Six Year? A progression of events query

[Fenral]

I would love to see Ferne -- or Bayohne, or any of the dev tracker-listed people -- give us an update on this.

Wait, so he's actually said somewhere before that time will never flow in any meaningful way?

[Anonymoose]

I guess technically it IS possible that all of the MS happened in one day. It'd be weird but assuming all heck was breaking lose it IS possible,

Would this also imply that the entirety of the Simpsons took place on the same day?

Wait, so he's actually said somewhere before that time will never flow in any meaningful way?

Not necessarily never, and not necessarily not in a meaningful way. There can be progression flags (as with the Waking Sands), and there are a few one-line swaps in certain quests (like Qarn HM where the Twins recognize you if you've done the MIN story), but there's a bit of a PAC-MAN spacetime thing going on (PAC-MAN Physics = exits the "end" of the map, emerges at the "beginning," but no progression is lost). Time passes, but doesn't move. Present-day events pass and accumulate, but aren't nailed to a date. The only things that I would say never flow in a meaningful way are the in-game holiday events.

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!

A lot of people are having a very hard time wrapping their heads around this, apparently, which makes trying to explain it quite a headache.

That said, Ferne could show back up and elaborate on this (or explain that it's not entirely applicable anymore, or that the circumstances change during a certain expansion) any time he wants to, but the above quote is from 2012, long after ARR went into development. I'm assuming that means it's still relevant, so until he says otherwise, my interpretations will be first and foremost obedient to that concept.