Depending on how the game turns out, and whether I consider it "worth playing", either 0 or 1000+. The odds are, it won't be in the middle.

I've got well over 1000 hours into Morrowind over several years, and over a dozen characters. I can build a character, and that character will play DIFFERENTLY than the last, because it's difficult to use skills that aren't developed, and your initial build has a strong impact on what you become. I still find new places, still haven't finished a significant portion of the quests, and am occasionall still SURPRISED by things I haven't encountered before, even after all that playing time.

On the other hand, I've got about 80-120 hours sunk into Oblivion, and way more than half of that was extensively modded to try to salvage what I could from the inherently flawed game design. It actually pays NOT to take the skills that the character will use, because of the scaling issue, and the lack of "failure" means that there's no real reason to play one character design differently from another. After a couple of weeks of intensive playing with several characters, it all started to look and feel the same, with no sense of "purpose", and I simply lost interest. Only a sense of "having to finish it" enabled me to force myself to complete the MQ, and I could never muster the ambition to go back to playing it again.

I won't buy Skyrim if the consensus among the "RPG" posters is that the game is more "mainstreamed" and "handholding" than Oblivion. If it's a return to "meaningful" character building and choices, then I'll probably play 2-4 hours a day, 3-5 days a week, for the next several years, as I did with MW, and STILL play at about 10% of that rate after all these years.

Never enough, I will not play this game enough.

80 - 100 Vanilla

400 + Modded

More than I should

According to my wife...Too many...

It's quite easy to rack up over a 1000 hours in TES games over the years.
especially when you don't just play one character, then shelve the game.
Just role play different characters (for me between 75 - 150 hours per character), and settle into the world (as opposed to just playing through the game).
It doesn't take up much of your real time when spread over the years.

then of course there are mods, which really keep it going.

Morrowind and Oblivion are the only two games that I have played this much, because I feel they really lend an opportunity to be a different character living in another world.

I will completely forget about reality and this game will become my life. :celebration:

i hear you man. over the past 5 years i've put about 400+ hours into 4 different characters. Also... i'll get blasted for this, and i know it's insane but...

I NEVER FINISHED THE MAIN STORY. OH GOD I'M SORRY! I'M A BAD MAN!

Until I get bored of it. Could be 50 hours or could be 500 hours.

I voted 800+ as I play many different characters. My longest was 700 hours on a character in Morrowind. Only did the MQ due to the companion mod I was using.

It's hard to do everything with one char in OB in 50 hours and I usually play with a single character over 80 hours, the first time more than 120. I make characters all over again and it will be over 800 hours in the end, I just found myself playing another 17 hours of OB the other day and I'm no where near done with any guild with him. But I've never played over 120 hours with a single character, the quests usually end and I reach the highest level. Anyone who will play Skyrim LESS than 300 hours is not a real TES fan.

I played Vanilla Oblivion on Xbox 360 for 350+ hours..
I imagine it'll be around the same, maybe a bit more.
Question is, how long will it take you to get to 300+ hours? 12 days?

If anything like Oblivion, which was probably about 800+ over the last 5 years, so yeah I reckon I will easily be playing Skyrim over 800+, if it`s going to be as good as I think it is :mohawk:

I dropped thousands of hours into Morrowind and Oblivion, I don't see why this will be any different.

I played over 1000 hours in oblivion and over 700 hours of morrowind thorough the years, cuz i started playing morrowind after oblivion... i would say that, maybe in a year or 2 , i will have played over 1000 hours, and i will keep playing it, since some quests are generated and we can duel with other npcs to show off our selfs. and npcs probaly will have enought emotions to look at you lik " ouh my god HES AWESOMMEEE!" AND STUFF... bioing :tes:

edit: one of the bad things about it is that i stoped playing both for a long time, and i lost most of the good mods, im to lazy to go there and search and then install, because most of the good ones need to have obse and stuff.. but now, when skyrim launches, it is going to be a new generation of mods, wich , this time, im going to folow!

Well, it could be anywhere within that range, given the time that I put into each of the previous four TES Games:

• TES I: Arena <100 hours. Admittedly, I've never beaten it. And I also only really tried it out once it became free-to-download back in 2004. I don't think I've touched it in a couple years.
  
• TES II: Daggerfall - >2,000 hours. This was my first TES game, and still stands to me as the downright best. Most TES fans that've been around before the 21st century will agree with me that BOTH MW and OB failed to match up. This is the only TES game I still play regularly.
  
• TES III: Morrowind - ~1,200 hours. The game was a bit of a let-down for me compared to DF, but still it was good nonetheless. Plus, its phenomenal level of mod support (exceeding that of OB) has contributed to its longevity. I occasionally play this game.
  
• TES IV: Oblivion - ~900 hours, if I remember my save times all right. To me, this was a disappointment; still a fun game, but that's because it was being compared to games of its OWN time, and overall... I feel that the quality of games has degraded significantly over the past 10-15 years. It fixed a number of things that badly needed it in MW, but also broke new things, (the PC interface, anyone? Or the inability to delete spells?) cut out a lot of features during development that shouldn't have been, and also, in the madness, neglected to fix a bunch of simple problems that were still in MW. (rain still falling through bridges and roofs?)

It's a bit early to truly tell how Skyrim will come out. Basically, if it turns out to be an "Oblivion +1," I'll likely play it less than I did OB; chances are in that case few PC gamers will bother working on mods for the game either, and instead focus on the otherwise-as-capable Oblivion. If the game lives up to all its promises, (unlikely but still possible, given the history gamesas has) then it could run into the quad-digits. Doubtful that it'd displace Daggerfall.

Pfft... 300h won't take me more than 1/2h with one hand tied behind my back.

I will probably be playing at least 300 hours so i chose 300-400. Could you put a secondary poll up there with like 100+, 200+ etc.?

Let's just say that I will be saying my goodbyes to my family and friends when it comes out.

I have over 1000 hours in Morrowind and about 100 hours in Oblivion. You can guess how many hours I will put into Skyrim depending on which of its predecessors it more closely resembles.

Probably 80-100 hours on each character and ill prolly make between 15-20 characters especially since im getting the pc version. gonna mod the hell out of it )))). My morrowind saves are absolutely ridiculous and im too embarrassed to post the numbers lol

Depends how good the game is.
If its EPIC then I will completely forget about reality and this game will become my life. ( This is for those of you who play 1000 hours on a single character.)

300-400

I can see myself playing the vanilla game for an easy 300-400. If they put out a good number of DLC items and quests (please more expansive than the ones for Oblivion were - I felt like Shivering Isles was like a large DLC item similar to Fallout 3's, not an entire 'sequel' [no offense, just my personal opinion]) I could easily go up to 600+.

The amount for me will probably be unknown probably over 800 but not all in one character. I might get 250 hours in one character as my maximum and that depends on how much replay value I'll have with Skyrim.