Timeline question

[Kytrin]

I'm curious if anyone can give me an estimate of how long, lore wise, we've been adventuring? I'm not certain if the patches would reflect game time accurately, and I can't fathom the day/night cycle in game would be even remotely accurate. Thanks!

[CyrilLucifer]

Yeah, don't go by the day/night cycle. My character in XI has been adventuring for hundreds or even thousands of years if you go by that. It'll eventually be that long in XIV as well. Day/night in XIV is pretty much just for looks, though I certainly wouldn't mind changes in which mobs appear at night like in XI, making the night feel more dangerous.

Anyway, to answer your question, I believe it was mathed out to be around 6 months from 2.1 to 2.55? There was some time delay between 2.55 and HW as well, either a few weeks or a month. Then at least a month or two to finish HW based upon some of the journal and key item descriptions saying time has passed. I'm not sure how long 2.0 was supposed to be, but it seemed a good deal more urgent to me than 2.1-2.55.

Also, how long your character has been adventuring also depends on if you imported from 1.0.

[Fenral]

Always less than a full year, no matter how much happens or how many patches go by. Legacy characters have been at it for at most a year and change, but never more than two years. The in-game day-night cycle is entirely non-canon, and seasonal events happen entirely in Simpsons Time unrelated to the world's time progression (which is nonexistent).

[Kytrin]

Thanks guys! That does help. Lin isn't a legacy character, so I'm strictly going by 2.0 and on. Which, based on what you said, would put her at about 9 or 10 months from the time she rolled into Gridania? Maybe about a year if I stretch it with the assumption that actual time passed between when they told me to go rest at the end of various patches and the time the next crisis (patch) cropped up.

[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.

[TinyRedLeaf]

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.

On that note, I'd state from my personal record that Lyland Battersea was 20 when he first arrived in Eorzea. He has since celebrated three Heavensturns — that of the horse, lamb and monkey — and is now 22 going 23. That's entirely according to me, of course. Time flows differently for each of our characters, and it's entirely up to players to make of it what they will.