Timeline question

[Anonymoose]

Which, based on what you said, would put her at about 9 or 10 months from the time she rolled into Gridania?

The Time Bubble around (5 Seventh Umbral aka 1 Seventh Astral) is mostly for the dev. team. Without it, they'd need to update every single short-term and/or exact date given in the game every time we moved forward. Not only is that a massive amount of text updating, but all-too-familiar dates that are frequently used (such as the fall of Ala Mhigo, twenty years ago, the battle of Silvertear Skies, fifteen years ago, the Calamity, five years ago) would no longer fall on easy-to-remember multiples of five. Every time a date was given, they'd be at the office like, "Okay, 1557 + 15 for 1.0 + 5 + for ARR + 1 for Heavensward..." and you just know the number of mistakes would increase tenfold.

For the sake of progress and sanity, time is for all intents and purposes "stopped" inside the bubble. Not stopped like time doesn't pass, just stopped like time doesn't move. The best example is still The Simpsons. Decades have passed but nothing has moved. Even if you could prove all of the "but three days ago" and "but two moons past" could add up to more than a year (Shouldn't Lisa be in 4th grade by now? She's attended 1032 days of 3rd!), it wouldn't matter much.

Saying you've been out for 10 months seems realistic, but it also only give you two months to fit everything from 4.0 onward if you're trying to accommodate the bubble. However, you as an individual do not necessarily need to be bound to something that exists for dev. members and loremongers. If you want to work out a rough timetable for yourself, no one can blame you. Just don't be surprised if it doesn't match up with the timetables other people make for themselves, or with Patch 7.0 if they still refer to the Battle of Silvertear Skies as fifteen years ago.

Strictly speaking, though, when Rhapsodies of Eorzea comes out... yeah... it'll have been one hells of a year.