...that the total number of replies in the Oblivion forum (a game which has been out for some time and modded out the wazoo) is only 279,522 but the number of replies in the Skyrim forum (a game which is not even released yet and won't be released for about 6 months) has 407,774 replies?

What are we all talking about?!?

(oh wait, 407, 775 now...)

Lots of repeat threads.

psssstttt....popularity grows with each new TES release......

They prune the forums.

That was my thought. And didn't they remake the forums awhile back? Probably nuked a bunch of old threads when that happened.

After a while, they delete old threads. Just look at Oblivion General Discussion. You certainly don't see threads about how the game was just announced or the forum was just created or anything.

this too ^ oldest post in OB cheats hints and spoilers forum is from 2009.....3 years after i joined and i joined shortly after it was released....

Well on the Oblivion forum people are discussing things like the finer points of level 50 potion making, and the merits of never running anywhere; while on here it's things like, do you think dragons will have saddles? :thumbsup:

that or the fact I would imagine that they archive or delete very old threads?

Oh yes indeed. Though I still maintain a grey search bar on a grey background isn't the best way to grab new members' attentions.

True.

Not at all. Most of the talk happens before the game's release, due to the hype and the craving to speculate. Since the TES fanbase increased substantially only AFTER Oblivion was released, most of the people talking on the forums before that were the oldie die-hards from Morrowind and Daggerfall. Whereas now we have all of the freshmen spawned by Oblivion's success, posting threads on the same topics over and over again because they're much too lazy to check if noone posted the same thing before. :spotted owl:
I swear to any diety I see topics pop up every day right now that are identical to the ones from January.

That's hardly the only design issue. It uses a gigantically high resolution background with transparancy. Before I switched to the IP.Board theme the computer's fan would actually speed up when browsing these boards, and on older computers scrolling through topics was choppy. It's pretty of course, but horribly inefficient.

Yep. For instance I've seen no fewer than 4 threads so far about how many posts are in the Skyrim area as compared to other areas.

Well...3, until this one came along and made 4.

Because it is easier for some people to spam a section of the forums that is fast moving in order to increase their star rankings.

Wait until the game is released then the Skyrim forum will explode with activity - though I'm hoping this time the traditional sections for hardware issues for PC and consoles are very quiet