Actually no, they didn't. They were still very exclusive, and kept all their knowledge within. It was only when Galerion left the Psijics and began to create The Mages Guild did magical learning spread.

However, the MG ended up being a ladder for enterprising politicians, and it became a bureaucratic mess, which was why Galerion eventually left.

They need to knock it off if they can't do it right.

The Arcane University premise was pretty irritating: about half of the Mage Guild questline is gaining access to the Arcane University, at which point the dialogue proceeds on the assumption that you're an absolute beginner who hasn't cast a spell before.

At least at the point I started the College of Winterhold questline, everything fit: the spell I was asked to cast was one I'd just learned, and in the first lecture by Tolfdir, I had the dialogue option to say that I knew a ward spell, but had never cast it and didn't really know how to use it -- and Tolfdir's response fit the situation perfectly. The implication was that we'd proven that we had ability with magic, but now we needed theory and training. Then we walk into Saarthal, and suddenly it gets all, "You are the One", and it feels like I'm not just on a railroad, but that I slept through several stops.

There was very little middle and very little end. There are lots of side quests to do in the College, but they basically consist in approaching different college members and asking if they have any side quests available, and it's a little weird to have students asking the archmage to do FedEx quests. The main quest has several deus ex machinas, and leaves a ridiculous number of loose ends. If we've got a reliable oracle in the basemant, why doesn't anyone ever talk to it? What was the Eye of Magnus? What was Ancano doing with it? Why did I need the Staff of Magnus to deal with it, when it seems as if all we needed to do was to shove Ancano away from it? What are the Psijics doing with the Eye? Why are the Psijics involved, anyway? I just angered the Synod and called their attention to the fact that the College has a extraordinarily powerful magical artifact -- how will the Synod respond? I just killed two members of the Thalmor, one of apparently high status -- surely that will provoke a violent reaction from the Thalmor. Why does it all simply stop there? Why do the Psijics get to declare me archmage? Why don't I get a say in who becomes master wizard?

CoW... I don't like that abbreviation.

oh, and @Bedave Selas: Great summation of the problems with that guild.

It depresses me how much Bethesda jumped on DA's anti-mage bandwagon.

...oh man, that's totally what they did, isn't it? Jeesh.
Don't say stuff like that, I don't want to have to think any less of Bethesda.

Isn't that a problem with every quest line in this game, even the longest one the Thieves Guild suffers from that problem. The DB, Companions and mages guild are just ridiculious


The Thalmor, the great war and the fall of White-Gold were all long after the MG started to fall apart, about 175 years after... So they aren't involved in any way. You are probably right that the Synod suffered during the Great War, hard to imagine them not too... However the mages guild was already gone by then.

You can just kill the Synod dude. They'll just assume the falmer, animunculi, or bandits did it if they bother investigating.
Really, every faction questline in all the past TES games have had that problem. You go from being a recruit to their leader in a very short span of time.

The rise of the Thalmor happened during, mostly, the Oblivion Crisis. They were an ancient house which fell out of power during the founding of the Septim Empire (and the defeat of the first Aldmeri Domminion) but always remained a pervasive feature of the Altmer government. When the Oblivion crisis started, the Thalmor, presumably a magocracy, was given more and more power to combat the Daedra, and with the fall of the Crystal Tower they became the reigning government, as everyone else was kinda dead. As such, the Thalmor rose to power before the Mages Guild dissolved, but you are correct that the Great War was much later.

True, but at least in Morrowind you had half a dozen stupid quests to do first and you needed to have a certain skill level before advancing... In Skyrim I can become the archmagister of the College while using a sword... If you wait for a certain point in the MQ to join you don't even need to know a single spell... And from what I remember you only ever need to learn 2 spells in order to complete the entire quest line... Way to easy.

Would you prefer http://www.bsckids.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/cw-logo.png

Oh gosh I take it back, CoW is fine!

Not when there were skill requirements (and not in Daggerfall where the highest rank simply meant you were an elite member). It's apparently caused by too many wanting the hollow title of leadership (look at all those people wanting to be a Jarl in Skyrim or the Emperor in Oblivion).

I totally agree. The sad thing is most of those things could be made a lot better (though maybe not totally fixed) if they just did a few simple things, like maybe put a few extra dialog options to ask those questions with college members or put a few quests in the middle like the first one where you actually study magic, and maybe one in the middle where you become an actual mage at the college as opposed to a student.