On the home page of the site, my time stamp shows as GMT -6.
On the front page of of every game, my time stamp shows as GMT -6.
If I open any actual game thread, my time stamp shows as GMT -5.
On my "GM Menu" page, my time stamp shows as GMT -5.
On my "Private Messages" page, my time stamp shows as GMT -5.

It's difficult to know what time a post or PM happened, when the site doesn't seem to know what time it is.

That's odd. I have just tried all 5 such pages using one of the games I run, and all say the same time zone (-7 for me). No variance. Tried the games I play in, and spot checked a couple that I have access to (ie: not the GM Menu). They are also consistant.

I have always had the same issue as OP. I remember seeing this discussed before. If I remember correctly it has something to do with daylight savings time.

Only the main menu and game page time is incorrect for me, everything else seems to be correct. Even if it isn't, one hour off in either direction doesn't make that big a deal for my games.
This message was last edited by the user at 15:38, Sun 28 July.

If you know that there's a discrepancy between login times and the thread times (which is a common enough issue that you're definitely not the only person being affected by it), then you just need to do the math to know when a post happened.

I tend to just look at the Cast List, and parse the last post time (for whatever player's post I'm curious about) against my last login time. Once you know which page is off by an hour, you just need to remember that page is off by an hour.

Yes, thank you, I'm aware that "just do the math in your head" is among the available options.  That's not a reason not to fix glitches.

The thing is, since it's been brought up a bunch of times before, it's not a site glitch.

It doesn't happen to all users, in all time zones. So it's not something that jase can fix, because nothing on his end seems to be actually broken.

I don't know what causes it. I know I'm affected by it, but I'm also only affected by it on one of the devices I view RPoL on. So unless someone can figure out what actually causes it (and it's been discussed lots of times, and no one seems to be able to pinpoint the cause) so that users can fix their end, there doesn't seem to be much to do besides find a workaround that works for you.

One thing to remember is that RPoL sets the time stamps for each individual user based on the time zone they have set for their device (which also adjust automatically for daylight saving time).

Might be worth checking the time zone setting on your device, just to make sure it's correct.

This is a big clue.  Also check whether your device automatically adjusts for daylight savings time -- and note that:

• daylight saving time changes forward/backward depending on which hemisphere you're in (since the seasons change accordingly)
• the specific day daylight savings takes effect is different in different countries (or even different states in different countries -- e.g.: Queensland, Australia does not observe daylight savings at all)

Not all devices are developed with international marketplaces in mind, and may only shift on (for example) North American dates.  Or they may sync up with different time servers around the world...

All of this is unlikely, but we're already talking about a flaky bug, so we're automatically into edge case territory here.

I access RPoL on four different devices (desktop, laptop, phone, tablet) and in my case the issue is consistent across all devices regardless of my own settings.

If I had to guess, it's potentially because GMT changes to BST during the summer, i.e., although I live in the UK it is currently 18:25 BST **BUT** 17:25 (5:25pm) GMT. Therefore systems that sync up with UK time, regardless of DST, will register one fewer hour in the summer (GMT -5), but systems that sync up with Greenwich Mean Time, which Britain does not use in the summer, will register that it is one hour earlier (GMT -6). It is possible that some of the coding is set to match with GMT regardless of the time of year?

I do not know if this is the cause, but as I've lived on both sides of the pond and dealt with trying to communicate with people on the other side, I know that translating back and forth between timezones and DST "change" dates is a total metaphorical ballache.

I'm not sure if there's an easy way for whomever does the coding for the website to check whether this is the issue, but I guess it'd be a pretty easy fix if it turned out to be the cause.

Hope that helps!

Another variable to consider ... does the issue only affect users who use more than one device ?

I don't have any GMT discrepancies, but then again a) we don't have daylight saving here and b) I only use one device (my PC) to access RPOL.

Oooh !  And for those using multiple devices - are you logging out of RPoL on one device before logging in again on another ?  If not, try that, and clear cookies for good measure, just to see if it makes a difference.

Hi. Is it really that big a deal? I mean if players are posting in a timely manner, then what difference does it make if the time stamp isn't the same across devices. Just curious.

Unsure, on that one. I know that where I see saw the issue is on my desktop (and just so we stay on topic, it was the same problem as the OP - not ALL of the timestamps in all locations within RPoL were displaying the SAME time stamp - not a case of whether or not that timestamp is "proper". In my particular case, where I really noticed it was in the Cast List, because Last Post times there wouldn't necessarily match up with the time in the thread or on the front page.)

...but I was seeing the issue on my desktop since long before I started ALSO using my phone to do RPoL things. So in theory, at one time, I did see the issue while only using one device. (My phone never had the issue, but I just chalked that up to the phone auto-updating itself better.)

However...and incredibly amusingly, I realized while writing out this entire post that I no longer have the issue. Every page location on RPoL is now displaying the same time for me, and all post times match up across all pages. (I don't actually care whether or not it's correct for DST, but it appears to be.) This is new, although I'm not sure HOW new, because it's not something I pay that much attention to. A few months ago, I know the issue was there. Now it isn't. I've been in the habit of checking player times against my GM times for so long, I couldn't tell you when the timestamps "fixed" themselves. But they have.

For whatever it's worth, I had both a browser (Chrome) and OS (Win10) update in the past few days. /shrug