Time Progression

[liruna]

Sorry if this is posted in the wrong area (I couldn't find anywhere else that seemed better for it). I know I'm still fairly new to the server and my opinion might not be worth too much, but I'd like to put this out there. Please don't take this negatively.

At the moment, as far as I've been told, in-character time advances along with the in-game time. When a year passes by in-game, a year has gone by. This is convenient for keeping track of what time/day/year it is at any given moment - you can easily consult the in-game clock.

Here are the downsides to that method, in my personal opinion.
- I believe the time passing was intended more for single-player games than for persistent worlds. If you're playing by yourself, of course it's always nice to see the sun rise and set now and then, and to have some variation in day and night, etcetera - however, time passes extremely quickly.
- People are given very little time to develop a character at a certain age - you make a seventeen-year-old, a week goes by, suddenly they're eighteen and you've barely gotten a chance to roleplay them at all.
- The server as a whole is given very little time to develop anything. Years go by with frightening speed. I joined in 1356 and it's already 1357. A lot happens in a year. The Time of Troubles is an intensely interesting and conflicted year in the Forgotten Realms, and it shouldn't just breeze by.

I've been told that the the year is going to start back over at 1350 once Beta is over, and, well, that's okay by me. I just feel like at the moment, time is going by way too quickly, and if it continues to move at this speed even after Beta, well, it feels too fast.

My suggestion would be to pick a year to start in and go for quite a while before advancing to the next one, disregarding the ingame clock entirely and keeping the server updated as to the current year on the forums. This would allow people to develop their characters/subplots/organizations/you-name-it with plenty of time, instead of feeling rushed by doing things by game-time. It would also allow the DMs to develop the lore and setting of the world a lot more.

Just my two cents. What do you all think?

[Zealote]

Good point.

About 1350 after going live: Actually, everytime the server resets, it goes back to 1350, as it should be. Please ignore the time passage of years IG for now. Its not really happening.

About fast time: I agree with you. I think even the days go by too fast.
Days and nights should last a lot longer. And if this current speed continues for the live version, we will end up dead of old age at lvl 5. ;D

[karadalisdrei]

Yeah... it also turns out that if you have indept IC discussions with other chars that you end up sitting around a fire for a couple of days XD

That does seem a bit weird ^^

[DM mithari]

I believe it's been discussed to slow down time. I don't know what came out of it though, but I, too, believe that will be a necessity once we go live.

[DM Sir Carnifex]

I like the idea of locking in a year for a certain, though. Even if the time does get switched to one hour per real five minutes, time will still pass swiftly.

For now I just ignore the age of my PCs. In fact I may still do that because then my PCs that start out at old age (yes, I have one) would be dead very soon and I don't want that happening.

[DEV Akavit]

At the moment no one really RP's their characters as advancing in age. It's just too weird to have them age according to the ingame clock. I'm sure that this will be worked out by the time the server is live.