Just saw the latest tam foundry video and i welcome the changes to skip the starter areas bar one aspect, which may not be major, but i was still disappointed. If you choose to skip the starter areas, then you will be given a sword as a weapon by default and are unable to pick your starter weapons. What do you guys think?

I thought you only skipped the starter island not the coldharbour part.

If you start more than one char, you can apparently skip Coldharbour too, With the subsequent chars

I see no reason to be dissapointed. Especially your reason looks funny: "How can I choose my weapon if I pass the tutoria!" You can just use any weapon - hello? been playing this game?

The first character has to pass through the Wailing Prison.

Any subsequent character has the option to skip it.
As for now not being able to choose your weapon, easily solved: have your first character create your weapon of choice before making a new character (make sure it's a level 1 version) and use your bank to transfer it.

This is one of the things we have to deal with if we decide to skip content. I'm getting slightly turned off by people not willing to make sacrifices for a bit of convenience (about loads of stuff, seen on this forum). If you don't want to do the starter island or coldharbor then you've got to live with the fact that you didn't choose a weapon to begin with, also weapons are really cheap. You can buy one for just a few gold.

The weapon racks in coldhabour have been removed. There's now only a table with a sword on it.

I see no reason to skip it. It's a one time thing anyway.

Besides, the loot there is quite useful. I always got out of there with at least one new racial smithing recipe on each character.

Managed to get Breton, Khajiit and Argonian recipes.

Not a catch as the latest patch only let you select a sword as the starter weapon, skip or not skipped, you however have a chance to loot weapon off mobs and the same apply to those skipped.

I can see the Whole tutorial disappearing not too soon after release if this is to continue...

LOL , think it has to do with the fact that people kept looting the first weapon they saw off the tables even if it wasnt the one they wanted

Well, as a character creation tool it is becoming less and less useful... Might as well let you Select a weapon when creating Your character then...
Then again the way Things go they may probably as well remove classes altoghether as it seems most will end up as tank mages anyway, since that seems to be the only viable build...

Hello-o? It is an option. You can choose. Do you understand? You are not forced to do this. You can play Coldharbour. Same as the starting areas.

So they deleted the voice telling "pick only one weapon..." or something like that