Fifteen years ago...

[Kyri]

Least its not as confusing as Tera and its differences from Europe to American lore :P

[Arcell]

If you've played the storyline at all over the past two years, you'd notice plenty of things that indicate time has passed. The most notable being the big glowing ball of death in the sky transitioning slowly from a small moon, to what it is now. The grand companies launched, and over time, recruited us and formed the Alliance once more. There have been posts on the lodestone over the last two years "ICly" from NPCs from the in-game papers, noting these changes as they have been happening.

Time has passed, it would be silly to think that all this has happened and it hasn't. Using real-world years just makes sense, considering things like the seasonal events coinciding with ours in the real-world (Starlight festival/Christmas, Heavensturn/New Year's, etc).

To me it just seems like SE wants it to be fifteen years since Mor Dhona to now (Dalamud falling). Thus launch would have been 13 years. I'll probably just update my dates as such. Would be nice to get a concrete "this is the current year" out of them, but I don't think it will happen.

Time has passed yeah but there's no indication as to how much really has. Dalamud has descended but that was in large chunks each patch. If the game were really measuring time it could have been very quick.

Using real time may make sense in the real world but you can't expect the game lore to reflect that, especially when it clearly has a different time scheme set up.

As with most games, the only real measurement of the passage of time is story events. Time tends to only progress as the story does.

[Aysun]

I still think the fact that we have had two Heavensturn events (two New Years) since launch implies the passage of two years since launch.

As I said in my previous post, I think they're just doing it this way so that they have nice round numbers. Fifteen years between the Mor Dhona event and Dalamud falling, five years between Dalamud and ARR. We can just adapt as such.

[Mihana]

I'm not going to bother paying attention to the paper, if they want to label it as fifteen years ago let them. Far as we actually know it may not be speaking in the contrast of it being actually fifteen years ago from that date, but rather like fifteen years ago in general. I mean SE did the same kind of deal if I recall in FFXI, Chains of Promathia's storyline took place I think roughly a year after the game's initial launch date. Someone can give more accurate details but I think there it had been twenty years since the Crystal War Era but CoP didn't take place until like a year or year and a half later I think. Meanwhile the game had been out for I forget how many years.

And being an RPer like I was back then I counted it as 20 the moment the PS2 release debuted making it about 22 years + the additional year or whatever that CoP would add on, or something like that... Overall I just ignored it in general. But this is why I don't actually date my journal entries, SE's whole timeline deal tends to be pretty loose as to when this or that actually happened. Don't put too much stress into it and count it as however you want. I personally will still count it as seventeen years or whatever, think of it maybe like the newspaper editor simply made a mistake in their posting. It's nearing the end of the world after all, maybe he was too stressed to write it correctly?

Another element to back this up: When do some in-game events actually happen? Such as, did the events of the Godsbow and becoming a bard happen to the very first person? And what about the defeat of the Legatus Nael van Darnus? To date I've seen no papers publicly released noting that a brave band of adventurers had seen to his demise, or the destruction of the Lunar Transmitter either. So as far as we can assume, he's not dead. That or his death isn't known. But given it's such a huge vital piece of information you'd believe the Eorzean Alliance would have been eager to get that piece out.

Regardless if you RP it as such or not, they'd have mentioned a brave hero and their allies dealing the final deathblow to someone like that. So don't fret too much over details.

[Punainen]

So you're taking it upon yourselves to push the in-game time forward? I mean nothing in the game actually suggests that two additional years have passed. There's nothing in the game to suggest that any definite amount of time has passed. Technically it is but the game doesn't treat it like any long stretch of time. From the time we arrive in Eorzea to the time we finish off the current story, no specific amount of passed time is stated and the flow of events is such that it could be an incredibly short period of time.

Exactly. Otherwise you could promise to kill the primal, and then MONTHS later you get around to it... The NPCs wouldn't be too thrilled about that.

[Valmonte]

according to the in game year we should all be dead, or pretty much in knitting years, i'm 64 and Badaron Tenfingers is a skeleton.

[Rau]

Exactly. Otherwise you could promise to kill the primal, and then MONTHS later you get around to it... The NPCs wouldn't be too thrilled about that.

Or swear oath to a primal... that you killed three times already because you've never actually done the main story line until after you finished GC quest line and A Relic Reborn.

[Nakiamiie]

In ARR, it would be great if they would give us the official date of Eorzea each time.
For example: Year 5, 3rd month of the Seventh Umbral Era -> Year 5, 5th month of the Seventh Umbral Era.
So, all events from the first patch to the second took 2 months.
Since people do quests on their own pace, the passing of days in-game wouldn't matter. We would just assume that 2 months passed between your two storyline quests, for example.

[V3rdict]

I still think the fact that we have had two Heavensturn events (two New Years) since launch implies the passage of two years since launch.

Bingo!

I'll go ahead and assume the woman writing The Raven was exaggerating or purposely not being specific and just rounding off.