I have to agree with the "A Hero Did It" approach, for the most part. I'm actually of the school of thought (and if it isn't a school, it is now!) that the main storyline exists in its own vacuum. The game universe is frozen on stasis until the developers release a new expansion.
The problem comes from knowing where, chronologically speaking, the roleplayers stand in the current frozen storyline. From what I've seen in other games, it seems like the common thing to do is to infer from the storyline the state of events of each area and merge them together in some sort of massive concurrent story.
The problem comes from knowing where, chronologically speaking, the roleplayers stand in the current frozen storyline. From what I've seen in other games, it seems like the common thing to do is to infer from the storyline the state of events of each area and merge them together in some sort of massive concurrent story.