What?

It's impossible to be objective about this. If I had to be realistic, then the chances are 0% because everyone has different tastes and expectations. Stating the game is the greatest RPG of all time merely shows one is over-hyping the game to be more than it really is. Already have enough people who feel that way about Halo.

No. It could become the best RPG so far, but not ever; as in past, present and future.

Not everybody will agree that it is the best RPG ever, so therefore that would be a ludicrous claim. Perhaps I could have worded my previous post better.

IT ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY WILL BE THE GREATEST GAME EVER MADE if they add the lich

Depends on the amount of content.

^ This.
The crucial factor is the amount of quests, factions and the depth of the story (imo), and we can't tell any of that untill it's released. So I will reserve my judgement till then.

As well as kill off ALL of the Bosmer.

please leave a few for me to murder and defile their corpses..

I am okay with this.

and i dont know if you like orcs? but i HATE THEM their so ugly and stupid, my last oblivion file i went on an entire world orc killing spree and i mean every orc was abolished from my land, except the ones that randomly spawn in caves and such, BALLS!

i actually prefer more actiony stuff in my rpgs. i find it impossible to play games that i used to love years ago because i hit a point somewhere where i started HATING turn based combat. i couldnt finish final fantasy 7 because of how much i loathed the constant pausing and menu clicking. if it were up to me time would keep going when going into your inventory like they do in the STALKER games.

removal of attributes is something that doesnt really bother me because it was somewhat immersion breaking especially if you played either morrowind or oblivion vanilla with their stupid 5x levelling screen...........hence why i had to use mods like nGCD which eliminated even having to look at my attributes.

in my perfect game, you use stuff and you get better at using it..........end of story. if im using alot of magic then im exercising my brain and getting smarter and learning more and if im swinging battleaxes then im focusing on being stronger and faster. im actually hyped about how they are doing it in skyrim.

they said that it would be very difficult to become master of all unlike in morrowind and oblivion which is great news for me cause i dont want to be the best at everything. when you think about it you can finish the game in literally a few ingame months and somehow in that very short time period you get uberpowerful and end up running various guilds and defeating the evil enemy and acquiring the best armor and weapons. its just silly on its face. so limiting your mastery of skills is good news to me.

STOP TALKING!

Well in that sense, then most stories in the last 1000 years are generic because they all have the basic plot of a story in the past. Like trying to save someone's life or trying to find someone is kidnapped. Arena had Jagar Tharn conspiring with Mehrunes Dagon to kidnap the emperor and pose as the emperor in his place which brought about a dark age in Tamriel and you, the hero, break out of jail and piece together the staff of chaos and save the emperor. In Daggerfall you are sent to get rid of the king of Daggerfall and then you get swept up into a bigger even that culminates with you getting the Mantella and then the event of the Warp in the West. In Morrowind you were sent to Morrowind by the emperor and are sent along to investigate happenings in Morrowind and eventually discover that your the Nerevarine and work to gather the tools to destroy the Heart of Lorkhan and defeat Dagoth Ur to save the inhabitants of Vvardenfell. And finally Oblivion, it had a short main quest line but it has a deep rooted plot into the series, really relying on the story in Battlespire. The Mythic Dawn, a cult that worships Mehrunes Dagon, conspires with Mehrunes Dagon to kill the Emperor so that the dragon fires would weaken the barrier between Oblivion and Nirn, allowing Mehrunes Dagon to initiate an invasion to try to conquer Tamriel and then the character gets caught up in the events and eventually helps Martin Septim give his own life to stop the invasion and seal Oblivion forever. I'm not seeing anything generic here.

It's EXTREMELY unlikely that it'll be anything as good as Morrowind. The depth in Morrowind... You truly were in this world, look around any town, there's political intrigue and a history to it. Incredible game. Also, after they messed up Oblivion so ridiculously much, I wouldn't trust them for much. However, Fallout 3 was good, and I think they've learnt from some of their mistakes. I'm not certain of the development team however. I really do hope Kirkbride is on there.....

Actually, I'm fine with every other race. It's only the Bosmer that send me into fits of rage, I hate them with such a passion. When the adoring fan came up to me for the very first time I killed him right then and there, and this was before I knew it was the cool thing to do, no, this was an act of rage.

yes please amen

A lot of stories tend to be generic. Especially in video games. TES is no exception:

Arena: Deafeat an evil wizard

Daggerfall: Wasn't very cliche actually

Morrowind: Stop a bad guy from using god-like power for evil

Oblivion: Stop an evil god from destroying the world

Skyrim: Stop a dragon from destroying the world.

Sure some of the finer details may be unique, but on a whole they tend to be cliche.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4KJY8WUGqk

While adding to the subjectivity wagon, I would like to say I prefer Oblivion to Morrowind. I'm not sure where I would place Daggerfall, but there are features of Daggerfall that are in Oblivion but not Morrowind, and I really like some of those features, so I have it next to Morrowind. If I had to rank them, I would have Oblivion on top, Daggerfall and Morrowind in a currently equal position that shifts towards either one's favor at different times (hence sometimes I may think one is better than the other because of the mood I'm in, I guess), and Arena at the bottom. I have fully, whole-heartedly, and thorough played each one, and that is how I feel. Of course, that's just me, but yes, the matter of the best RPG is all subjective.

I dont really agree with what you determine to be a RPG, all games have a world, gameplay and story, so by your logic all games are a RPG.
In an RPG you or your parties strength, dexterity, charisma, combat ability etc. are all governed by skills and attributes, so yes a game does need stats to be considered an RPG.

The rest of your post is pure opinion, though i lol'd at "oblivion had the perfect world".

ROFL WTF? LOL

As annoying as Final Fantasy 7 was due to the highly cliched mechanics and the usual Kabuki drama, it is the only game ever to bring tears to my eyes.

So if Skyrim is to compete with MY 'All Time Greatest RPG ev4r!!11 one' , then it has to move me philosophically at least as much as the Ultima series; and move me emotionally at least as much as Final Fantasy 7. Incidentally Braveheart was the only movie to make me cry too.

Generic themes and stories can still end up being All Time Greatest given the right crafting.

Already you have started to seal the fate of Skyrim in your mind. History truly does repeat itself. People get attached to a game and they say they will give the next game a chance but in the back of their minds the new game won't ever be as good as the game they are attached to unless the new game is a carbon copy. The biggest thing I think that made people hate Oblivion was the fact that when they found out that they changed the game from Morrowind, they were so angry that when they started playing Oblivion and when they got to the point where they got into combat, they started to get angry because the combat was different than Morrowind, whether it was better or not, they just don't like the change. Now that their dislike of the changes in the game are simmering they get to the skills their rage boils because they don't have their favorite skills from Morrowind that were overpowered such as spear and enchanting. So now they are just dwelling on how different the game is from Morrowind instead of letting themselves sink into the immersion of the game. This is why I believe that people can't get into Oblivion, because they were too busy comparing it to Morrowind to notice what Oblivion had. You can't be always comparing a game to another game, you have to judge a game for what it is. If Oblivion had been the first TES game I guarantee the people that complain about it now would say it is a good game because they have nothing to compare it to.

Pretty much, If you dont have stats, then your not an RPG.

That people are so obsessed with specific ways of handling stats and the use of dice rolls is just plain sad, in my opinion. RPGs were never about dice rolls or that other nonsense, they were about simulation of growth in both power and influence as well as role-playing what you want to role-play, but due to limited technology, that was all that could be done, then. Now that we move forward and be a bit more innovative, people have this nonsensical delusion involving a "it must have dice rolls and boring combat to be an RPG" rule that, quite frankly, is one of the most short-sighted and unhealthily obsessed things the gaming community seems to defend, in my opinion. Of course, that is all just my opinion. However, in the case of attributes, all they did in Morrowind and Oblivion was tie into a horrible attribute scaling system that I am glad is gone. I think Skyrim is taking this all of this in a better direction, and I'm saying that as an RPG player.