Yo guys I was just thinking that there should be separate divisions in the mages guild. Like for example depending on if your character is good or bad that you can join the dark wizards or like the white wizard guild. It would be really cool because then if you are a bad character then instead of the only bad guild being the dark brotherhood there would be a group of dark mages that use dark powers and possibly work with the dark brotherhood. It would be awesome having wizard battles and doing quest against each guild. Tell me what you think in the comments below and also please vote <3

Yo guys I was just thinking that there should be separate divisions in the mages guild. Like for example depending on if your character is good or bad that you can join the dark wizards or like the white wizard guild. It would be really cool because then if you are a bad character then instead of the only bad guild being the dark brotherhood there would be a group of dark mages that use dark powers and possibly work with the dark brotherhood. It would be awesome having wizard battles and doing quest against each guild. Tell me what you think in the comments below and also please vote <3

I thought The Mages Guild wasn't going to be in Skyrim.

Not the mages guild but still some form of a "Guild of Mages..."

Oh yeah, the Synod and the College of Whispers, most likely...

you knew this so...what exactly are you saying...

I would really like this for all guilds. Like in oblivion, all i wanted to do was play as the blackwood company, not the fighters guild

Yeah, it would have been nice in OB to play as the necromancers or the blackwood company but remember while BGS wants you to be able to "go anywhere do anything" they want it done in a way that leads to something they can control for the next game. If the necromancers won in OB then even though it's 200 years later and there isn't a Mage Guild they would have to customize it to your game and they want the hero of the last game to just be a generic hero so you can start fresh in each instance. Does that make sense?

As has been said in many other threads there is no more mages guild it fell apart after oblivion and two new factions arose called the collage of whispers and the synod (sp?) little to nothing is known about the organizations as of yet.

I would like to see a little more personal choice relating to the factions in this game. Something along the lines of how FO3 and
V are handled where you can do some things differently and maybe have different quest lines to follow or something.

Me too, I have always wanted this.


That is a good point, but it can be controlled. I'll use the Mage Guild vs the Necromancers as an example. The endgame of the Mage Guild in Oblivion was basically MG vs Mannimarco correct? Well imagine a world where after doing so of the recommendation quests you start the Cheydinhal one (first instance of Necromancy, with Falcar). Instead of him vanishing after trying to drown him, you and Deetsan track him down and confront him. In the dialog before the battle, Falcar attempts to convince you to join the Necromancers if you want to be truly powerful. You can then kill Deetsan and join him. This unlocks an alternate questline, which pits you against the Mage Guild, but can have either the same ending, or a tweaked one. For example the Mage Guild wouldn't fall because Traven and his champion (would be you if you were in the MG) failed to defeat Mannimarco. Maybe the champion does a lot of damage to him, but Mannimarco flees before perishing. You are then left without a leader in those parts, so you take over for the King of Worms. It is basically the same thing, choosing the other side just can't result in any HUGE changes at the end.

Besides, the only thing that the main person (Nerevarine, Champion of Cyrodiil, Dragonborn) does is the Main quest, we never got confirmation about any guild quests from Morrowind in Oblivion. That was like 6 years, this time it is 200. The only thing that really needs to remain the same no matter what is the Main Quest.

It will be the College of Whispers and The Synod.
By name only I surmise the Synod will be religious in nature and the College more mundane.

I fully expect certain effects only attainable if you joined one of them. I think, and hope, they will sport their own unique effects.
So.. College is mark and recall.. Synod is levitation.
;)

Oh crap... I suddenly care about which one I join. Damn you Merari... Who am I kidding? Mark and Recall please.

There will be.

That would be a tough choice... if fast travel was not implemented in the game.

I'd love for it to not be so cliche as for the game to give you two guilds and do everything but directly tell you "these guys are the good guys and those guys are the bad guys."

I'd much rather they do it politically and deal with areas of gray morality. For instance, let's take the Synod and the College of Whisperers. Let's say the CoW is a group of mages that see magic as a source of knowledge that want to uncover its secrets as a testament of manpower and to pass down generations and eras. They could add political strifes within, corruption, etc, and make you take a stand. So you can side with the righteous and possibly hold yourself back, or you can wade into the gray areas and uncover more power at the sake of losing respect as an institution.

Then they can say the Synod is a group of mages who view magic as power, much as the Telvanni in Morrowind, where the more you know and the more powerful a mage you are, the farther you go in the guild. We're talking mage duels a plenty here, and you can be the "bad guy" and rise up quickly if you're talented and you step on anyone in your way, or you can be the "good guy" and seek the long way around on your quest for knowledge and power. They could even do something cool like the Synod initiates you with another new member, and you two often do quests together. At a crossroads you have to either help him or crush him. Helping him will give you some respect from good members while the bad members would then see you as weak, but crushing him would make you feared and respected throughout.

They probably won't go into this much depth in the game. But if they do, then great.

I like this idea.

Good and bad wizards should not be groups, they should be individuals within the larger organization. That's why the mages guild is badass, they don't represent good or bad, they represent control.

But I feel like they never did a good job portraying this. In Morrowind, yeah, the arch-mage was an idiot and you eventually took his power, and in Oblivion it was all pretty much the good guys battling the evil necromancers. No real moral struggles between you and your inner person as you were doing quests.

I mean when I was gathering mushrooms I could go buy them or explore and look for them. That's the only real choice I was given. I'd like to see more than just content, but content that moves me and drives me to do it more than once because of choices I make guiding my path.

Agreed. Take a look at what I said in the "Fixing the mages guild" thread to talk about this.