Compared to Oblivion, MW had twice the quests, 4 times the NPCs, a whole lot more and larger towns, etc. and all in a handbuilt world. Given they had less people than Oblivion, how did they have so much more stuff in it? And from the sounds of it, while still more than Oblivion, Skyrim won't have as much stuff as MW either, and that's got 100 people for crying out loud.

Lower graphics and voice-acting replaced for the most part with text increases disc space, less resource usage on the platform allowing more content to be loaded at the same time and more development time for other content. A smaller landmass tends to give increased detail and content as they can shift focus faster. Then there's passion.

lol I always thought Oblivion was way too desolate! There just wain't enough NPCs to interact with. It made the game world look too static.