Idea: Time Phase NPCs

[Maenad]

If you pay attention as you move through Mabinogi's storyline, you'll notice that different places are in drastically different time periods. This creates a continuity lapse of a sort, that cannot be fixed easily because of the nature of an MMO.

I have a somewhat fix for this - NPCs that take the place of others as you move through mainstream, but are still the same NPC.
For example, in G1~G3, we might have Walter running the General Store, but later, as you're doing G9, this might be Waltina, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Aeira. She would have different responses, personality, behavior, looks, etc, but would still have the same shop, the same repairs, and the same upgrades. Players in G1 would still see Walter, but you would see Waltina.

Given that places like Belvast and Cobh and Taillteann require the time period to be at a specific point, the continuity error cannot be completely fixed, but this would help.

[Oizen]

Time lapse?

I dont really see it.

[Elleanior]

Blizzard has been having a lot of fun with such systems in World of Warcraft. Other online games are only recently starting to implement such a system without entering a building. (That is, having an instanced area that is not a separate loading screen.)

It would be interesting to have that.. I'd just settle for a bit of NPCs aging at least a bit. Poor Sion's probably going to be stuck as a 10-year-old until g25.

[ＣＩＲＮＯ]

The thing is, we're on a different time line with the NPCs. While we age and change rapidly, they remain the same for a long period of time.

This is because a year for them is like 1000 years for us.

So much logic, man.

[December]

That would be at ends with the whole Milletian/Tuatha de Danann perception of time thing. Miletians are supposed to age much faster than the Tuatha, not the other way around

[Knightmehre]

This isn't guild wars.

This is Mabinogi :D

[Maenad]

The thing is, we're on a different time line with the NPCs. While we age and change rapidly, they remain the same for a long period of time.

This is because a year for them is like 1000 years for us.

So much logic, man.

That would be at ends with the whole Milletian/Tuatha de Danann perception of time thing. Miletians are supposed to age much faster than the Tuatha, not the other way around

We walk in Iria, elves and giants are at war. We walk through Taillteann. They're in a temporary alliance. We walk into Port Cobh. They talk of longtime peace between elves and giants. We walk through Belvast. The only race mentioned is Fomor.
There's inconsistencies all around.

[Sinsie]

The time lapses are probably only as great as however many years it took in real life for the generations to be implemented. They aren't as large as you believe them to be. Andras' back story has her suffering from being different mainly because no one knew what the heck an elf was, and assumed the large ears to be fomor'ish. Granites in Filia talks about his brother Granat who currently lives in Tailteann, Krug the Giant King has his sister sent to Tailteann, which means characters introduced during G4-G6 have siblings still young and formerly close alive in G9-G12. And of course, Ruairi is alive and well still being heard of after all this time, other characters such as Duncan are involved in the latest quests. Nicca and Ethna are right there for G15. Old characters and new characters interact with each other directly or indirectly all the time.

The game suffers from the same unfortunate problem later Pokémon games do; "Remember there being only 150 in the whole world? Well this region you can ride your bicycle to had like a hundred more and they have century-old legends of ancient Pokémon we never heard of. Why didn't we know? I don't know the roads leading there were blocked by thirsty guards nevermind that Bill's family lived in Johto." This problem is that at the time, the game/story developers didn't have all of this stuff planned out, so it's not like they could drop hints that giants and elves existed, or alchemy existed, or other towns existed, ect. So the limitations are noticed during gameplay and we're supposed to assume that whole parts of the world are blindly never noticed/never talked about until they're plot relevant.

To keep it short, there's plenty of evidence that the in-game world for the NPCs is only advancing as fast as our world's time, if that. It might be a few more years, it might be less. If an official storybook was written about all the main quests of the Milletian in Mabinogi, it would most likely retcon everything to be in the world at the start and change things to make more sense. While the newer towns definitely seem nicer and more advanced, that's most likely Nexon just wanting to make the latest editions cool as can be without worrying whether or not it fits.

Plus with all the Human, Elf, and Giant milletians running around partying with each other and getting along, it makes sense that elf-giant relations would progress much faster, especially since Krug and Castanea agree that the fighting is pretty stupid all the way since they were first introduced.

[Phanterz]

This is basically because the devs made each chapter independent of each other, so the storyline doesn't fit.

It would take a bit of messing around to organize a progression.

[Elleanior]

This is basically because the devs made each chapter independent of each other, so the storyline doesn't fit.

It would take a bit of messing around to organize a progression.

It'd certainly make the game awesomer for the plot-goers, though.