It's not exactly important, but that is where we disagree. I was saying it was a result of a world design decision that got it removed, so then buildings and dungeons had to be designed for a lack of it.

This.

I'd like levitation, but it'd need some limits. Something like instead of single cast, it's a sustained spell (constant magicka drain), or some other disadvantages (getting hit by a spell/arrow breaks your concentration and knocks you down, etc).

okay, whatever. not really different than what i said at all, but whatever.

If levitation is in the game there would also be a required substitute for it that does not involve magic or else you would have to have a specific skill to access some of the content which would make players feel forced into using it. I never said it was logical, but there is usually a way to do things with both magic and without, except physical damage can be mitigated better with combat skills while magical effects are mitigated better through magic skills. That is my opinion about it.

Where is this podcast?

Levitation would have been almost useless in OB because there WAS NOTHING TO LEVITATE TOO.

doesn't look likely to me. The way he worded the question sounded like a snarky way to say "no" to me, if it were in, he would say yes, after all, it's clear a certain segment of the fanbase wants it, so why not tell them what they want to hear? Unless doing so would be lying, of course, alternately, if it was in, but for some reason or another, they were not ready to talk about it, then he would have said "We're not ready to talk about that yet." or something vague that doesn't really answer the question like "What do you think?" or something, with the comment about DLC, what it sounds like to me is basically "no", just with a joke involved.

Including/excluding levitation will depend solely on the Skyrim engine performance (in particular on consoles).

No doubt the engine was bench-marked on the slowest of the targeted consoles, with 2 possible approaches in mind:
(1) The closed-city approach of Oblivion (levitation is impossible, but easy performance gain due to simplified far objects)
(2) The open-city approach of Morrowind (no technical reason to exclude Levitation, but it needs advanced handling of far objects like the Farcry engines do)

If Mr. Howard answers a question like 'levitate in Skyrim ?' with 'Another DLC. Three hundred dollars', well... i deduce that benchmark number (2) did not go well and levitation MUST be left out for performance reasons.

Note to the casual reader:
the above may sound weird, but believe me: (1) Open/closed cities (2) Performance and (3) Levitation are closely linked. Consoles - the slowest of the targeted platforms - will determine the destiny of levitation.

I snapped two quotes from another thread that I think brings a little truth to the matter.

I would be pissed if they did that. That would be the paragon of withholding things in the game, only to sell it to us later to make extra money.

Well I will give 15-30$ for such DLC if we will receive some nice quest with it and levitation will be at same level as in previous games, an Old Telvanni wizard for example can help :whisper:
I will give more then 100 if Devs will create really good DLC thats will expand game similar to Midas Magic (not like Spell Tomes please) and NPC will actually use magic now, so Levitating Mages can be brilliant awesome rivals for my character.