a year's worth of time in ARR, HW, SB, etc. each.

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Originally Posted by ZeroPointSigma

Just to keep my sanity over the subject, I just headcanon it to be a year's worth of time in ARR, HW, SB, etc. each.

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Same.

ARR was about a year of stuff, HW the same, SB maybe a tad longer because of how long I like to think the initial sailing over there took.

Essentially I just put each bit in its own bubble.

Same here on making a headcanon version of it, though I'd put HW at not being quite a year for my own headcanon. Closer to 6-9 months.

I'm personally in the camp headcanon-ing each expansion to take around a year. I THINK a dev said between the final cutscene of 2.55 and the beginning of 3.0's MSQ was a few months, but until we get a concrete (ie, Encyclopaedia) source saying times then it's all up in the air

It has been 2100 Earth days since ARR released, or just over 3million Earth minutes.
Every Eorzean day is 70 Earth minutes long.
Therefore, it has been 43200 Eorzean days since ARR released.
Or with 12 months of 32 days each, exactly 112.5 Eorzean years.
...
The WoL looks good for being well over 130, huh?

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Originally Posted by MaethusXion

I'm personally in the camp headcanon-ing each expansion to take around a year. I THINK a dev said between the final cutscene of 2.55 and the beginning of 3.0's MSQ was a few months, but until we get a concrete (ie, Encyclopaedia) source saying times then it's all up in the air

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The time between 2.55 and 3.0 was a few days to a few weeks. Per a live letter.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...804-23-2015%29

0:05:06
Q: Story-wise how much time has passed since the end of Patch 2.55 and the beginning of Heavensward?

A: While there is no specific mention of how much time has passed in-game, it’s about a few days to a few weeks after the events that took place during Patch 2.55. You can think of this time as the time that passed while Haurchefant was speaking with the people of House Fortemps, and the expansion begins when the Warrior of Light’s entry to Ishgard has been approved, so it’s not like months have passed.

In my opinion, the reason why this question comes up so often is because the bubble itself ISNT static. Sure the models don’t always update, but flavor text, some areas, and even the placement of some NPCs absolutely DO update as you progress. And even if they don’t directly specify exactly how MUCH time has passed, the game does reference time enough for you to be actively conscious of it and curious. Time bubbles are fine, but if you are going to move me from one to another I’d like to know how much time has passed between them. I think that’s reasonable.

On the subject of updated models, I honestly haven’t seen a demand for SE to do that for NPCs. If anything, they take that initiative themselves with each expansion now.

To those using WoW as an example, bear in mind that we're never really in any scenes and typically not in the spotlight, and those who start anew will often find events in a complete jumble, so time isn't much better there. If anything, it's worse. Vol'jin is still casually standing inside my WoD Garrison, yet he died an expansion ago and was replaced by Sylvanas, yet I can also go and start MoP content when I like and the first cutscene will be of Garrosh as Warchief telling you what to do. There's a LOT of examples of this sort of conflict due to how WoW is pieced together in the present after the levelling system was streamlined and scaled.

An old-school player playing from vanilla would have went from Vanilla > Burning Crusade > Wrath > Cataclysm > Mists > Draenor > Legion > BFA, and we'd be right to consider this the natural course of events, yet if I started levelling a new toon right now, that order is pretty irrelevant outside of my own level. Once you hit X, Y or Z level you can completely skip content entirely and do, say, Wrath rather than Crusade, Draenor instead of Mists etc, and if you do either with any sort of previous story conflict (like above mentioned Vol'Jin/Sylvanas Warchief debacle) then you're in for a lore-based headache if you care for that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, FFXIV has some minor examples of the same thing, but far, far, far less so and none of which exists is too overly impactful unless you're a stinger for accurate lore. Example, I had gotten about halfway through Heavensward on my WHM before I decided to off-level a Dragoon, which caused some... Curiosities in terms of Estinien's place in the MSQ vs how he was in the DRG quest-line. While we can debate over its usefulness, just having the game be more centric from its own A to B and be time-contained is just a way of trying to protect the game, even if it itself also isn't exactly perfect.