You know Beth is atleast doing SOMETHiNG right SOMEWHERE in the tes series with all this milage going on lol.

If Morrowind had the combat system and NPC schedules (instead of just standing where they were) of Oblivion, I probably would have went back to Morrowind to stay several years ago. I prefer its culture and mystique, plus the Bloodmoon expansion is as if it were made just for me, I love it so much.

That being said, I never played Daggerfall and from what I have read of some of its options, I can see why some people see Morrowind as a devolution. Animal languages, climbing, and class specific weapon and armor use seem pretty cool, IMO.

I just hope Skyrim is a synthesis of the best elements of all, including Fallout 3. Guess we will see in 7 months.

not too much daggerfall, 3 years of Morro, 5 years of Oblivion, I anticipate another full-term of skyrim once it is out.

I still play MW from time to time.
I played Oblivion for about 2 years but even during that period I played MW more.
I hope to play TES V as much as or more than MW.

Morrowind : Likely around 2 years total.
Oblivion: 2 weeks. Worst waste of $60 since Fable.

Played MW for about 5-6 years, and still play semi-regularly. It's modded heavliy now, because after all those thousands of hours, it's mostly "been there, done that", and technology has improved a lot since. Despite the awkward animations, the "too-blatant" die-roll mechanics, and overall technological gap between it and newer stuff, it's still got that "magical" feeling of being somewhere else, and struggling to survive, explore, and eventually thrive in a strange land.

Played OB for about 2-3 months, HEAVILY modded after about the first week, or I'd have been too bored with it to finish the MQ. There were improvements, mostly in technology, but overall gameplay outside of combat went about 2 steps backwards (even combat was a "lateral" move, because what it gained as a more exciting FPS system for the player, it lost as a poorer RPG system that rendered the character all but meaningless), and it was boring to have everything "spoon fed" to you at the same depressingly same level of challenge and reward.

Played FO3 for about 2-3 months; a bit improved over OB (felt more like "band-aid" fixes than "improvements") , but not really my "style", and the main FPS vs RPG focus is more toward FPS. I actually LIKED a lot of things about the original FO, but it's extremely "outdated" now, both graphically and interface-wise, and I don't think that most "modern gamers" would stand for the sudden and regular "dead, reload" incidents. I got tired of spending as much time and effort fighting the clunky interface as dealing with the in-game events, and put it aside after a month or two.

Skyrim, depending on whether it's a return to the "feel" of MW or a continuation down the road into a simplfied and gratuitous FPS hack&slash game, will either be my next "5-10 years of my life" game, or else I won't even bother to buy it. I was "burned" once with OB, and a second time to a lesser degree by trying FO3.

For comparison, I've got the old Close Combat series games (CC2 "A bridge Too Far" and CC3 "Russian Front" were my favorites), and I still occasionally play them after 10+ years. I more recently got Hearts of Iron 3, which has more bugs than you can shake a medium-size forest at, but which is gradually working its way into a highly detailed masterpiece strategic simulation of WWII, which I've been playing for over a year now. An understanding of mid-20th Century military concepts, units, tactics, and equipment is highly recommended, and the learning curve (brick wall?) is daunting at first.

The Witcher was off my drive and gone within three weeks, because outside of the interesting and often well done conversations, the rest of the game is a set of semi-linear scenarios and cheezy "twitch" combo combat garbage. You have a sequence of tiny "almost-open worlds", each a small patch of territory just bigger than the town or castle, except for annoying things like the low picket fences that you can't cross. It pretends to have a flexible RPG advancement system, but just has 120+ different ways of boosting the same 9 silly "skills" (you have 3 attacks each for magic, your iron sword, and your silver sword, and you have to learn the same moves seperately for each of the two types of sword). Oh yes, it also has an Alchemy skill; it's either 1 (you know it) or 0 (you don't), and you have to take it on one of the first missions to progress to the next scenario. There are Axes in the game, and you can actually wield one (poorly), but you can't "learn" how to use them and improve. There are also bows, but you can't use them at all. There are a few pieces of armor and other weapons to be found, but you're automatically handed the new "best" one when you hit various stages of the storyline, so ithey're pretty much irrelevant other than as loot to sell. I suppose the RPG claim has something to do with the juvenile "collectable cards" you get for "bedroom conquests". Waste of a perfectly good three weeks, not to mention the cash.

I guess I will play it on and off until the next ES game comes out

I really picked it up when Morrowind came out, and since I've played all to some extent except Redguard and Battlespire.

TES I & II - play a couple of months (after playing TES III)

TES III - from launch until 2009 with 256 mods. (Trib and BM too). BLOODMOON WAS GREAT !!!!!!!!!!!!! Miss that...

TES IV (and SI) - from launch until last year with about 70 mods.

ps: Play Fallout 3 from launch until last weekend.

I will play Skyrim until the next TES (VI) comes out. 2015,2016 ?

I totally disagree. I thought the emphasis on world depth we saw in Morrowind was the right direction, which is totally lacking in both Daggerfall and Oblivion. I would sacrifice a samey "Landmass-the-size-of-Britain" for 1 Square KM of endless possibility any day. And by "World Depth" I mean that subtle level of detail that brings the world alive. Daggerfall lacked it mostly due to technology, Oblivion lacked it probably because of laziness or constrained launch window.

That said, I have to agree with your overall point. Skyrim should be Skyrim. It should take what every entry did right, synthesize it with what every entry has always wanted to do, and create a whole new experience the like of which the world has never seen.

Arena - Lore Creation

Daggerfall - Character Depth

Morrowind - World Depth

Oblivion - Combat Refinement

I played Daggerfall for seven years before it started to feel stale. After that, I played Morrowind for eight years (which is to say I still play it). I've only played two Oblivion characters, and only started really enjoying it about two months ago, so that's a bit harder to quantify. I also only just started delving into modding Oblivion, while I know the MWCS inside and out.
I have super-high hopes for Skyrim, with the mentions of random encounters and a lot of the details they let slip about how Radiant Story works. With any luck, it'll svck up another almost-decade of my life. (Yes, I'm finally starting to find Morrowind a bit dated. Finally.)

Well why not use some mods then?
http://www.lgnpc.org/
http://lovkullen.net/Emma/Comanion_project.htm#NPC
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=mods.detail&id=676
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=mods.detail&id=8118
For living NPC

About combat all have different tastes and preferences some one like Daggerfall style combat from MGE
some like something like this
Combat Enhanced
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=mods.detail&id=2164
or this
Gratuitous Violence
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37977

Damn its that serious?

Morrowind - 2 years (disc broke)
Oblivion - Over 5 years on and off
Fallout 3 - 1.5 years
New Vegas - to be determined

Good synopsis, and why I favor Morrowind over Daggerfall (most of the games I play are 10+ years old at this point).
Going from Daggerfall to Morrowind and suddenly having to think about how my character was going to fly (because in Daggerfall my non-mages could just climb), or open locks (because in DF they could just lockbash), felt insanely restrictive at first. I still occasionally try to play anti-magic characters in Morrowind and regret it Every Time.
DF also had the ability to let you form your character better by allowing you to turn down (non-Main Quest) quests without breaking the game, which is a feature I really, really miss. Taking every assassination job you could find and turning down goody-two-shoes things does a lot more to make you feel like a bad guy than saving the world and just following orders, and that's a freedom that hasn't been seen since. Do you lose a lot of depth because the quests were cookie-cutter, name/location-plugging affairs? Yes. Absolutely. But it had its perks as well.
But putter putter. Imma start lurking again.

I'd be interested in knowing how long people played each game without mods. Not that I'm a purist or something, but I'd like to see what sort of life the games have on their own. But if you got it for pc, why wouldn't you have used mods as soon as good ones were available?

Without mods...
Morrowind for about 1.5-2 years.
Oblivion for about 2 years.

I imagine I'll get about the same from Skyrim, which is perfect. I wish their were more deep sandbox games like Bethesda's. Pure quality stuff. Definitely my favorite games, followed by NBA 2K series and Red Dead Redemption. The problem with Red Dead is it doesn't have great replayability, though the multiplayer is okay for a bit. If rockstar decides to forsake (possibly) artistic integrity and tries to squeeze another western gta onto the current generation, I hope its game world is a bit deeper. Rambling... anyway... :tes:

forever

Daggerfall.... Watched my older brother play when i was a kid. downloaded when it became freeware, and beat it twice (probably took 2 or 3 months)
Morrowind... on and off since 2002 so for 9 years (remember on-and-off though)
Oblivion... played though 1.5 times. played SI and KotN once. played for a total of probably 1 year


SKYRIM:.... i don't know.... if it has more appeal to me than Oblivion (like Morrowind did) then i could be playing it 5 or so years from now.

Arena for about an hour

Daggerfall for maybe a half year

Morrowind for about 3-4 years

Oblivion for about 1-2 years

I still play Morrowind and Daggerfall and maybe Arena if I manage to get in to it (and out of the first dungeon :pinch:)

I wish I could find Close Combat for less than $90... Those games were awesome!

I Got Oblivion in 2007 and i still play it so 4 years. And i will probably play skyrim for like a 5 year stretch or even longer if all the things bethesda has aleready confirmed is true. And i don't doubt the trueness of it.

With the epic amount of modding to be had and the fact the quests are technically infinitei will proably play it till the disc is worn out by the laser in which case i'll get another one and then wear that one out ( by this time TES VI better have come out) so about 15 years

I started playing Morrowind when it came out and played regularily until Oblivion came out. I will still play Oblivion until Skyrim comes out, and so based on that I see no reason that I will not still be playing Skyrim until the next game comes out. and as always 90% of my playing is done on my xbox, very little on the PC version

Morrowind when it came out, played around 1500 hours over the years until Oblivion came out.
Played Oblivion for around 1200 hours up until the end of 2010. I havn't played it since.
I didn't think the next game (Skyrim) would come out until 2012 or 2013. I was floored with the announcement.

This.

I've owned Daggerfall for 14 years now. I played it for a few months when I first got it, and have probably put a total of a year or so into it, scattered over the intervening years.

I've owned Morrowind for eight years now. I played it pretty much non-stop for well over a year when I first got it, and have probably put a total of at least a couple of years into it.

I've owned Oblivion for about four years now. I played it for a few days when I first got it and hated it so much that I didn't even touch it for at least a year after that, and went back and played Morrowind instead. I finally decided to give it another chance after the GOTY came out, got that, gritted my teeth and just tried to ignore the fact that following directions and finding places had been replaced by a magic GPS unit and gathering information and solving puzzles had been replaced by an omniscient journal that popped in to tell me what I had decided to do next, and found that I liked the world well enough and that the level scaling at least made it relatively easy to create oddball characters, and entertained myself with that. I've played it fairly consistently since then, though I've taken breaks to play other games, including Morrowind. I would guess I've got a couple of years of time invested in it - not quite as much as Morrowind, but probably close.

I have no idea at all how long I'll play Skyrim. None.