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.