How much time have passed since ARR?

[Cybylt]

I think the time being static is part of what makes eorzea so bland, lifeless and inconsequential. its just a static world in which nothing really matters.

they could allow time to flow without having any significant impact on the story or actual timeline. XI as old and archaic as it was even managed this. what you did one day would have some actual effect on the world the next. the balance of power between nations under constant flux, the variety of goods available from vendors constantly changing based on the state of the world. places like sacrarium where the maze was different every game day..

loads of these little things all bought the world alive and made it feel like it was moving forwards. makes a big difference in comparison to eorzea where you can sit there eat popcorn while a bunch of beast men run rampage on a settlement in some fate or other and pooooffff! it never happened..... which is often stated as a big reason why fates are so boring and tedious because nothing actually happens.

you could consider beseiged in XI to be basically 1 big fate. but it was a million times better simply because its outcome had a real impact on the game world...

you can create the sense of time actually progressing by such small and simple things

XI had a bubble too though, its entirety takes place within the same year in-game.

I'd also say time passes in every which way but fine in WoW because time travel shenanigans have been a thing since Crusade. On top of that, due to its open structure it doesn't even follow the A to B to C sequencing of a plot unless you really hold yourself to it. Mag'har orcs can time paradox themselves into joining decades after the fall of the Iron Horde, back in time and to a parallel dimension to the days of Cataclysm where they were not present, face the Lich King, see the rise of Iron Horde and then be the very hero who inspires them to join the Horde in the first place.

Bizarrely, Nightborn Elves come to their racial faction with max reputation specifically to avoid this same manner of paradox.

WoW's also got the world NPC issue where unless the instance of a locale is changed to reflect some kind of change, NPCs there won't be affected by events like their own death. Conversely in 14, so long as you've completed content where they need to be present on the world, injured or dead NPCs will be removed from the world if they're normally there.

14 holds fast to its sequencing of events which I think is more important than getting deeply involved in how much time has explicitly passed.