Timeline question

[Riggy]

So I know that at the time of ARR starting, it had been twenty years since the Ala Mhigo was annexed by Garlemald. How much time has passed between the start of ARR and 3.5? Did the lorebook give any sort of timeline for the more recent events (although I guess it wouldn't have stuff from 3.5)?

[Sounsyy]

How much time has passed between the start of ARR and 3.5? Did the lorebook give any sort of timeline for the more recent events (although I guess it wouldn't have stuff from 3.5)?

 

This is a question that gets asked a lot, but unfortunately there's no one satisfying answer to give you. "Officially" less than a year has passed. Unofficially, roleplayers all measure the passage of time differently, with most aligning their rp with real time passage.

 

A more in depth answer can be found in the link below. My post is followed up by one of Anonymoose's and gives a slightly different take on it. Hope this helps!

 

-Discussion of Canon Time Passage

 

EDIT: Adding in a different link to a similar explanation.

-Try this link

[Riggy]

How much time has passed between the start of ARR and 3.5? Did the lorebook give any sort of timeline for the more recent events (although I guess it wouldn't have stuff from 3.5)?

 

This is a question that gets asked a lot, but unfortunately there's no one satisfying answer to give you. "Officially" less than a year has passed. Unofficially, roleplayers all measure the passage of time differently, with most aligning their rp with real time passage.

 

A more in depth answer can be found in the link below. My post is followed up by one of Anonymoose's and gives a slightly different take on it. Hope this helps!

 

-Discussion of Canon Time Passage

Okay, so it's in a similar position to the passage of time in that other MMO (i.e., whatever feels convenient to the plot).

 

Unfortunately, the link doesn't seem to work with my phone, though.

[Valence]

It has been 25 years that Ala-Migho got invaded, actually. It was 20 years ago for 1.0, and since ARR happens 5 years later... That's 25. Technically you can make that almost 26 since... Well. What Sounsyy said above.

[PSDuckie]

I treat it as if three years have passed between the beginning of ARR and the current time.

[Riggy]

It has been 25 years that Ala-Migho got invaded, actually. It was 20 years ago for 1.0, and since ARR happens 5 years later... That's 25. Technically you can make that almost 26 since... Well. What Sounsyy said above.

But wasn't it invaded in 1557, and 1.0 was 1572?

[Sounsyy]

It has been 25 years that Ala-Migho got invaded, actually. It was 20 years ago for 1.0, and since ARR happens 5 years later... That's 25. Technically you can make that almost 26 since... Well. What Sounsyy said above.

 

This is incorrect. Ala Mhigo was invaded in the Year 1557, 15 years before 1.0 (1572). Now five years later it has been 20 years.

[Kismet]

I personally go by the passage of real-life time because following anything else is way too confusing -- for ME, anyway. So I'm in the camp that's treating the current in-universe year as 1581.

[Flynn Bladebreaker]

Seasonal events also mention that they've met you "last year", so I'm seeing it in a mixed bag. That said I also RP that time has flown with real-time from ARR to present. If the devs came out and said we're in a bubble, or point out exactly how long it's been since Bloodstorm and ARR, I'll be happy to knock off some time to match with the date they present.

 

Interestingly, Yoshi-P commented on the Bloodstorm teaser that some time has passed. We dont know exactly how long. Passed since when? I'd like to get some closure on this by the time it comes out.

 

Edit: Even if the devs announce that Bloodstorm begins 3 or 4 years after ARR (though unlikely), then we as a community who have mostly RPed with time passing as real-time, would not have to take any action or reaction to this. Not like SWTOR were a timeskip was forced, but we can easily just say we've RPed those 3 or 4 years between ARR and Bloodstorm, no need for a timeskip. Anyway, that's just speculation. Probably won't happen.

[Sounsyy]

Quick personal PSA for roleplayers to consider: The Year 1577, or any year past 1572 does not exist in the Eorzean calendar, please do not use 1577 ICly in RP. Upon every Umbral Calamity and every Astral reset, Eorzeans reset the calendar year at Year 1. Similarly to how factories reset the sign that says “NO ACCIDENTS IN 37 DAYS” when there is an accident on the 38th day. The Eorzean calendar year is essentially saying “THE WORLD HAS NOT GONE TO HELLS IN A HANDBASKET IN 1572 YEARS.” If you tell an Eorzean that it’s the Year 1577, you’ve essentially told them that the Calamity never happened.

[Aya]

As much, or as little as desired or needed... I think that's really the best answer here, and I am not saying that to be cute or anything!  The timeline once ARR begins seems intentionally nebulous, and even if they try to nail it down it wouldn't necessarily pay to cleave loyally to it. 

 

Just do the best you can, and enjoy the details while not sweating them too much.  That's my advice anyway!

[Kismet]

Huh. The calendar reset thing is actually news to me. Guess I just missed it, lol. I will update everything accordingly, then!

[Nebbs]

So it sounds like we just play it vague. So long a you don't become your own Farther it should be fine. It also explains how those rapid pregnancies work, and why a watched pot never boils.

 

With actual RP I could probably add up several years IC, and I do like characters to progress so I will go with a fuzzy age on things.

 

Still that 101year spell will only take a few days now;)

[Valence]

Annd, I cannot read source material properly it seems. :frustrated:

 

Other than that I play it as in a compressed time bubble. I will maybe RP once, twice a week (or less, or more, but it applies to everyone). All the blanks around can be taken as way more short. Eventually, it can turn 4 real life years into less than one eorzean cycle.

[Kilieit]

IDK, I figure out my main's "downtime" pretty rigorously. There's a lot of boring off-screen stuff he does between sessions and if anything he doesn't have enough time to get all of it done, not the other way around.

 

And like... I feel like most people acknowledge seasonal events in RP... so do you just pretend that there are 3 Risings/Starlights/Heavensturns/etc in a single cycle? Does every character get one nameday to celebrate, and that's that, because their next one would fall outside the time bubble?

 

Here and WoW I've been a proponent of the real-time approach to RP, simply because it's the Occam's Razor in terms of making sure everyone's on the same page regarding stuff like how long it's been since the last session happened and what time of year it is in terms of seasons.

[Valence]

Respect of lore timeframe (or just lore itself) trumps everything else for me.

 

If there is 3 starlight events in less than a lore year, then it's compressed in 1 starlight in my book. Storytelling is great in that it allow for time compression or expansion at will.

 

( I know that my wiki is not following my own medicine, that is planned to get fixed soon )

[Kilieit]

Usually my characters undergo a lot of changes in a year's worth of development, so... that wouldn't really work for me. ><

 

The lore is a tool to use in order to bring about enjoyment, and while in the huge majority of circumstances I'm happy to defer to it (because it's exciting and compelling and engaging), this is one situation where sticking to it to the letter brings me nothing but frustration and confusion.

[FreelanceWizard]

Since I RP every day, and a lot of character growth has happened for the purple-haired idiot over the last 3 years of real life time, I play by the rule of, "game time follows real time, and I'll work out any discontinuities when or if the bubble advances." It's the best balance I can come up with between ignoring obvious progressions of time through holiday events (which, I should note, often mention things that happened at the last celebration, and Heavensturn is an advancement of the year by definition) and sticking to the time progression tied to the MSQ lore. After all, the comic book time bubble exists primarily to aid in the telling of the MSQ given the vagaries of patch and expansion development time.

[BumblingSeaBiscuit]

I, too, tend to follow a 1:1 ratio of in game and RL time. Just easier for me and my FC that way.

[Valence]

Usually my characters undergo a lot of changes in a year's worth of development, so... that wouldn't really work for me. ><

 

The lore is a tool to use in order to bring about enjoyment, and while in the huge majority of circumstances I'm happy to defer to it (because it's exciting and compelling and engaging), this is one situation where sticking to it to the letter brings me nothing but frustration and confusion.

 

What kind of "lots of change"?

[Kilieit]

Usually my characters undergo a lot of changes in a year's worth of development, so... that wouldn't really work for me. ><

 

The lore is a tool to use in order to bring about enjoyment, and while in the huge majority of circumstances I'm happy to defer to it (because it's exciting and compelling and engaging), this is one situation where sticking to it to the letter brings me nothing but frustration and confusion.

 

What kind of "lots of change"?

 

Three main categories:

 

- Connections. They meet new people, fall out with old people, get married, divorced, have kids, lose family members, etc etc etc. If one Valentione's day is spent primarily moping to other players about being single, and the next is spent happily with a partner, how am I supposed to roll them into one? If a character says to mine, "haha last year you were really sad and now look at you", am I now supposed to tell them "no that happened before my character met yours (outside the time bubble)"?

 

- Plots. These are usually sequential i.e. feed into one another directly; plot B could not arise if plot A hadn't resolved in the way it did, and plot A would never have happened if plots X and Y hadn't come together in the way they did. When these plots are tied in any way to the time of year, things get really difficult, really quickly if you start trying to flatten years together. So you ban your players from ever mentioning the season, weather, yearly events, their own namedays? The "butterfly effect" means such seasonal stuff can often spiral out into longer-lasting, wider-reaching plots, and it gets impossible to then start trying to tell everyone it can't have happened like that because "last year's" version of that event was outside the time bubble - or to just perpetually continue stretching the remaining 11 months out into infinity.

 

- Personal development. Telluric Medic's previous incarnation, the WoW character Ursala Earthwielder, was a prime example of this. Ursala began as a character who was patient to a fault, extremely unreactive, and disinterested in personal grievances - despite having an underlying streak of care for others, and a talent for healing. So her first ever Winter's Veil as an RP character, she sat it out, like she always did. Through developments, she grew first into someone with a growing curiosity regarding other people and their affairs So, the next Winter's Veil she poked her head in a bit to try and see what "the point" was. She didn't really get it. She certainly didn't enjoy it. This was discernable to other characters. She continued to develop - a series of events forced her to face up to the existence of others' emotions, the consequences of callousness, the merits of a smile. So by the next Winter's Veil, she at least made a token effort with presents - already having understood from the previous year that presents were expected - and although the holiday grated on her still, she had begun to understand "the point" of it. This continued for the 7+ years I actively roleplayed her for - in her last Winter's Veil she was actively organising a story evening and present exchange for a local orphanage. I don't think any two of her Winter's Veils were even comparable, because her personality, outlook, and attitude had grown so much in the intervening time (a year's worth of almost-daily RP is a long time). The beginning of the time bubble is a time before development that occurred during RP can have happened - so how could I decide which was the "true" Winter's Veil when all of them demonstrated important traits about her character at the time; traits which would not carry the same meaning if blended together or forced out of sequence?

[Kismet]

To kind of springboard off of what Kilieit's saying with my own experiences... For those of us in active RP guilds that may participate in multiple guild arcs over the course of a year? That can potentially have a TON of impact on the characters involved.

 

If your guild's been around for couple of years or so, condensing ALL of those happenings into a single year can become incredibly unrealistic... Especially if it's a combat-oriented guild, since some people can contract injuries that require many months of healing. To fit everything into one year, you'd either have to retcon them participating in certain events/arcs that occurred after they got injured, or you'd have to retcon the injury itself from ever happening. Neither scenario is preferable, especially if the character's injury/involvement added something pretty major to the course of events/overall plot.

 

I can see how someone with an incredibly busy RL schedule, small and/or barely active guild, or who plays a character who lacks a proactive nature may not apply to any of what I talked about. And that's totally fine. But for those of us who either get a decent amount of RP in, or want to treat things with as much feasibility as we can manage... Cramming all of our characters' development and experiences into the span of a year would be a hassle.

[Valence]

I personally feel that a lot of players also tend to overdo character evolution and quickly jump to the end of the line, where so many stuff happens in their life in a short amount of time it's ungodly, but I'm not saying it's your case and I understand vast amounts of RP sessions tend to get rather hard to deal with in that regards.

 

It's actually probably one of the hardest things to manage RP wise in a setting where time nearly froze.

 

Especially if you play a character that sees a lot of combat and epic adventures. This is exactly a part of why I withdrew my character very fast from a FC arc that was into that kind of things. My character would have turned into a grizzled vet in less than a few months and the rate was not even that huge (one combat arc every two weeks or so).

 

I probably also have the uncommon belief that even a merc outlet would have a certain amount of non combat time between their epic, adrenalined fueled grim fights. Like the military really. Even the busiest units don't spend their time in missions, and even less in eventful combat missions.

 

As RPers and storytellers, we naturally want to jump to all the interesting and eventful aspects of the lives of our characters. And when we are busy, those events that usually can happen over long spans of time in realistic lives and outakes, will happen in chain. FCs also fall into the same trap for various reasons (one of the first being also here to entertain their members!).

 

So yeah, that's something I have been extensively watchful over, and for that, it clashes with most RPers take on the matter and makes my life miserable.

[Kilieit]

I still don't know... I look at my real life, and the difference between my Christmasses, birthdays, and so on, and I still feel like it's not really possible to say "oh yeah, you can basically roll those into one".

 

Made-up example b/c I don't feel like revealing personal info: let's say I have a best friend, and we give each other Christmas presents every year. Then one year we fall out, and for Christmas that year, he doesn't give me any presents and I don't give any to him. Despite not wanting him around, I still miss him, because I miss the companionship and consideration that the present exchange signifies. The next year, the loss is felt a little less significantly, and while the previous year I'd been moping, this year I basically have a normal day - but without him. But by year 3 (for argument's sake, this year), we've reconciled, and we do the gift exchange again - only this time the present he buys me doesn't feel as thoughtful, because he was out of touch with my hobbies for two years and doesn't know what I'm into any more. Despite the original routine having been restored, it's different as a result of the ongoing development of our relationship, and this year's Christmas could not have happened the way it did if the previous 3 years' Christmas hadn't happened the way they did.

 

I don't think there needs to be majorly significant life-or-death changes for a character to have differing outlooks on the same scenario in the course of a year. My example is a pretty boring, happens-to-everyone example - everyone has dramas and friendships that change over time, for better or worse. Especially fictional someones in a hobby where drama of one sort or another is the entire source of entertainment.

 

I think insisting on utilising the time bubble in RP is basically following rules for rules' sake... it's intended as a way to understand the MSQ and nothing else. Even the developers step outside it when it's appropriate - holidays being the prime example. I think ongoing RP is an appropriate situation in which to step outside the time bubble, regardless of how dramatic it is or isn't. Remaining within the time bubble means you cannot allow stuff that happens to influence the character in any meaningful way. And honestly, that's less realistic than someone changing a lot in the span of a few months because they went through something traumatic (personality change is a symptom of PTSD).

[Valence]

Havign to chose between the lore timeframe and the few bland seasonals they give us (which are already way too many and pollute the city states visually with immersion breaking RL rip offs)? Well, my choice is easy I think here.

 

If find it way less dangerous and a slippery slope to adhere to the lore timeline, for that if you don't, and suddenly learn it has only been one year since the start of ARR when Baelsar's Wall falls or whatever, and have been playing it way differently... Well I find that a lot harder to work around.

 

But maybe because I anchor all my RP more into MSQ and plot driven events rather than seasonals... I never felt that problem when it came to seasonals. Like for the MSQ, I tend to adapt my writing and keep it rather vague in terms of days/months/years to stick to it. I don't especially feel the need to say something happened that day and not the following day, or even feel obliged to precise the exact day something happened. It happened and it's way enough for me, as long as it remains coherent of course.

 

But yeah, sticking to the lore here at least until the devs make the clock move further ahead, means adding serious limits as to how far a character can grow and evolve. To me it's part of the story itself, and as much as a challenge as specific tone to work with rather than a hindrance.