Time tracking would be useful for a lot of the existing quests: the grove ritual, the goblin attack, the burning building, the Zhentarim leaving their hideout, the poisoned gnome, the toxic fumes in the collapsed cave, etc.
Some of these quests give warnings before failure, some fail automatically, some aren't even implemented properly and the *actual event* never occurs.
It's not (only) nostalgia, it's asking for quest/narrative consistency as it relates to time. And while implementing the passage of time, they could add a fatigue system which would be a neat way of encouraging long rests (which would then offer all these cool cinematics they spent so much time working on).
