Is it just me or was having to go around to ever city to get a recommendation for the mage's guild a pain in the ass? All that work just to get your own staff and access to all the other cool stuff in the Arcane University. I can remember multiple times thinking about doing the mage's guild then remembering "oh yeah I need those recommendations ...". I personally would like to see the actual mage's quest chain be longer the have a bunch of little pre quest quests.


I like the concept of having to undergo a test to get in, (like SAT's for secondary education) but does it really need to be that long? I think that you could get the same concept across but with 1 quest slightly longer than one recommendation quest.



Thoughts?

First off, it was a pain, and second, you really didn't get that many benefits from being in the mages guild. Sure, you get the only source of enchanting in the game, but too bad enchanting was relatively weak in Oblivion. The exclusive spells weren't even very powerful or useful.

I didn't mind it, but more could definitely be done. There should be two Mages Guilds now, so it should be interesting.

No, you should have to put in some effort in order to join a guild. I personally thought they should have done the same thing with the Fighter's Guild. And once you're in the guild, it should take time and effort to climb the ranks.

I know the only reason you say this is because you rolled a second char that you also wanted in the mage guild and you were like "Aw crap this again?".

The first time i did it, i felt like i was really part of the mage guilds, and the quests were really awesome and had cool twists.

The second time i did it, the recommendations took me about an hour, not that long.

So no, not annoying, even the third time.

Exactly.

My only problem was that getting into the guild was hard, but getting into archmage rank was just as hard aswell... I want everything to be hard long and challanging sacling to how it should be in real fantasy world.

It could have been better written less of going about killing people and more on solving mysteries and puzzles.

The Mage's Guild in Oblivion, I thought was just terrible overall. It seemed more fitting to be called "Witch-hunter's guild" than Mage's guild. The Fighter's guild suffered from that too though, but it made more sense in the context it was delivered. Overall, Morrowind's guilds and storyline just had better pacing, often treating the first two thirds of the guild, as really nothing more than "Contracts" or "Guild Jobs" with occasional mention of the ambitions and political drama within. And only towards the end, when you're high ranking and influential, are you thrust into the pivotal "Story" Elements. I also loved how nonlinear the Morrowind Guilds were. Having four areas with multiple contract opportunities, instead of just moving from town to town in an order, then even able to pick your side to determine the outcome of the guild.

But back to the Mage's guild, again, in Oblivion I had a really big problem with the direction they took the guild, Mage's Guilds were supposedly wizards-for-hire and/or covenants of arcane enlightenment, and here we have the archmage with a bone to pick with Necromancers, formerly a respected practice in Cyrodiil. It wouldn't have been so bad if it was just against the Manimarco aligned necromancers, but all of the Necromancers got lumped in with that. Also, Wasn't Manimarko supposed to be a sload, not an Altmer?!

There was nothing wrong with the reccomendation quests, imo.

The problem was that the only source of enchantment in the vanilla game was located in the Arcane University. It was also rather pointless. There should have been a bunch of unique books placed around a giant library. It would also have been great if it was full of alchemical merchants and other mage-like merchants. I had no reason to visit the place other than a few quests, really. It would have been great to go to the university as the best source of magical goods whenever I wanted them.



Also: Mannimarco was supposed to be http://www.imperial-library.info/sites/default/files/gttpo_mannimarco_01.gif Pretty sure that's not a Sload, but I may be wrong. Turned out the Barenziah was a Dunmer. :shrug:

Anyhoo, they should really have tried harder with Mannimarco, imo. Would have been nice to see another side of the story, too. Less of the "Happy Rainbow Elf", but down on the "Almighty Evil Power of Doom". Imo.

...Custom spell making & enchanting were both mages guild exclusive things.. right?

But it only because pain when you had started with a new char for the 10th time.

There isn't Mages Guild anymore

Too long? Why would you want to make the questline shorter?

Getting into the mages guild was actually ridiculously easy, despite being described as hard. You just ask the leader of a guild. Getting into the Arcane University would be a prestigious and impressive position, and thus it only makes sense you should have to put in a lot of work. Maybe they could have mande the quests more interesting, but the actual numerousness was by no means extraordinary. I think it should have taken longer and more effort.

No, he is an Atlmer. What you are thinking of is that the Sload idolize and worship Mannimarco as a god.

The storyline of the Oblivion Mages' Guild was just so terrible. Its funny that Traven kills himself to make the gem to protect you. I didn't pick it up and still demolished the so called "Mannimarco" (that's NOT the King of Worms I so know and love). Its just a shame that the powerful, intelligent, and very neutral King of Worms presented in Daggerfall turned into a generic, idiotic, girly-elf boy who gets one-shot in a magical fight.

The entire storyline, if one could even call it that, was so ridiculous. The guild gets attacked by necromancers, and suddenly, they're ALL bad guys who we run around and exterminate. Not only that, they only attacked because they were provoked in the first place! If someone really looks, the Mages Guild was the worse side in the conflict, but the writing tried to make it look the other way around (And failed badly).

I disagree. I found I had a need to get into the Arcane University on all my characters, mage or not, simply because of the huge advantage of being able to enchant stuff with my own special abilities (which were often much more useful than the rare special weapons I found) and make spells that I couldn't find in stores.

Not in name, but it's been confirmed that there will be something similar in Skyrim.

Sure enough THAT was powerful, but I meant the exclusive spells that you buy from those within the University.

Didn't have a problem with it myself. :shrug:

It's not like you couldn't magically teleport Fast Travel to each city to get them done, and while I can see where some could find it tedious, I liked it better than the Fighter's Guild's "No criminal record? You're in, ready for an assignment, total stranger we've never seen before?" approach. The Dark Brotherhood and Thieves' Guild had their own inititations which were shorter, which also (to me) balanced it somewhat- making it seem as if each group had their own standards, instead of being cut and pasted form-letter style so they all went "Intro, Single Initiation Quest, Newbie Mission."

Sorry Spartin...

your opinion for this thread is WICKEDLY in the minority!

I have to agree with this. I'd say if your going to make the quests more harder and longer, at least make the rewards more useful. I'm Arch-Mage....now what?

I agree. Same thing with the KotN DLC. Having to go to every stupid alter was really annoying and I wish they had done something else instead. :/

I don't know how to vote in your poll because the poll asks "Were the recomendations a pain?" which is a definite yes, but the subject is "Did it take too long to get into the Arcane university?" which is a definite no.

The fact that you had to get a recommendation from all cities made me assume that the mages guild is a 1337 guild and takes some serious skill to join but in the end... it wasn't that awesome. Although Wizard's Fury and Spelldrinker Amulet were extremely powerful if u got them in the later levels.

Serously? Custom spells are quite OP in vanilla Oblivion, far more powerful than anything you could buy and the magicka cost for casting is much lower than the spells for sale. Getting access to the Arcane University is usually the very first thing I do when starting a new game.

Personally in comparison with the other guild quests, I found the Mage's guild quest line to be not quite as fun as the Dark Brotherhood, but more fun than the Fighters Guild and Thieves' Guild quests. I like that it forces you to visit each city, this is a great introduction to the different locations and gives you an opportunity to collect new quests in each city.

I disliked that the culture of the Necromancers was not very interesting, however. They basically cast the same exact spells as all the other spell caster NPCs. Also, it was kind of weird to hear the Mage's Guild members complain so much about Necromancers, but in the same breath they would teach me how to summon a zombie for 200 septims.

Since I never used fast travel until I'd been to a city I usually ended up 10th or 11th level by the time I'd done all the Apprentice quests. I think the idea of the quests was fine even if some of them were a bit lacking and the highways of the empire shouldn't have been more dangerous than the wilderness.

Yeah you hit it right on. I enjoyed getting the recommendations from everyone before allowing me to proceed.