The Battle Bakery [vPie]
Timeline of the Personal/Living Story?
They seem to have gone with the years changing with us in the real world now for the Living Story at least.
The ‘Story So Far’ trailer indicates we’re at 1327AE now, but they haven’t given us true indication as to whether we’re post-Zhaitan or not. We seem to still be in this weird limbo where personal story stuff happens during an undisclosed period, but the Living Story moves forward through time. Rox telling Rytlock she killed Tequatl (along with an army) is example of this.
Despite getting told that the Karka event was post-Zhaitan ages ago by a developer, the lack of in-game lines to indicate we’ve killed Zhaitan or not (or any mention of him) seems to suggest they still want to keep the personal story stuff out of the picture.
Officially, the living story takes place after Zhaitan’s defeat, but in practice the devs do their best to keep them separate, so we can only piece that together by a post-Lost shores dev post and the allusion to the Pact’s efforts in Orr in Tequatl Rising.
As to the actual pacing, it is safe to infer that the Tyrian year changes at Wintersday, which conveniently corresponds with our own New Year. There is very little beyond that to pace the game by. All we have to go by is that the entire personal story, start to finish, takes place within the span of the year 1325, and the exceedingly rare comment in-game, such as a scout in the Cursed Shore saying that the invasion of Orr had at that point been ongoing for weeks. Flame and Frost through Tower of Nightmares was 1326, and this Marionette business kicks off the action of 1327.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
The Personal story is fairly confusing with its pacing and time-frame.
Don’t quote me on it, but I remember reading that the Great Hunt takes place in Winter. At least we know it’s yearly.
Some PS-quest lines seem to take place over a single day (Order of Whispers quest-line with Demmi states Ladi Wi cast an invisibility-cloak spell on her when she left DR that can only be used once a day on the same person) while the foundation of the Pact to the Invasion on Orr seem to span over weeks and possibly months.
Then there’s timeframes that could be days or weeks or months, like the inbetween time of Forging the Pact and the beginning of the Personal-Fear story-branches. There’s no indication of time I remember. But over the course of that the Pact built Fort trinity. I don’t think there’s much to go on here beside speculation and thumb-estimates.
Aaaaand since the LS is now synched up, everything seems to take place in real time as little sense as that makes. Batkitten is hitting the fan in Tyria every fortnight, woop.
According to the wiki, the Personal Story took 1 year to finish in game. The Living Story started afterwards and it’s been a year already since the Living Story started.
Elyas Wolfbane – Ranger, Xukavi – Thief
The Personal Story begins and ends during 1325, before Halloween at that (which is sometime during fall even in-universe). According to Occam, from the story step “Forging the Pact” to the second instance of “The Source of Orr” is a course of “several weeks” (this likely means somewhere less than 3 months – and keep in mind that during the course of the few “Fear” chapters in the personal story, Fort Trinity is built atop ancient ruins that barely stand). There’s a norn in Wayfarer Foothills that mentions he (or someone with him) couldn’t make The Great Hunt (the tutorial) because of a winter blizzard – indicating that the beginning of the norn storyline (if not all) happens in the beginning of 1325 AE (note: the Mouvelian calendar’s new year is technically the first day of spring, so the tutorial may even be at the end of 1324 AE).
The Lost Shores was officially stated to occur post-Zhaitan’s defeat, and though it’s not entirely clear Thorn’s appearance was too, it is most likely. Since then, the Living World has been synced up EXCEPT for the placement of Wintersday (as we celebrate it in the beginning of winter, to coincide with our Christmas and New Years, when Wintersday itself is Tyrian’s New Years day). You pretty much just have to believe that their shifted forward in seasons by about 3 months with ArenaNet’s kitten attempt at “syncing” the calendars (Gregorian and Mouvelian) which I still say is a fully idiotic move to attempt just for the sake of the Living World.
Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.