How much time has gone by...

[Mirtrione]

Since our character first arrived in Eorzea at the beginning of ARR?

Have the devs ever said anything about the passing of time as measured by expansions or patches?

[Mysteltain]

It's hard to tell in-game, as we exist in a sort of time-bubble at the moment, so that newer players don't experience the world differently from those of us who have been playing from 2.0 or earlier. If it were otherwise then we would need multiple Mor Dhonas and Idyllshires, and Northern Thanalans, among a few maps that should be very different following certain story events. That said, there are the occasional bits of dialogue that imply travel times, such as early in 3.0 when Cid mentiona that we had left Ishgard and been in the Sea of Clouds for a few days. The boat from Limsa to Kugane also took a couple months, if I'm not mistaken. I imagine that others could give you more specific instances, but I'm just going off of memory.

[Anonymoose]

Nnnoooooo...!

It has been [0] days since we've been asked what year it is.

Jokes aside...

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!

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 (Fernehalwes)
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.

Time passes, but it does not move; it never adds up to anything. Even if you can prove that 5,000 days passed, the year does not change. It is, and will always be, 5 Seventh Umbral Era [into/also known as] 1 Seventh Astral Era. (Until they say it's not.)

You can find some lines in the game that make this confusing. Some NPCs will make meta-jokes about real-world time or deliberately say "How many moons has it been!? Oh, it doesn't matter!", but so long as the NPCs are still saying the Calamity was five years ago, the Calamity was five years ago. (Please look forward to the Rising!)

Even after spending months at sea, the Calamity? Still 5 years ago. Silvertear skies? Still 15 years ago. Ala Mhigo? Still 20 years ago. Doma? Still 25 years ago. (Aside from this one thing I don't even want to get into, lol.)

That said, feel free to make up your own timeline for yourself; no one's gonna stop you and no one can say you're wrong.

[Cilia]

Long story short: there is a "time bubble" the game exists in that means no matter how much we do or how far the story progresses, the year doesn't advance, characters don't age, etc. Think about animated TV shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park; despite having been on the air for years and years, absolutely nobody has aged a day. Same concept.

Personally, I clock it in at about 2 years. But that's just me.

[uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu]

If you want to go by patch 2.0-2.1 (112 days interval or 1 story year = 1 major patch), it's been 15 years. At the end of 2.0, Minfillia still referred all events of 2.0 as '5 years ago', but it was just before 7th astral era started (at patch 2.1), so we can assume a new calendar year had started.

[Nestama]

Until the Elezen twins starting ageing (or any of the Doman kids who arrived/left Mor Dhona), I think it's safe to assume a year hasn't even passed, yet. Maybe a month or so?

[Brightamethyst]

If you want to go by patch 2.0-2.1 (112 days interval or 1 story year = 1 major patch), it's been 15 years. At the end of 2.0, Minfillia still referred all events of 2.0 as '5 years ago', but it was just before 7th astral era started (at patch 2.1), so we can assume a new calendar year had started.

15 years seems WAY too long. I'd guess that game event time has been more or less following real time, and about five years worth of events have happened between 2.0 and now.

[uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu]

15 years seems WAY too long. I'd guess that game event time has been more or less following real time, and about five years worth of events have happened between 2.0 and now.

I like to think ingame-clock year as an episode. There's roughly 20 episodes (20 ingame eorzean year), per real year or season. So yeah it's roughly 5 tv seasons.

[ObsidianFire]

One of the beauties of FFXIV is that everyone can decide how fast or slow the game would take in real time for themselves. Want more time for character interaction to happen? Make events take longer! Want travel time to reflect real-life travel time? Space events out more if you know certain characters aren't teleporting! Want things to happen so fast the characters don't get time to think things though properly? Have some events happen all at once! FFXIV is a really fun game to RP in since there's a lot of details that are left up to the player.

Instead of trying to fit the game's events in a certain time frame, the game wants us to have an easy time fitting in events that happened before the game started. So instead of knowing that the events of 2.0 took place over six months, we know that "five years ago" will always be "five years before the game started" no matter what expansion reveals the events.

[Iscah]

Until the Elezen twins starting ageing (or any of the Doman kids who arrived/left Mor Dhona), I think it's safe to assume a year hasn't even passed, yet. Maybe a month or so?

That's part of the time bubble - nobody ages. There's no way all the events of the three games (or even just HW/SB) could actually take place within the space of a month.


Also the lorebook says that Elezen don't mature until around age 20, so if you want to believe that time is passing, it's reasonable that Alphinaud and Alisaie (16 in the 'time bubble') still look young at this point, even if you assume something like a year per major expansion. (It's harder to explain the Doman kids, of course, so just don't think so hard about that.)


My main issue with the time bubble is that it gets a bit confusing when people talk about how long ago things happened - eg. one of the NPCs at the Doman Enclave saying it's been a year since the failed uprising (ie. what caused Yugiri and the other refugees to travel to Eorzea). Does that mean it's been a year since the post-ARR events when the refugees arrived there, making the rebellion concurrent with ARR? Or was Doma destroyed a year prior to that?