A MSQ timeline/calendar is needed.

[Nav_Fae]

I cannot for the life of me recall the source, but I recall that ARR - EW all takes place in about a year. Some of the expansions no more than two weeks apart.
But this also a game where people can live to be 100 years old and not die from old age and still look young.

Someone once made a timeline of how many times the game forces a day to pass (like making the WoL spend the night at an inn room). If we added all of that up, the entire game would take place in under 2 months.
The passing of time I think is just one of those things that they'd prefer the community to head canon a solution to. Bet also yeah, they said this game would never age the twins. So if people are hoping for like 5 year time skips, it's not going to happen. Most we'll see is a year.

[RyuDragnier]

You guys DO know that it's possible to age people up without having to change the environment, right? Look at Guild Wars 2, canonically it has been 10 years since the start of the first quest you do in the game, and they haven't really changed anything on the world map that was available then to show it. The main story acknowledges it, but the old maps in the world stay the same regardless. FF14 can do the same.

[Asari5]

it appears strange to me that they put so little importance into time while they offer an explainig to so many things nobody would ask an lore explanation for... for example market board on the first

[Canadane]

Everything exists in time bubbles.
This has been explained before in past lore topics. Essentially it's like The Simpsons where time passes, but it doesn't.

[Necrotica]

I could see them aging up the twins eventually. They say they won't do all kinds of things and end up doing them.

[MikkoAkure]

From what I remember, the only instances of time passing that’s referenced in the MSQ are Solus’s death and the ship to Kugane.

The Doman refugees that came to Eorzea in ARR fled the failed Doman rebellion that started when Solus died, the legions were recalled to the first Garlean civil war, and the locals rose up under Hien’s dad. When we finally get to Doma, they talk about how it happened a year ago.

The trip to the Far East itself took 3 months.

Anything other than that is inference and headcanon. The devs themselves said we’re in a time bubble as others have mentioned and the passage of time won’t really be reflected in the plot.

That all said, I’m hoping that there’s some sort of passage of time now that the original game was over. We already have the Echo so it wouldn’t be too out there to still do old side quests.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Considering the twins' ages has been brought up a few times in ShB and EW, that might be hinting at something. My pet theory is that they'll be aged up a little to go with the graphics updates promised for 7.0, but I have no evidence for that, just speculation.

The game's timeline is deliberately vague because, as an MMO with big chunks of the world still unrevealed, it would be limiting to future stories to nail down exactly where everything is and how long it takes to get there. You also end up wondering just how, say, Hien and his troops arrived with their yols just in time for the siege of Ala Mhigo, with nobody knowing they were coming, if it took us so long on a boat, while we still also had to fight past Lakshmi and Fordola. I'd rather just shrug and accept that the timeline moves at the speed of plot.

[Striker44]

It would help the story make a lot more sense. Particularly when you get things like "the scions are pretendjng to disband and won't see eachother as often" to the next quest being "let's get the gang back together"

Are you the same person who completely missed the boat on this one in the other thread, too, or just happen to use the same phrase? O.O

The whole thing about the scions "disbanding" was that it would be the "official" line, while the group was actually doing no such thing. They even specifically limit the next quest to only a certain group within the Scions rather than the whole team to keep that illusion alive.

Personally, I see no need for a "timeline" whatsoever. The number of months, years, whatever just doesn't really matter when you're progressing through the MSQ in a linear fashion. In a game like WoW, I could see a timeline being helpful, since you can choose which expansions to level in, and you probably won't level in all of them, so you could potentially do a post-Cataclysm expansion and then go back to a pre-Cataclysm one, and that can get rather confusing without knowing when each one really occurs. But for something like FFXIV, you progress the story in a direct fashion.

[Brightamethyst]

I cannot for the life of me recall the source, but I recall that ARR - EW all takes place in about a year. Some of the expansions no more than two weeks apart.

Incorrect. We as players see everything happening instantly because it's a game, but a lot of time still passes between story events. The boat ride to Kugane at the beginning of SB. In real time it took 10 minutes CS and a dungeon run, but in game time we were on that ship for over a month.

[RyuDragnier]

The game's timeline is deliberately vague because, as an MMO with big chunks of the world still unrevealed, it would be limiting to future stories to nail down exactly where everything is and how long it takes to get there. You also end up wondering just how, say, Hien and his troops arrived with their yols just in time for the siege of Ala Mhigo, with nobody knowing they were coming, if it took us so long on a boat, while we still also had to fight past Lakshmi and Fordola. I'd rather just shrug and accept that the timeline moves at the speed of plot.

GW2 uses years for this exact reason. You don't need to know "Oh this happened in X month of this year," just that it happened in that year. Example, they could have ARR's starting year mentioned, then mention certain important story things that happened that year, such as how 1577 is when the Warrior of Light comes to Eorzea, have the year mentioned for when Crystal Tower storyline happens in, when the Domans fled to Eorzea, etc. Not months, years they happened. An example below using a few years before the start of Guild Wars 2 with information you're given rather early in the game (so it's no big spoilers for anything).

1319 AE
Events of Edge of Destiny (prequel novel) begin.
Destiny's Edge is formed and kills one of Jormag's champions, the Dragonspawn, as well as several other dragons' champions.

1320 AE
Kralkatorrik awakens and creates the Dragonbrand. Glint is killed and her body retrieved by the Zephyrites. Breaking of Destiny's Edge. Almorra's Massacre and founding of the Vigil. The Ogre Revolt and the Branded siege of Ebonhawke leads to humans and charr fighting together against a common enemy.

1324 AE
Events of Ghosts of Ascalon (prequel novel) begin.