On Goobues and Timelines.

[MikkoAkure]

And for some clarification on this, it's not quite literally 'the entire game takes place within the same year', it's more 'they write loosely as if no specific time passes'. Outside of in-game events which are their own weird thing, they just write it with no explicit statement of the passage of time. It's more or less up to you how to read that, if you think the events of the MSQ take place in one really wild week or if there's significant gaps between expansions or whatever, but the developers just never state timeframes or milestones. I'd compare it less to the Simpsons, which has to grapple with background technology and celebrity figures changing, and more to Futurama which has no such problems, and can just go 'all this happens and Fry's still nebulously late 20s' with nothing really standing too weird about that.

That was specifically Koji's words so I guess take them as you will.

Before I move onto question two, allow me to veer off onto a little tangent: there have been several threads about Hydaelyn’s timeline not matching up with Earth’s. If it has been two years since the release of the game, why is it still 1572 in Eorzea at the time of patch 1.23? 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 sacrilegious.

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?

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.

Futurama actually does reference the passing of time and occasionally mentions which year it is. It's always 1000 years into the future and the first episode was year 3000 but they've had whole episodes around the 3012 election during 2012 and other things parallel to current events.