It's a little more complicated than that @Zaria.

So, each Alliances' zones play out in order simultaneously. So when you're running around Auridon, the Glenumbra and Stonefalls stories are happening without you (in concept, anyway). It's implied, as you get further in, that this lead to some differences depending on if you were there or not. Though those are never really spelled out.

After that comes Coldharbour. This is a direct continuation out of Bangkorai/The Rift/Reaper's March. There might be a day or two in there, but the timescale is short.

Once you've finished Coldharbour, gone back, and finished the main quest, Craglorn opens up. (The original threshold was that you'd encounter this when you hit Veteran Rank 1 (level 50), though it was leveled on the assumption you'd already hit VR10.)

Craglorn takes place roughly 3 months after the events in Coldharbour. Cadwell's Silver and Cadwell's Gold take place during the events of your original alliance's zones. Only, now you're in a timeline where you landed there, instead of your original alliance.

You can think of these as alternate timelines, but the metaphysics get weird, and it's not a discussion we need at the moment. The short version is, characters will remember what you've done for them, even if they encountered you in a different timeline.

After Craglorn, Molag Ball stages an attack on the Imperial City, and you go in and stop his last attempt to salvage The Planemeld. This happens about six months after the events of Coldharbour.

Wrothgar takes place roughly nine months after Coldharbour. As you pointed out, you can go there immediately with a fresh character. In fact, this was always the case. When Wrothgar dropped, the enemies were VR15, but you'd get level scaled up when you entered the zone. So you could go there at level 3, and then adventure there without ever engaging with normal leveled content. This resulted in a situation where you'd come back out, and nothing would be at level, and you had nothing to do.

Hew's Bane takes place roughly one year after the events of Coldharbour. Same deal as Wrothgar, it's accessable to new characters, but it's supposed to happen after everything else.

Gold Coast, fifteen months, you know the drill.

Shadows of the Hist, should be a year and a half, but I'm honestly not sure about this one. Pinning down the timeline for dungeons is always a little iffy.

Then we miss an update. As in, there's nothing at twenty-one months. Maybe this is supposed to be Homestead or One Tamriel, I don't know. But, there is a gap in the timeline.

EDIT: In retrospect, the prologue quest for Morrowind, with the missing Azura prophets might fit here.

Finally, Morrowind is roughly two years after the events of Coldharbour. So, go, save Vvardenfell.

Except, Morrowind was also a change for the devs. Up to this point there hadn't been much about the timeline, but with Morrowind they said, explicitly, that every zone now happens at the same time. This doesn't mesh with what you can actually see in game. It doesn't mesh with how NPCs "remember" quest completes. But, that's the official stance.

Before that, the implication was that your wayshrines were moving you back and forth through time, and between dimensions. It also suggested that some characters were also getting shuffled around at various points. The easiest example is Naryu and Raz both recognizing you on The Gold Coast, when they don't during Messages across Tamriel. But, official stance is, everything happens all at once now.

zaria wrote: »

I believe you summed it up well.
Gold and silver is alternate timelines.
Craglorn is after the of the timeline sounds correct. Never thought of IC in it.

Yeah, IIRC, the IC's timeline is a pain to nail down, because of how the quests, WGT, ICP, and open world content all interact. I want to say WGT is technically the end there, but I can't remember with any certainty.

The weirdness with the alternate timelines is, moving forward, they selectively start blending together. The best example is The Sweetroll Killer quest on The Gold Coast. You, Raz, and Naryu all know each other, even though that's completely impossible, since it requires you to have been an Eye, and worked with Naryu in Deshaan and Eastmarch.