PLEASE provide an option to make game days last as long as real days.

[GenBroadaxe]

You're obviously not a programmer. The game has access to your local time. Just click the time display in the upper right corner and it will cycle between ET (Eorzean Time), ST (Server Time), and LT (Local Time). So all the game needs to do is read your local time, and then render an approximate position of the sun in the sky relative to that. Likewise the same thing would happen on your friends' computers (which read out a different local time value) if they have this preference enabled. So it would look correct relative to their local time, while at the same time it looks correct to your local time. Yes, it means they would see the sun in a different position than you do, but we already have all kinds of things that one player sees and another can't (quest NPCs especially).

Obviously this is notwithstanding solutions for other issues. For the DoL issue, Square could just make this preference unavailable to anyone if they have a DoL class equipped.

This isn't a matter of being a programmer or not. What you're asking for as an "option" is something that would directly impact in game events and systems. NPC's don't do that. Weather and time both have direct server wide effects on multiple systems that are intended for multiple people to participate in. Weather and time can't be an instanced option specifically for those reasons.

[Jojoya]

I'd like to also add that it makes a lot of business sense (for Square Enix) to implement this option. You'll capture a lot more of the WoW crowd this way. I came from WoW (which has full length days and nights) and I almost gave up on FFXIV because it really bothered me how the days/nights were so short. I know I am not alone in this. 10 million WoW players means a lot of potential future FFXIV customers.

You may not be alone in it, but you're exaggerating to an extreme if you want others to believe 10 million WoW players would agree with you. One of the most common complaints among WoW players was the 24 hour day/night cycle. Frequent requests for Blizzard to shorten it had been getting made since the game's launch. Players who could only play at night were finding themselves stuck in perpetual darkness, making it unpleasant if not also difficult to play the game. For many, it would be a reason to not bother switching to FFXIV and to choose one of the other MMORPGs that does have a shorter day/night cycle instead if they were looking for a new game to play.

Certainly I was one of the ones who moved from WoW to FFXIV and found the shorter day/night cycle a major improvement for game play and immersion. When a couple of hours spent in game is supposed to represent days if not weeks of game world time, there should be several changes in the day/night cycle occurring independent of my real local time.

You're incorrect when you say no one else is impacted by making it an option. The combination of lighting and weather conditions serve to impair a player's view to varying degrees. A player who is changing what they're seeing compared to players who are displaying the intended effects can create a practical advantage for themselves in certain content (PvP and the Hunt being examples). For that reason, it's something SE shouldn't allow.

[milovan]

so.. say you’re watching a long movie at night, you’d rather have the scene set at night the entire film just so it wouldn’t mess with your circadian rhythm?

[milovan]

don’t get me wrong, i use night shift on my phone, but hell not on my laptop for crying out loud.

[milovan]

also, a moonlit night doesn't give you an orange tint. well red, if that’s what you call it.

[Fhaerron]

Some people have jobs or school, etc (can't play 24 hours a day).

Would be really annoying only to be able to see the nighttime in game when I play 3 hours in the evening.