While in my RP group we may occasionally time-skip, time bubble, or suspend time for various reasons (had to break early, event ran long, complications, for example), I keep pace IC with Real World passage of time.Â
SE has a very strange sense of time that sometimes contradicts itself. For example in XI... according to the devs there, even though there are events/holidays/festivals that by their own lore happen only once a year (and game has been going on for over twelve years now), the rest of the events of the game are occurring over the course of a SINGLE year. I've heard that in XIV, the events of everything that's happened in MSQ from the start of 2.0 to what's going on now has occurred in just a few months (could be wrong, it's just what I heard...), and there's rumors that when the expansion hits SE is going to time-skip us several months into the future. If we're only advancing time according to SE's whim schedule, it sort of negates the purpose of choosing a Naming Day during character creation (strictly speaking as a mechanic and not an RP point).
Also the in-game days only last a real-world hour -- three in-game weeks pass on the in-game clock in a single real-world day. It's a sort of kick back to XI, I think, where some mechanics, quests, crafting, and the like relied on the moon phases and elemental alignments of days and the only other option would be having to wait RL days/weeks/months for an opportunity to do something (NM only pops during the Waning Moon, don't fight Garuda on Windsday, don't try to fight Gnoles when the moon is more than 60% because of their healing abilities, need to wait for X-day with Y-moonphase during Z-weather to HQ a craft...). Could be wrong on that and other games did/do it, but the few other MMO's I've played the in-game time reflected whatever timezone the server was located in.
Of course, some people could argue that Hydaelyn is either a REALLY small planet that does do a rotation in one hour (at that size, though, we probably wouldn't have much gravity or an atmosphere...) or that it just spins that fast (... I think we'd get flattened or tossed out into space at those rates...), but then there wouldn't be a reason for some races (Miqo'te) to develop clans with nocturnal/diurnal traits. Tidal effects, growth patterns/capabilities of vegetation would suffer... a lot of stuff that I don't think can just be handwaved with 'aether makes it possible' because if I remember correctly, Eorzea is unique because of the high aether saturation. Other parts of the world would likely suffer horribly.
Aaaanyways... I'm tired and rambling...
Kara was seventeen when 2.0 started, she turned eighteen last June (ICly, no-one knows when exactly her birthday is, they just celebrate it around the first day of summer. Character-creation mechanics-wise, it's the 19th of Third Umbral), she'll turn nineteen this June. So-on and so-forth. All my others, save the Gardener, age alongside passage of time in the Real World.
The Gardener is the exception because... I don't know how old she is, honestly. I like to leave it ambigious with her, I guess? About the only thing I'm dead-set on with her is that she's somewhere between "old enough to have a five-year-old offspring somewhere" to "old enough to have grandchildren about to enter adulthood".
SE has a very strange sense of time that sometimes contradicts itself. For example in XI... according to the devs there, even though there are events/holidays/festivals that by their own lore happen only once a year (and game has been going on for over twelve years now), the rest of the events of the game are occurring over the course of a SINGLE year. I've heard that in XIV, the events of everything that's happened in MSQ from the start of 2.0 to what's going on now has occurred in just a few months (could be wrong, it's just what I heard...), and there's rumors that when the expansion hits SE is going to time-skip us several months into the future. If we're only advancing time according to SE's whim schedule, it sort of negates the purpose of choosing a Naming Day during character creation (strictly speaking as a mechanic and not an RP point).
Also the in-game days only last a real-world hour -- three in-game weeks pass on the in-game clock in a single real-world day. It's a sort of kick back to XI, I think, where some mechanics, quests, crafting, and the like relied on the moon phases and elemental alignments of days and the only other option would be having to wait RL days/weeks/months for an opportunity to do something (NM only pops during the Waning Moon, don't fight Garuda on Windsday, don't try to fight Gnoles when the moon is more than 60% because of their healing abilities, need to wait for X-day with Y-moonphase during Z-weather to HQ a craft...). Could be wrong on that and other games did/do it, but the few other MMO's I've played the in-game time reflected whatever timezone the server was located in.
Of course, some people could argue that Hydaelyn is either a REALLY small planet that does do a rotation in one hour (at that size, though, we probably wouldn't have much gravity or an atmosphere...) or that it just spins that fast (... I think we'd get flattened or tossed out into space at those rates...), but then there wouldn't be a reason for some races (Miqo'te) to develop clans with nocturnal/diurnal traits. Tidal effects, growth patterns/capabilities of vegetation would suffer... a lot of stuff that I don't think can just be handwaved with 'aether makes it possible' because if I remember correctly, Eorzea is unique because of the high aether saturation. Other parts of the world would likely suffer horribly.
Aaaanyways... I'm tired and rambling...
Kara was seventeen when 2.0 started, she turned eighteen last June (ICly, no-one knows when exactly her birthday is, they just celebrate it around the first day of summer. Character-creation mechanics-wise, it's the 19th of Third Umbral), she'll turn nineteen this June. So-on and so-forth. All my others, save the Gardener, age alongside passage of time in the Real World.
The Gardener is the exception because... I don't know how old she is, honestly. I like to leave it ambigious with her, I guess? About the only thing I'm dead-set on with her is that she's somewhere between "old enough to have a five-year-old offspring somewhere" to "old enough to have grandchildren about to enter adulthood".
