I don't know where you people are getting that from.

I'm currently playing a thief/assassin that I created with the sole purpose of completing the Thieves Guild and DB later on. According to my save file I'm 20 hours in with this character and I still haven't completed the TG questline.
I'm not rushing the game but I'm using carriages whenever possible. I.E: I used a carriage to go from Riften to Solitude and from Windhelm to Markath, both travels would take a long time by foot.
I haven't done any other side quests, I even skipped Riverwood altogether after escaping Helgen. I don't use fast travel tho but even if I did it wouldn't have shortned much of this time.

So I wouldn't call 20+ hours short for a guild questline. Most singleplayer games don't have half of that game length in their main campaign.

it takes as long as you want it to mate, thats what our younger pairs don't understand or have the discipline to enforce as for the DB, you are in for a treat if you can stomach the cold-bloodness of it

Some are shorter than others, but alot of people just try and rush them them, instead of truly enjoying them.

Thieves guild was the longest guild quest line in my opinion. Although I do agree that quest lines in skyrim are shorter then they were in oblivion. Especially the college's questline. That was over before I even knew it. (Also I never use fast travel or carriages so that isn't the problem)

Compared to Oblivion, the questlines seem very short... and progression through the ranks seems very rushed.

I will say, so far, the Thieves Guild has been the longest quest line for me. I have yet to join the College of Winterhold and just started the Dark Brotherhood.

Try Winterhold, "Hello new apprentice. Oh, archmage you say?"

I think forcing you to do a larger number of radiant quests as well as all minor quests before progressing would add to the experience, that should be moddable at least without new voice acting.
I've started to make myself to stop doing just their main quests so it feels less rushed.

This.

The complaints are based predominantly on comparison to Oblivion."Not rushing" has little merit. Any of us could make them 100 hour quests if we wanted to.

I think the Thieves Guild quest line is the "longest" but the College quest line has some pretty intense, or rather long dungeon crawls. It could just be myself, but some of those particular quests took me hours to complete, simply because I look at everything in there. Just don't rush your quests and things would seem a little longer. I do agree you appear to rise in some of your ranks pretty quickly, but TG does a better job at making you work for your title.

Yeah. I really wished they could have improved on that.

The only questline I've completed so far is the Companion's questline. And, I have to stay, it ended very abruptly, in my opinion. The events almost didn't make sense, everything ended so swiftly. I couldn't help but think that Bethesda meant there to be more to this story, but it got cut.

I blame the marketing decision to release the game on 11/11/11. That was such an audacious move they couldn't back down once they had announced it. That had to release it on that day even if the game was unfinished.

True. However I think it depends how you play the game. Companions have about the same amount of quest as Fighters guild did in Oblivion. The difference is that the Companions rely more on radiant quests. Making it a different experience every time you play through it. One might argue that because of that it actually takes longer to "complete" the Companions quest than it did Fighters guild. But yes, seeing to the amount of MQs it is shorter.

TG however have the same amount of quest as they did in oblivion. And are built up in pretty much same way with most of them being MQs that are the same every time you play through it.

Some do seem quite short but others like the Daedric quests are a vast improvement over their predecessors.

The one thing that did make guild quests feel longer in Oblivion was how they worked, you traveled from city to city and did quests for each of the guild locations. Few of these quest lines had any epic feel over them, except for maybe Dark Brotherhood. They felt longer then the quest lines in Skyrim simply because it did involve a lot more travelling and more quests, but majority of the quests in Fighter guild was go to this place kill X animal/person/thing/etc. You just had to visit every city and rinse and repeat to do all the quests to become the leader.

I do personally prefer the build up in Skyrim when it comes to the thieves guild, it gives a reasonable explanation whya newcomer would be accepted as guild master rather then how it worked earlier. Dark Brotherhood questline also had it's nice momens, but I still have this feeling the DB in oblivion was way better. Mage guild quest line is silly short, it's over before you kind of realize it.

Them being short has nothing to do with how long they take to complete, as that's determined on an entirely personal basis.
They're short because they lack content and pacing.

I only completed the companions so far, and it was over very fast. I didn't rush it, that happened naturaly. Completing a quest mostly earned you a comment like "companion X wants to speak to you". Following this leads to a very fast completion of the quest line, missing out on all this radiant quests (which more often than not send me to already completed dungeons anyway, so i don't really feel like missing something...)
So i can't speak for all the quest lines, but the companions surely could have been handled better. Doing the College right now. Ths time i will speak to everyone i see, asking if they need help, whether it makes sense or not.

Just completed the Mage's quests and I must admit I felt somewhat empty inside afterwards. The story felt rushed and it was like lets make the dungeons really big to make up for lack of story. They could have easily fleshed it out. But that said I did enjoy it but I don't think I'd do it again and that's the problem I felt with the big quests I've done. That said I've only done two, MQ and Mage's and I wouldn't do either of those again.

I found the College quests very disappointing and also the Companion quests. The DB and Thieves Guild seemed better, although the DB again seemed quite short for me. The lack of recognition of your rank is also very poor. I`m the Archmage but hey speak to me like i`m still the apprentice
I personally find the guild quests pretty mediocre in Skyrim. I `ve had a lot more enjoyment doing the side/daedric quests to be honest.

I had more fun doing them in Oblivion, the Fighters Guild seemed quite epic to me.

It would have been better if you need to build reputation by doing sidequest to access the main guild quest line stages. Hopefully this can be modded in once the toolkit arrives.

It's not as bad as it could be though, the guilds seem to be less hierarchical in skyrim. The harbinger and the archmage are more like first among equals.

They are short compared to Oblivion, which is basically what all of use are complaining about.

Thieves Guild was the most rewarding, challenging, and had enough GOOD twists in the storyline to actually make you wonder what was up next. It had the most love, IMO. Dark Brotherhood would have to be second, then College of Winterhold, and lastly Companions.

The guild quests could always use more content. Same with the factions. There's always room for improvement. ^_^

There's an odd problem with the quests in Skyrim... every single one has this air of urgency, like you have to do it immediately or the world will suffer. It's hard not to steamroll through them if you believe the storys you're being told. Everything has to happen NOW! I kinda wish there were breaks in the quest lines where you at least felt like you could take a break if you wanted to. I know you can... you can leave any of them sitting in your journal for as long as you want. But it just feels wrong to leave some poor NPC hanging.

I call it the WoW Syndrome.

Players are rushing to 85 as fast as possible, then to start the reputation grind, and complain there's nothing to do. After I left WoW, I played Rift for about 6 months, and found it to be worse there. Although a great game, Rift's areas are smaller then those in WoW, and the level cap is only 50. Every day there was/were at least 1 or 2 threads about "nothing to do at 50."

If things are going too fast for you, slow down. I try and walk wherever I can, and do one (or two if they're short) dungeon between quests. I fast travel only about halfway to wherever the quest tells me to go, then I go find a dungeon. Going off-road is the best way to find places and things to do. While walking on a "road," if you see a path going off to the side, that's a sure hint of something being there at the end. Also, do some quests in the towns. Do all the "radiant" quests in a guild, before doing the main part of it. Some of the guild questgivers may not be around at the end of the main quest, so those quests are gone.

Good luck.

Nono, thieves guild and DB are quite ok; its the college of winterhold and companions that were bad. I don't know if they were short, but i know those 2 were horrible. Quite.