Six Year? A progression of events query

[Volkai]

It's come up in some RP chat that we seem to now be at six years or so post-Calamity.

However, near the end of the 2.50 quests Minfilia says it's been five years since the Calamity, which doesn't seem to mesh with the various mentions of time passing between various storyline quests.

Are we still somewhere in the 'five years past the Calamity' time frame, or have we crossed into year six? Does anyone have a solid idea of how much time passes between the events at the start and end of the 2.0 storyline, between Castrum and 2.1, or 2.2, and so on?

[Anonymoose]

WELCOME TO THE BUBBLE

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!

From now until the end of the game, it is perpetually Year 5 of the Seventh Umbral Era aka Year 1 of the Seventh Astral Era

(Probably.)

[Kaiser-Ace]

So under that assumption, the MS of FF14 likely spans the course of only a few months possibly reaching a full year by the time Heavenward is released.

am I correct in that assumption Moose-Sensei?

[Anonymoose]

I'm I correct in that assumption Moose-Sensei?

I actually don't really know if there's a correct way to interpret the "bending of space-time."

The way I choose to look at it is like so:

Let's say that, whenever Final Fantasy XIV has received it's final expansion, someone goes back and tallies up every single time someone in the main scenario says, "X bells ago," or "Y moons have passed," or "it's been Z weeks." Perhaps they find that, based on the NPC's confirmation, the game must be held accountable for at the very least three years worth of time passing. Too bad. It's still 5(7U) aka 1(7A). BECAUSE PAC-MAN SPACETIME, or whatever.

Another example:

Watch every episode of South Park and tally up how many days you can account for since they entered the 4th grade. Have years passed? Yes? ... No, they haven't. This is what Fernehalwes meant when he referenced the Simpsons. You can hold them accountable for years worth of time passing, but, canonically speaking, time didn't move. Those trying to make any more sense of it than that might as well be watching the [ET] clock wondering why the game hasn't been held accountable for hundreds of years passing, for all the good it'll do. It passes, but it doesn't move. The game might "span" for years, but it's always gonna be using the same calendar. It's like cumulative Groundhog Day.

If people want to do the best they can to create a fanon timeline for their character's journey through the story, I'm sure it can be done; I'm sure a perfectly reasonable distribution of time can be found for the entire game once all has been said and done (and I bet it'd be fun), but it won't be canon. That's the main point I want to try to drive home here. Fernehalwes has said that the highest degree of legitimacy goes to the interpretation, "It's a Simpsons bubble." I don't want to discourage anyone who wants to make their own timeline from doing so, but it'd be really helpful if they didn't try to bring anyone under its yoke or get the dev. team to admit that it should be Year 2 of the Seventh Astral Era by now. Someday they may canonically move time, but, just in case, I wouldn't hold my breath over it.

[Kaiser-Ace]

EDIT INCOMING

Assuming that was in reference to me, I hit all the correction bubbles before I posted it and have no idea why they didn't save. I swear, some times this spell check works and some times it doesn't.

[Anonymoose]

EDIT INCOMING

When you see this, it means my post is more than 1,000 characters and hasn't been ninja-edited into place yet, lol. You can circumvent the character limit on posts by typing everything you want to say, and then copying it, posting only "EDIT INCOMING," editing your post, and pasting. I have to do it with almost every single post I do, because I'm a damned windbag, and sometimes people just catch it at the right moment, lol.

[Kaiser-Ace]

Ah ok. Even still. That first post I made was barely understandable until I fixed it. No idea why my computer does this to me. Just like SOME women (Not all) it seems to do every thing it can to be irritating. >_>

[Volkai]

Argh. I suspected we were in the MMO time bubble, but people keep telling me that somewhere or other it's been (officially) said that we're at year six after the Calamity. Without a source link, of course.

There's also the fact that the post you quoted is from 2012, so it's possible that something saying otherwise had been posted in the intervening years.

[lololink]

Argh. I suspected we were in the MMO time bubble, but people keep telling me that somewhere or other it's been (officially) said that we're at year six after the Calamity. Without a source link, of course.

There's also the fact that the post you quoted is from 2012, so it's possible that something saying otherwise had been posted in the intervening years.

Well 2.0 starts 5 years after the calamity so we are in year 6 AC ( actually you are in the 6th year after the quest to commemorate the calamity at lvl 15 I think ), but yeah I wonder if they'll stick to the time bubble theory, for an anime where all episodes are independants from each others the time bubble works fine, but in this game events occurs in a certain order ( although you can consider that side quests can occur anytime ) so there is a continuity, I think in WoW they made each expansion last 1 year or 6 month lore wise.

I don't really understand Ferne's answer, unless he is speaking about having the game occuring at the same pace as in the real life ( meaning that if a player started today the dialogues should be changed to say that it's year 7 ) ?

[Volkai]

Well 2.0 starts 5 years after the calamity so we are in year 6 AC ...

I don't really understand Ferne's answer, unless he is speaking about having the game occuring at the same pace as in the real life ( meaning that if a player started today the dialogues should be changed to say that it's year 7 ) ?

What Fernehalwes was saying is that while there is 'passage of time' as events progress, it is unmeasured. So when you're doing the 2.5 storyline it's been a while since the Crystal Braves were formed, just as when the Crystal Braves formed it had been a while since your fight with the Black Wolf, just as that occurred a while after the story of 2.0 starts... but it's still been five years since the Calamity. You can't say "Heavensturn marked six years since the Calamity" or some such, and have your statement mesh with the official timeline.