I expressed my opinion on Commerce (your trade and travel). We cannot really see behind the scenes. Especially in Naval travels. Heck, we don't even know if they are capable of navel battles or much on their naval advancements now. They put a compass on a docked boat and it jumps 100's of years ha ha.

And your reliance on magic comment. It is why they still use horses. Not everybody can utilize magic and teleport goods to different parts of the world. Therefore the need for carriages and cargo trains. It took forever for use to use combustible engines. Furthermore, combustible engines is so inefficient. Like what, 23 or 32% efficient?

Lord Tidus, who was your comment directed too?

You are all forgetting that we can use magic and potions as reference to today's US society: Not everybody can afford drugs or healthcare, and they suffer. It is really no different between the two worlds.

Once again, I ask you both... where do you want them to advance to and how can we judge since we don't have a model to go after?

I WAS thinking tho.. we could use the Fable system as a model. With the fall of magic, the technology advances doubles and triples. I see it like, why do I need to get up and grab a beer when I can use telekinesis?

I already compared potions to medicine, forget about magic. It's probably not cheap, but it's probably easier, cheaper, and fastest than skin grafts. Medicine for disease? They already have it, you just need to give them a reason for an industrial revolution.

Or "Magical Revolution." I recall a discussion about something similar happening a few months ago here in the lore forums. Except they use a Dragonborn's soul to power everything.

If technology increases, it will be http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Magitek

Thats an EXTREMELY narrow way to look at it. You know advancement takes place in more then just medical... right?

Trade?
Communciation?
Transportation?
Building/construction?

Perhaps some one can put the guy who was torn in half by a dragon together again with the twiddle of his fingers, whatever, but thats a very small area of development.

Yup. However, they never got into trade in the lore.

For communication, they sometimes use the dreamsleave. That will become the internet (more or less) if the public gets their hands on it.

Magic. And the Dwemer had airships.

I agree. Alinor apparently has really tall buildings, and Tamriel has a lot of sewers. So they kick medieval Europe's ass in this regard.

Don't forget agriculture.

Most of what Tamriel has is cheaper, by their standards, than a car (for transportation). There is no point for them to develop in anything aside from magic. A lot of people can read, and there seems to be a type of printing press.

Edit: Sorry for editing this so much, but one more thing: Time =/= Advancement. With the Mede Empire apparently deep in [censored], with Old Mary at their throats, no technology will be advancing.

I'm not going to bother reading this whole thread at the moment, but I'd just like to point out that a much better question than "Why hasn't Tamrielic culture advanced" is "Why should Tamrielic culture advance, and in what ways?"

And Silent Colossus' "Time =/= Advancement" is a very pertinent point.
Our collective perception of the normal historical progression is tainted by the fact that we live at the culmination of an unprecedentedly rapid period of advance; the Industrial Revolution and the onset of Modernity.

For 99% of human history, two hundred years was no time at all.
It's only in the slightest fraction of time that we happen to be in that two hundred years means a large degree of change and progress.

Lol, The2crow. The OP and some others just flushed out what they wanted to see.

Problem is, non of previous advancements were recorded for us to see. As far as Commerce (Travel, Trade, Sea), Agriculture, Education, Medicine, ect... we have seen nothing.

Deriving from this subject.. it would be a rather cool quest if maybe we could help advance the society... umm humm, Maybe mining? Steam? It could make for a cool quest

I would make another statement...

It has been 10 years and yet we still haven't streamlined better fuel source.. no cure for aids or cancer (although that Canadian study was interesting)... Does that mean we are stagnant?'

In WoW, another magic universe, Night Elves live forever and yet are very technological inept... but that was due to their societies beliefs.

THEREFORE, there is just not enough information to base such claims

There are many observable instances of technological progress as the result of conflict in TES. Most of the ones that come to mind relate to armor (naturally, as that's one of the things that relates most to the actual gameplay)... See the stories about the development of bonemold, or Pelinal's plate, or one other that I can't recall at the moment. It was in Oblivion, and I believe it was about the earlier history of some Colovian lord.


There's a fair bit of information regarding naval capabilities. If you want to know about naval battles, look at the battle of Stros M'Kai from Redguard, or the background info about pirates from Oblivion's DLC "Thieves Den".


lol. My bad.

Anyways, to sum up my position: Two hundred years isn't that long of a time, and we don't have enough information about Tamrielic society to really say if it has been undergoing an appropriate degree of progress or not (though my opinion leans towards the latter).

200 years is a lot of change in modern terms, but change didn't happen at all fast before the renaissance and industrial revolution. For example, the Roman Empire lasted about 500 years... 1000 years if you count the Byzantines as part of the empire. It started with swords and shields and ended the same way... and then the Dark and Medieval Ages followed that, so it was centuries more of the same. You get my point.

The time between Morrowind and Skyrim. I dont know how long that is, but its plenty of time, and theres virtually no sign of any advancement, at all, in any area. Hell, if the lore supports it, even Arena - Skyrim. I havnt played arena/daggerfall though so i cant say, but its like everything development is frozen in amber, to remain the same after hundreds, even thousands of years. Its not a bad thing, but it makes me wonder what people are doing.

I agree, there really isnt a reference for for technological advancement in the past, but in the past few hundred years, and the coolest new invention is the carriage? No new ways of magic (which is ALWAYS being studied and developed), agriculture, transportation. At least an effective form of communication would be something. Like, hey, leme use this magical stone which can absorb sound, and then send it to another stone across Tamriel where it can then be heard by another. Kinda like a sonar teleport spell.

At the same time, i also realize that there is probably things going on in the background we do not see.

I don't know what you're complaining about. The world is not static. Do you think that just because people haven't invented the steam engine, there's been no change or progress?
There has, it's just nothing world-shaking (well, with the exception of the literally world-shaking events of Red Year). As one should expect. Two hundred years is NOT that long of a time, especially not in a setting like this.
Even if you expand the time period to Arena-Skyrim, it doesn't make much of a difference.
From Arena to Oblivion is only a span of thirty four years or so, from 3E 399 to 3E433.

You'll need to wait for Skyrim to see specific developments and changes. It's unreasonable to assume that the world would've "progressed" enough in a mere two hundred years for technology to be so radically altered that you could tell without playing the game. That would demand a COMPLETE change of setting, which would be ridiculous. There's no reason for Tamriel to undergo an industrial revolution or anything world-changing like that.
At the moment there's simply nothing to criticize. There are signs of magic having advanced, at least from a scholarly angle: The schools of magic have been reorganized, and there are new institutions devoted to studying it.
Not to mention new spells, like the one that shows a track out of a dungeon.

They've apparently advanced enough in their knowledge of how magic works to abolish the Mystic School of Mysticism.

From the previews, they've also invented all sorts of crazy new magic effects, that circle of protection, runes, sprays, and stuff. Outmoded the old Touch, Target, Self system~ (however, they've forgotten how to craft customised spells :rolleyes: )

Also, in more mundane matters, some bright smith came up with the idea for new "all in one piece" armour technology, where greaves are permanently bound to the matching curiass. To ensure tightest interlocking of armour pieces and bestow the greatest protection to the wearer's core. They've also learnt the arts of creating weaponry and armour that doesn't degrade through use! Miraculous.

Healthcare magic has advanced to the stage where everyone slowly regenerates health while out of combat!
What wonders this bright future holds, indeed!

Chortle. We can lampoon gameplay decisions as advancements all you want.

Just remember, before you vent about lack of "progress" again. What we're shown through the medium of the game isn't the reality of Tamriel. Well, superficially it is, I suppose... but it is tempered by thematic and art style considerations, tone decisions, and the man-hours the development team puts in, on top of the technological capacity of the systems they want to work with.

They had steam-works (Skyrim will have Steamworks too, in more ways than one, hohoho~). They've demonstrated the capability for flying ships and spells. They have magical teleportation networks. They've got long distance telepathic communications. Summurset has crystalline skyscraqers. Valenwood had walking tree-cities. Settlements depicted are orders of magnitude smaller than what they "should" be, because they literally don't have the time, money, manpower and console power to model them and still maintain the depth they want with "Radiant" NPCs, fancy models and stuff.
Look at what they wrought with Arena and Daggerfall where they were able to be relatively fast and loose with content and generate vast worlds, vibrant, sprawling and lush with generic people.

I've never really been sure how long the setting of Elder scrolls has really been at the level of technology that it is once the games start. People say all through the second era and on but I'm not sure how they know this as the only things we have to go on from before the start of the third era is written word and legend. There is one game set at the very end of the second era an era that was about a thousand years long.

Other than that game the span of time we have actually witnessed is rather short and I might add fraught with calamity, over the past few decades in the game there has been a series of wars started by an imposter Emperor, a massively confusing calamity in the west of magical/divine origin causing entire nations to relocate or disappear entirely, a nation swept by plague who's semi divine leaders are in a sort of shadow war with eachother, and an empire spanning invasion by a violent god from another dimension. The conclusion of the last one resulted in a power vaccum in at least two of the nations, which in turn led to wide spread warfare and a series of events which rendered the large part of one of the nations inhabitable due to impact from a large asteroid, a massive volcano erupting, an earthquake and a series of tidal waves which affected other nations as well.

Also in the first century of the fourth age a floating city from outside of space and time killed an unknown amount of people and wiped out at least one city. Other damages caused by this city aren't yet known.

So while I can't speak for the years previous if you consider the events of the last years of the third era and the first two centuries of the fourth I think we're lucky things haven't decended to an even lower level of technology. Really we're lucky there's anyone left alive.

That's absolutely wrong. Look at oblivion: grind up venison, and mugwort seeds, and you have an alchemical healing potion. That sort of recipe would be impossible to keep under wraps. Now, in The Real Barenziah, there's an example of an elderly lady who is deathly ill, and from the description of her home, she appears to live in poverty. Even she can afford a cure disease spell / potion (with a bit of debt). She only dies because her son Symmachus was an idiot / lazy bastard who waited until a public holiday to ask around for help. None of the priests looked at him and said, "obviously you're too poor" or "obviously you're too low in class," they said "obviously its a public holiday and I'm forbidden from working."

And, its only very recently that doctors / mundane medicine started actually helping people in anything resembling a reliable fashion.

----

Now, onto the topic question:

It's because progress in the elderscrolls comes in the form of personal, internal progress.

In our world, if you want to move a bunch of heavy stuff really far away, you work hard at coming up with an idea for a mechanical process to do it. That mechanical process will work just as well for anyone who learns about your plans. Your cousin can do it, your son (once he grows up), even someone who isn't related to you at all. Anyone can build, say, a crane. This ease of imitation is so powerful we even feel a need to curtail it with intellectual property laws.

In nirn, if you want to move a bunch of heavy stuff really far away, you work hard at improving your skills at either the school of alteration or (pre-oblivion) mysticism. You focus, and meditate, and practice, until you can cast levitate on touch, or feather on touch, or mark & recall, or any number of spells like that. And the progress you make doing this? A thousand times greater than the progress you'd make if you spent your time figuring out a mechanical process. However, here's the problem: that progress is contained within you, and you only. When you die, that progress is lost.

The way it works in our world, we make these tiny little steps every lifetime, and then our children step a little bit further, until we're standing on the shoulders of giants.

In Nirn, they take the same long strides a thousand times.

Want to make better armor? Enchant it. Want to improve agriculture? Summon better plants, or use restoration magic to make 'em grow better. Want to hurl large objects at high velocities towards that castle wall? Why? We have fireballs for that.

And remember, everyone has the potential to become a mage. Almost anyone who wants to improve things is going to be lured down that path.

And with stagnant technology comes stagnant politics. Though part of the stagnant politics also comes from the existence of many elves as old as the empire.

That is a VERY good point. I applaud your post. Excellent thinking, and well explained.

There's plenty of progression, it just isn't the guns-and-cars kind. If you must compare it to Earth, Nirn is the 4,000 years preceding the Rennaisance, not the 500 years after. The speed of technological progression in the modern world is an anomaly, not the norm.