Eventhough it was short, I enjoyed it.

Both the Companions and College questlines were incredibly bad. Scores of dungeon crawler quests, almost no interesting characters, and somewhat bland rewards (except for that one thing the Companions give you, you know the one). College was the worst, however, for sure. Ancano was so obviously an evil guy that it really shouldn't be any kind of spoiler to anyone. Why not have him being actually good and the kindly old man being a dike in secret? At least it's going to be a little less cliche. Oh, and I am the Arch-Mage, yet I have to run errands for nobodies? What the hell is this? I should be negociating with Jarls and world leaders to expand the College's influence, or failing that threatren to summon a horde of Deadras in their cities if they dare to cross me. Yet I have to be a guinea pig in some girl's experiments and most rogues mages I find that outclass me by erecting instant barrier blocking any spell while pelting me with their own. But, if I resort to a weapon or just summon stuff it's auto-win. Way to make me feel like the top magic user in Skyrim.

Yeah, I ramble, but it's tough to sensibly play a mage in Skyrim. as Renegade says, it feels so empty and void, it's like no other character type was envisionned by Bethesda except either a stereotypical warrior hero (like that guy in the background), an hybrid mage/warrior, or a DB/Theives's Guild type with either daggers or bows, and nothing else. Shame, because the Brotherhood and Theives questlines are really good. I strongly doubt the same people designed these 4.

Fantastic concept, terrible execution. that's how I see it

I liked the College quest chain. Gameplay-wise it plays better than any other guild quest line IMO. Also, I liked how you got story elements while you were running through the dungeons.

Dark Brotherhood had the best overall story and characters, but it had too much filler. Also, except for some of the key moments (that were epic), the gameplay and story elements weren't intertwined all that well. I'm blah blah blah, blah blah blah, ok now go kill a beggar.

That pretty much applies ot the whole game. Well when speaking of the whole game, "terrible" much too strong of a word, but it leaves much to be desired.

I did like Labyrinthian (or rather Piperunalmostliterally ) and the Dwemer ruins, but the story part of the storyline was pretty

My money would have been on the Orc in the library. No self-respecting Orc would favor books over battle! He's obviously got some alterior motives.


Better execution would have been to let the player only get to a certain level in each guild in the vanilla game. Then have each DLC tackle a different guild and allow to player to make it the rest of the way up the ladder.

I was arch-mage at level 9, Tolfdir is like 150 years old, i advanced more than him in two days then he ever has, Ancano died to one Fireball, and the Psijics, I don't even know, they rolled up, grabbed My Eye of Magnus and rolled out like No Big Deal, and then i walk outside and what does the guard say?

"So you can cast a few spells, think I'm impressed?", I'm like, yo B**ch I'm the Arch-Mage, i will disintegrate you for fun, but no, he wants to be all hard.


Anyways, story line ended in like 3 quests, Dungeon Crawls, it almost seemed like they did that guild last, and ran out of time so they just threw something together.

In Oblivion it was no different, or even a bit worse. When you travel to the college you get 'Ah, the universities newest recruit...' every time, even after becoming Arch-Mage. None of the other mages treat you any differently, and the Bruma guild is still on fire.

At least in Skyrim, they establish early that the structure is pretty loose and the Arch-Mage is mostly a figurehead for the guild.

The College of Winterhold quest line basically depends on a Deus Ex Machina; of course it's going to be bad.

Companions was worse. It went from what could have been a honorable warrior story to a vanhellsing tie in.

Hmmm, I haven't started mage's quest line.... But I was HOPING it would be better than the pathetic Companions quest line. Oh well. I miss the guild quests from Morrowind and Oblivion. They made you feel like you deserved to be leader.

I'd say the mage's guild line is actually worse sadly.. But maybe I'm just more disappointed with it than the Companion's guild.

WTB patch that expands the Companions and College on winterhold.

Hey, at least the Theive's Guild quest line is pretty well concieved,


The Dark Brotherhood quest line also wasn't bad.

@Levanon Yeah I'll agree with that. They were definitely more enjoyable.

I really didn't like the college questline :/

Labarynthian was awesome. Did you know that there are multiple parts to it, including a maze outside? Yeah, the quest doesn't bring you there at all. Also, the staff and eye and the mage from the Altmer Islands got me excited to visit Summerset.

I still agree that the quest really doesn't seem all that great. It rushes you through the main quests making it seem so much shorter. If you had to go through some side quests on the way or at least be a certain skill level in areas of magic before the archmage found you useful enough to complete some quests, perhaps it would have been a lot more exciting.

The only good parts was the teaching part and Labarynthian other then that it was bad. Had some good ideas, but failed to execute them, plus it was way to short(as were the other factions).

I hope this is a joke, or some terrible point to illustrate that even that would be better than what we have currently. That is absolutely what is wrong with the whole DLC business. If that was so, we would willingly pay for a game that was not finished, then pay more to finish it. DLC expanding upon guilds is okay, but for developers to purposefully stop the quest-lines short in the main game, and then let players pay for DLC to be able to finish them is terrible.

That's a bit off-topic, but I had to respond.

WHY DID THEY NOT TAKE THE EYE FROM THE BEGINNING SINCE THEY APPARENTLY HAVE THE POWER TO DO SO.

Of course Bethesda could have easily fill it in a bit by saying that they need to Staff of Magus to power it down a bit before they can teleport it. Or that the spell would consume and shorten the caster's life-force or some crap.

IAA with everything said here!

They probably wanted to give that feeling that everything magical or cultural is in decay in skyrim :cryvaultboy: .. i don't know ... but if the next game takes place in the beast lands i won't even buy it, from morrowind to skyrim the game just got dumber and dumber

I just finished it last night, and I have to agree that it was too short and left much to be desired. Even though I enjoyed going through Labryrinthian and Mzulft, it just didn't feel like I did enough to become Archmage.

Terrible guild questlines except the Dark Brotherhoods and thieves guild which was good enough.

Agree with most people. The questline was too short, and I never had the feeling of actually accomplishing anything. I expected to rise through the ranks and get certain perks like in Oblivion, but now it felt like going from student to arch-mage in a few days. (The arch-mage robe is pretty sweet though, for a mage-type character).

All of the guild questlines were rather dull, but, the college takes the cake.