Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim isn't even close to being out yet ( sorry for reminding everyone! ) and this forum already has over 100,000 more forum posts than the Oblivion forums do, and almost as many Topics created. Now I understand that this forum was originally created back in September of 2009 ( at least according to the date of the oldest topic of the Oblivion General Discussion ), which was 2 years after the initial game came out, but you would still think that it would be far passed that of Skyrim as far as forum activity. Maybe it's the overwhelming hype of the game, coming out, I mean it is the first Elder Scrolls game to come out while this forum is active, so that could be a huge factor. Nonetheless, good job!

its a trend, and not very surprising. bgs continues to make games that bring in more people than before and it would make sense that each new game/forum would draw in more people. also they did get a bump of forum members thanks to the aqusition of the FO series which brought lots of people to the community that would other wise not be brought in by TES. its the result of reaching to wider audiences.

The forums get pruned, every once and a while. Oblivion, and maybe even Skyrim, have had more posts in their respective sections than you believe.

I see, good point. The Fallout: New Vegas Forums have ALMOST as many posts as the Skyrim Forums. Two different but popular series' would bring in lots of people.

ah, yea, theres that too.

but I have noticed that the mean of users on at a given point has been increasing. and a good indicator is the most users on at once stat that goes up pretty much every time a new game is announced.

This is because older posts are deleted. There is some kind of system that either deletes them when they are inactive, or every time a new thread is made on their forums, the oldest one is deleted. There have been many more posts than the number that shows for Oblivion. But this will also be their most popular game yet, no doubt.

ah yay congrats bethesda on the 90,000 copied posts and the 10,000 originals. WELL DONE!

Yeah, y'all's rambling dribble of posts (:P) are pruned regularly, so the numbers really mean nothing.

Anyways, this thread doesn't have much of a point so I'm gonna lock it.