Thread: 3.3 - how long has it been lorewise since 2.0?

Lucky for you this is a frequent question, so I can go ahead and pass this one off to ... myself.

Originally Posted by Anonymoose

Like the in-game clock, the in-game passage of time itself is fudged so that given dates don't need to be adjusted every time the plot moves. There is a time bubble of approximately one year that encapsulates the 5th Year of the Seventh Umbral Era also known as the 1st Year of the Seventh Astral Era. Even if you can prove 5,000 days existed in the bubble, it's still stuck on 1(7AE). Thanks to an old post by Fernehalwes of the dev. team (who confirmed this), we call this "Simpsons Time" and by extension "The Simpsons Time Bubble".

The dev. team needs to be able to not go back and update every instance of one year ago, five years past, ten years back, etc. every time there's a new patch or new expansion. (And you know it wouldn't be done with accuracy under pressure, and then you can't even track the lore even if you were paying attention to all those mentions). You can interpret the time however you like for your own character. Maybe you're a lore purist and it's been one hell(s) of a year. Maybe you'd prefer it if your character spent over a decade slogging around Eorzea moving crates and waiting for the next epic battle. It's up to you!

TL;DR: Time passes all time, but all it does is shove more and more into the "one year" bubble. In fact, at the end of Heavensward, one of the knights has had a baby and time still hasn't moved, lol.

Here are the dev. team citations:

Originally Posted by Fernehalwes

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!

Originally Posted by "2015 Interview with Gamer Escape

Anwyll: Long ago, you mentioned that 1.0 took place in a “Simpsons Time Bubble.” Are we still in a bubble? Or does time move now that we know Patch = Canon?

Koji Fox: It’s still a bubble; you have to have a bubble. There are players joining in Heavensward that are starting at the beginning. The bubble’s just gotten bigger.