Seeing the commercial success of Skyrim and looking at Bethesda past record, an expansion is almost a given.
I'd like to know where people think the first expansion will take place. I gave a few obvious choices:

1) New landmass: from a developer point of view, this option gives most freedom both content and lore wise. Both Bloodmoon and Shivering isles were set in a completely new landmass with no ties to the parent game. Size and content can be designed to meet development schedule.

2) West Morrowind. There are two paved roads leading to Morrowind; one from Riften (the city gate is, interestingly, closed shut so this path can only be reached climbing the mountain behind Riften) and one from Windhelm. Are these gates obvious hints to an expansion? Mainland Morrowind is huge so the chances that we'll see it all in a small expansion are small.

3) Orsinium: one of the loading screens states that Orsinium is located between Skyrim and High Rock. It's a mountain area with natural barriers and it's quite small. Both aspects make it a good candidate for an expansion and give players a chance to investigate in one of the most underrated races in Vvanderfell.

4) Other... there are other options as well. The expansion may be just a single, big quest like knight of the nine (disappointing) or exploring a giant, lost city located under a mountain (meh...) or located in another realm like Sovengarde (again meh!)

Please share your thoughts

So, the people who voted for "other" have nothing to say? :confused:

Too early to talk about it?

They may do all of those places.

I'm pretty sure I heard that Orsinium was wiped out and that's why the orcs retreated to Skyrim.

It had been wiped out multiple times, they can rebuild y'know.

I'd love Orsinium. Nice idea. For sure the expansion landmass will have to be located next to Skyrim, else they'll have to find a trick (such as the Strange Gate for Shivering Isles). I'd like to see a landmass that has previously been mentioned in previous TES games.

Tamriel.

http://ppsh-41.tumblr.com/post/13145143504/entire-tamriel-landmass-built-into-skyrim

I hope the first expansion takes place in a world where magic resistances work and quests aren't so buggy.

I'm going to go on a limb here and say most DLC will take place in Skyrim

It's just distant land. The basic landmass is there certainly, but it's all really low detail textures. And filling it all with towns, cities, buildings, caves, ruins, NPC, quests, items, dialogue etc would take even longer than it took to make Skyrim.


Also Morrowind and Cyrodil does not equate to 'All of Tamriel'

In fact, Oblivion also had tthe surrounding provinces to some degree and they didn't make any DLC for those provinces either.

There are some dangling plot threads in Skyrim already, the two most glaring being the resurgence of the Falmer and the Thalmor within Skyrim getting away with rampant torture and executions. I really hope we get to explore more of Blackreach and confront the Falmer leaders to thwart their surface invasion plans. If it involves fighting a Deep Dragon or a Dwemer Mechanical Dragon at some point, all the better. I'd also be pretty happy for any scenario where we deal the Thalmor a major blow and oust them out of Skyrim for good.

I'm torn between Orsinium and West Morrowind. Come to think of it... Why implementing not one but two roads from Skyrim to Morrowind instead of placing natural barriers all around like they did with the rest of the provinces (...and in Oblivion too).

BTW, Obsidian is currently working on two RPG projects... one is a long awaited RPG set in Wheel of Time universe, the other is top secret. Maybe they're pulling a 'New Vegas' set in Skyrim (or surrounding areas)?

Im nearly sure the first DLC will involve a certain place underground everyone thinks is visually stunning and the falmer/dwemer storyline.

Orsinium might be dlc two or three... Thalmor if they are a dlc wont be new land but instead a big quest line in skyrim.

Maybe I'm the minority but I don't like the steam punk style of the Dwemer. In Morrowind it blended well with the general alien look of the land but in Skyrim if feels so out of place. I also hope that Bethesda doesn't follow the DLC route and goes for one (or two!) fully fledged expansions.

Untrue. This is NOT distant land, it doesn′t get rendered in any as-high-as-you-want settings and even if it did, it wouldn′t be visible. The fact, that they made a visible passsage to Morrowind speaks volumes.
In Cyrodiil, you find the Imperial City. Even though low detail, everything is build exactly how it should be, Solstheim is in the right place, the red mountain has the right scale. That would be totally obsolete if we weren′t to visit those regions. And despite he posting only pictures from the two regions, he stated that he found the other regions built in as well. I think I myself, even saw a way to high rock, but don′t quote me here, I′ll check that out later when I′ve progressed a bit in the main story.
The question is, why is this all there? I can only think of two possibilities:
A) They REALLY count on the modders to do something awesome and want to support them
B) They plan on releasing complete regions of Tamriel as DLC′s. In that case, these are already done to a big part I guess, and on release, we will find them filled with details, characters and new stories, and the gates will be opened. Remember how they said the DLC′s for Skyrim were going to be something big?
Well, if this is it they sure are!

Id rather have something along the lines of an working economy system or more depth in Quests, bigger battles or so for PC then more of the same in different ambiente.
Since a PC only expansion wont happen I would like an up to date Cyrodiil expanding the Stormcloak vs Imperium vs Thalmor Theme.
My bet would be on Orsinum though.

A new landmass might be the easiest (Not 100% sure how their terrain is made or generated yet without the CK). Because your not going to be hammered by your own conscious or other TES hardcoe dieing fans (Unless its based off Lore) about how it should be made and all that other nitty gritty stuff that you people want perfected in your Frame of Mind...

A new landmass which you could walk to for a DLC would make sense. Bethesda tend to "test" new things in their expansions/ DLCs so they can improve on future games. For example, when they created the Gatekeeper in SI, it was a kind of test which formed the basis for the super mutant beomoth in Fallout 3.

Either way, we should expect something new.

What ugly pu-mans not like Beautiful Orc! :biggrin:

Im willing to bet there will be a "re-visit solstheim" as it would fit very well with the Skyrim theme. Also I would personally love to see that one, solstheim was pure awesome in Morrowind

On the other hand the devs might go with something completly different, like shivering isles for oblivion.

ElseWhyre
ElseWhyre
ElseWhyre

I feel the absence of a "Ravenrock" type of quest I wish it could have been possible to rebuild Halgen. People have been asking for a quest like this also in Oblivion with the town of Kwatch. At least, now, the ruins don't continue to burn for months after the Dragon crisis has ended

Revisiting Solstheim is an option I didn't consider. It might be a cheap one, though.

The poll is quite limited, so I won't be voting just yet. You may think of adding these options:

• Atmora
  
• Roscrea
  
• High Rock
  
• Hammerfell
  
• Akavir (lol)
  
• Sunset Isles/Alinor (also lol)

Anyone who thinks Bethesda is going to do the entirety of Tamriel as a DLC is seriously jaded. It's not going to happen.

However, considering that Bethesda built two pathways that seemingly lead into Morrowind, and that, correct me if I'm wrong, they didn't build any similar pathways leading into other bordering provinces, It seems very likely that we will have a DLC that takes place in the northwest strip of Morrowind. Note: the section below is sort of spoiler ridden.

It would be a perfect landmass for a DLC. In terms of relative scale, the landmass wouldn't be as large as the Shivering Isles DLC for Oblivion. However, Bethesda did say that they were going to handle DLC more akin to Fallout 3, so I'm not expecting anything as Large as SI. Bethesda wouldn't have to worry about making random invisible borders for the landmass, as the north and east sides of the landmass would be constrained by the Sea of Ghosts and the Inner Sea. The southern edge of the DLC landmass would end at around the northeast border between Cyrodiil and Morrowind. It would be easy to block off with impassible mountains, considering most of west Morrowind is very mountainous, and the Dive Rock mountain range extends into west Morrowind.

The landmass would contain one large city, Blacklight, in addition to a few smaller settlements, similar to SI. I really don't know what the story would be, but I would kill to see a story based on the return of the Nerevarine. It's pretty much confirmed that the CoC became Sheogorath, so I'd like to know the fate of our hero from Morrowind as well. I know some people would be worried that it would be impossible to show the Nerevarine as an NPC without confirming the race and gender of the currently ambiguous hero, it wouldn't be impossible. Considering it's been 200 years since the events of Morrowind, a Nerevarine clad in Daedric armor with a gender nonspecific otherworldly voice would be pretty awesome.

As for the main story of the DLC, I thought that Septimus Signus's belief that the Heart of Lorkhan still existed in a physical form to be extremely intriguing. Considering that he was attributed to be very intelligent and respected by Urag gro-Shub, I don't believe that he discovered the Dwemer lockbox in northern Skyrim on a whim. He must have done extensive research before conjecturing the location of such a lockbox, and was probably driven mad only after he had discovered that he couldn't open it. I really don't think that he just randomly decided that the Heart was inside the lockbox: he must have gleaned some information that would lead him to believe the Heart was inside.

Furthermore, Septimus was being used as a pawn by the Daedric prince of knowledge. Hermaeus Mora likely wouldn't trick Septimus with false information; it seems reasonable that he would abuse Septimus's desire for the truth to fulfill his agenda. Now, if what Mankar Camoran said in Oblivion is true, that Tamriel truly is Lorkhan's plane of Oblivion, then the Heart would be a sort of Daedric artifact, and it is unknown if such artifacts can ever be permanently destroyed. Other Daedric artifacts, such as Azura's star, have been known to re-manifest themselves in Tamriel hundreds of years after being supposedly "destroyed". Therefore, it could be possible that the Heart has manifested itself in Tamriel again.

Basically, the main quest would involve our character setting out to once again destroy the heart, with the aid of the Nerevarine. We could possibly use Kagrenac's tools once more to destroy it, or some other method. The main quest of the DLC wouldn't have to take place entirely in the new landmass, certain quests could send us back to Skyrim.

Basically, this is my hope/idea for a DLC, based entirely on conjecture.

Wow, EffeminaT, great post!

I'm also inclined to think that West Morrowind may be the likely candidate, not for DLC but for a fully fledged expansion. The only problem I see is how they're going to deal with the eastern border or this part of Morrowind: it's a shoreline with Vvanderfell directly in front of it. I can see a lot of players crossing the small water strait to go check what's left of the old towns after the great eruption.

As for why I haven't included in the poll High Rock or Hammerfell, the first was already covered in Daggerfall, the second is too big and was partially covered in Redguard. All hints point to TES VI being set in the Sumerset Isles so we're running out of provinces pretty fast