[lonnarin]

Besides, isn't Moraken going on several centuries now? And Bloodstone was several thousand years old. If we start enforcing age limits on characters, NPCs would have to follow. And that would mean a new handbook revision every 2 years. I think captain Garent must have been pushing 200 by the time he had his daughter take over, and she's probably over 60 currently. :P

Beyond just being difficult to code, the time dilation get's pretty significant. Say you have a 4-part quest which runs every 2 weeks. In the quest, it is usually time-bubbled, which means that the event is pretty much taking the few days it takes to actually run, and you're not really supposed to RP having been in that quest until it is completely over. You could have a quest series that takes 2-3 months to complete in real-time, which would according to the game-clock take more than a year. Still, these events could take just a few days of RPable game time.

Then when you take a half-hour talking to the NPC in-game, you see that several gametime hours pass by. Spells that would normally last half a day poof int he time it takes for an old man to tell you about his grandchildren. This doesn't mean of course that the NPC is speaking at a rate of one word per every 5 minutes in Treebeard treantspeak, but that the perceptual half-hour of conversation takes precedence.

So yeah, there's a lot of time-dilation going on that the set game-time doesn't cover. This would also include running from town to town or sailing from continent to continent in less than a game hour when it would take 3 months at least for a 1600s Spanish Galleon to sail from Europe to America. and full nights rests that take less than 10 seconds after pressing the R-button.