In the Gameinformer article they mentioned that AI won't be going about their business, work, eat, bed time. So It Sounds like most NPCs will be standing around in one spot, so you don't have to hunt them down to much.

I can only imagine an NPC getting a horrible night sleep with people waking him up for part of a quest every 30 seconds.

But I want to have a discussion on how this will effect the different times of day. I certainly hope it's a given that we will see beautiful sunsets and day breaks and stary skies at night. But at the same time because we won't have a wait function what do you think the day to night ratio will be. How long will 24 game in game hours last. I can only suspect they want it to me day a larger majority of the time.

Maybe 24 hours = 2 hours but it will be light out a full hour and a half of that time.

If they run it all like current MMOs, then time of day will correspond to the time of day where you are (or rather, where your server is).

While that may be, to me that doesn't make sense. If I only play at night, then I'll only be able to experience exploring and playing the game at night.

Also wouldn't everyone on a server have the same time of day in game. Its a 4 hours difference from someone playing on the west coast of the US compared to someone the the East Coast on the same server. Or would they just average out a time for a North American server

Again, this is just how every MMO to date manages it. Servers are usually divided by time zone, so if you play on a Pacific server, it will be on Pacific Standard Time. And yes, everyone on a server will be on the same clock; anything else would be an utter nightmare for the servers to handle.

And if you only play at night, then yes, it will only be night. So, much like in real life, if you'd like to see a sunrise, wake up early.

It's likely that they may handle time in the same way the single player games do.

Actually, most games I've encountered take a RL day and divide it into four game days. So even if you play at night, you would still see a day/night shift at least once. However, nerevarine has a point that most MMO's will just make 1 RL day = 1 game day. Hopefully TESO will take the divide by four route, but perhaps not.

As much as I want this to be a world I want to feel is there and in someways real. There is already plenty of mechanics that are going to make this a less of a breathing world then single player TES. Not to say it won't be a good game because of those decistions, because I actually feel that making a game with a 4-6 hour day, will make a better "game" then a 24 hour day.

That critique makes sense, but it's more applicable to single-player games than to MMOs.

When you have thousands of people playing in the same time zone, then having the time of day in-game actually correspond to the time of day where you are is a subtle-yet-huge feature.

Well technically I would be fine with a 24 hour day in a single player game. Because it not online then I'm aloud to use the wait mechanic to wait for day time, or another time.

In an MMO that doesn't have that feature, and can't. I feel like its even more important that 24 hours is faster. So I can experience all times of a day. Without taking a 24 hour vacation from life.

I can understand that it's the easy decision, and "makes sense" from a world that is experienced by thousand of players.

But is their a real benefit to this besides that? Like why would you, or anyone prefer this?

Love to have a few answers, I guess they would probably go this way, but I would like them to be thinking of the benefits to each before deciding (they probably have this fleshed out, but I'd think it wouldnt take a lot to tweak it)

Well if you don't always sign on at exactly the same time, then you'll experience many different times of day.

You could possibly join servers that are from different time zones to experience different times in game, but it could also pose a few problems, such as the server lagging for you as its based in a different country (usually)

Yes a subtle-yet- game breaking feature..
If this was the case I would never see the light of day while playing, things in MMO's don't need to be tied to real life, or terribly realistic, this is a fantasy world where we go for a short while to escape our lives and to play someone else for a little while where there is magic and zombies and vampires. If I see daytime while it's dark outside I am perfectly able to immerse myself into that, there are limits to how realistic games can be before they just became blatantly boring

It seams to me the decision to make time of day tied to real life is the no brain decision in that it's seams obvious and easy, but you start thinking about I, there is problems with it.

If I want to explore the world of Tamriel and be able to actually see it when it is light out. I will need to play during the day. If you do that, you are now forcing people to play at a certain time in order to get a certain experience.

Also with servers, haven't played an MMO in a while, do most games let you switch servers? Would be useful when going on vacation for an extended period of time in a different time zone.

well I can see how letting NPCs sleep and move about can cause problems !!

honestly I have no idea how to make this work other than the traditional sense *shrugs*

it would be nice if they found a way though (to give NPCs a limited "life" sort of)

Again, you'd have to only ever play at night for that. I mean literally never play in the daytime at all. Ever. Not once. Not even a little bit.

And again, every MMO does this already, and there haven't been any hordes of nocturnal players foaming at the mouth over it. Most people seem to accept the notion that the make-believe worlds have days the same length as ours.