The thing I would most like to see in TES VI is a true open world. Instead of having linear quests in a sandbox world, I would like to see issues in an open world.

The open world aspect of TES is a huge draw to it, but ultimately you're still doing lines of quests that consist of "go here, do that, then go here, do this"(in general). Instead, I would like to be presented with a set of issues to be solved. As an example, a war. Maybe you join a side. You could be just a lowly soldier, fighting the battles with no say in the direction of the war. Or maybe you would want to become the leader. Would you try a diplomatic route? Maybe you become the leader of a city, and use the city's citizens and guards to fight and creat a third faction. Or perhaps you would assassinate the leaders involved, not taking sides at all. The point is being able to participate in the war in any way you choose.

One paper and pencil GM I've talked to said about creating the story and setting "Consider what the world would be like if the player characters were not in it." I think this approach could be a lot of fun in TES. Have the world and events go in a certain, like a story, then allow the player to influence events. So you get an open world with issues in it for you to solve in the way you want.

The concept of an open world that goes about its business with or without you, and where you can shape the events as they unfold naturally is ideal in principle, but next to impossible or unaffordable to create. It's difficult enough to create proper interactions between two in-game factions, much less between every NPC and political, economic, cultural, or religious sub-group. "Stories" simply wouldn't happen, just more and more of the "daily events" that make up 99% of human existence.

It can work in a pen-and-paper game group because the GM can craft and alter that story on the fly (at least a good GM can), but a video game has to have all of the possibilities and options pre-defined and all of its effects on everyone around calculated and applied.

For instance, the player character picks up an object from the street. Two NPCs see it. One NPC doesn't care (which has to be coded for that NPC) because the object doesn't affect him or her, whereas the other recognizes it as the property of a third NPC, and decides to demand that it be given back to that NPC. If the third NPC isn't physically present, the game has to decide that they don't know you picked it up, unless the second NPC notifies them, and change or not change their opinion of you. You already have about 50-100 "checks" to do before the NPCs even decide whether to care or not, and then you add in how it affects the factions both you and they are associated with. If the guards get involved, it goes up an order of magnitude. Then you figure out how to program the responses to every other action of significance that your character does, and it's absurd. A human being multi-tasks and parallel processes that information and its ramifications easily, a computer.....not so easily, and only one aspect at a time.

I agree that it would be nice, but programming isn't there yet, and probably will not be until we can create good enough AI to essentially write it for us.