Guild Wars 2

Trying to be solution oriented here:
I’ve been thinking about how ANet could possibly keep the years syncronised, and at the same time make it so that:

• amount of released content feels realistic in comparison to the time passed in lore (=>reducing no. of days per year – may complicate Timeline/GW1 -years though?)
• the calendar is consistent with existing events/lore
• the calendar’s backstory gets fleshed out a little bit (see ‘The First Colossus’ below)

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My proposal for a new layout:
(NB, disclaimer: everything below this point is my fiction, not official lore!)

There are 4 seasons and 204 days in the Mouvelian year. The seasons are in fact not of equal lengths. Instead Tyria has a shorter winter and a longer spring, due to the neverending battle between Grenth and Dwayna:

The Scriptures: The First Colossus

And Grenth saith unto Desmina, “Come thou into my darkness; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation. For I will cause it to snow upon the earth twohundredandfour days and twohundredandfour nights; and every living substance not worthy will I destroy from off the face of Thyria.”

And the snow and the ice was upon the earth twohundredandfour days and twohundredandfour nights. All in whose nostrils was the breath of Dwayna’s life, of all that was in the iced land and without Grenth’s blessing, died.

But when Dwayna again smelled the Zephyr’s sweet savor; then she said in her heart, “You will not again curse the ground any more; for thy heart is evil from thy youth: neither will you again smite any more every thing living, as you now have done.”

Thanks to Dwayna (or so do her most devoted followers still claim), Winter is now the shortest of all seasons, and not nearly as cold and harsh as “The First Colossus”:

• Season of the Zephyr (Spring) | Jan-Apr | 68 days
• Season of the Phoenix (Summer) | May-Jul | 51 days
• Season of the Scion (Autumn) | Aug-Oct | 51 days
• Season of the Colossus (Winter) | Nov-Dec | 34 days

Correlation to in-game events:

• Mad King Thorn Day (“The revolt on Castle Thorn”): 51 Scion / Oct 31st
• Wintersday (traditionally called “Last Wintersday”): 34 Colossus / Dec 31st
• Personal/Living Story, etc.: Only follows year syncronization. Exact dates are added manually to the Story Journal. That would allows the writers a lot more artistic license and freedom. E.g. letting a storyline released throughout a year happen only through a summer in game lore (while the remaining calm/less interesting year can be released as NPC text / short stories etc.)

Your thoughts?

The real problem with the calendar is that every LS episode seems to pick up immediately after the next. The time it takes from the end of the Festival of the Four Winds to the release of Heart of Thorns is meant to be the time period we are playing from the start of Living Story Season 2 to the end of it. It doesn’t feel that way, at all, though.

There’s no sense of time passage in the current season of the Living Story.

I don’t get why this is even something we need to be concerned about.

After giving it some second thought, neither do I.

A red post saying: “only years are synced through the in-game storyline, days are not” would be appreciated though. And having actual dates being mentioned in the Story Journal – to give players some time perspective – would be a big bonus.

It’s only a matter of concern because ArenaNet made it a matter of concern.

And ArenaNet made it a matter of concern because they were asked about it during the e’spirits interview.