I was just wondering....when we shut down the game for a length of time (a few hours, overnight, etc), does the game actually run in the background on our computer or is it just that when we return to the game, the computer calculates how much game time has passed since the game was exited and updated the game accordingly, i.e, aging, job progression, etc.

If the answer is that it runs in the background, does this calculate differently when we just leave the game but are still using the computer versus when our computer is actually shut off? Thx.

The game calculates how much game time passes since the game was exited