Golden Girl

The problem with time in the game is that there are 2 separate timelines, because it's an MMO.
There's the historic timeline, and the levelling timeline - the historic timeline is the one where the events are tied to certain dates and years - for example, Statesman and Recluse drinking from the Well in 1930, the transit sytem starting in 1951, the first Rikti invasion in 2002 and so on - these dates aren't a problem, as they all happen before the current time period of the game - where the problems start is when the historic timeline moves into the period of the game being live.
That means that fixed historical dates become stretched out, because as an MMO the content has to be repeatable - so while the second Rikti invasion has the historical date of 2007, it's also still happening now in 2011 - the RWZ is in the same crisis stste as it was in 2007 - and that's where things get confusing with the other levelling timeline.
In the levelling timeline, events happen as you progress - the higher levels happen at a later date than the lower levels, which makes sense.
But it leads to weird situatiosn where the Shivan strike on Glaxy City in 2011 happens before the Rikti invasion of 2007 - or that the Faultline storyline happens after the destruction of Galaxy City, even though it happened in 2006 in the historic timeline.

As a basic example, the historic timeline reads like this:

2006 Faultline story/rebuilt
2007 Second Rikti invasion
2010 Tyrant invades
2011 Galaxy City destroyed.

But the levelling timeline goes like this:

Galaxy City Destroyed
Faultline story/rebuilt
Second Rikti invasion
Tyrant invades

So it's quite bixed up trying to decide what's the "real" timeline