Daggerfall had huge graveyards, realistic sized farms and villages, and truly massive capital cities. It's about as close as any game I've played has come to "life-sized", and while the game is no doubt full of flaws (esp in random dungeon generation) it's epic scope still fills me with a sense of wonder to this day.

Morrowind was on a much reduced scale. Even so, cities such as Vivic were huge, impressive, and you could easily become lost in them. It didn't seem like a world that was possible in reality like Daggerfall, but it was still a huge undertaking.

Oblivion was on a further reduced scale. The Imperial city was the size of a town in Daggerfall, and the rest of the cities were more like hamlets. Even so, it was a step up in many ways from it's predecessors and while the dungeons were bad it was still a very strong game overall.

Skyrim is on an even further reduced scale. Solitude is the size of a Hamlet in Daggerfall. Things in the exterior world are clustered extremely close together. (We never noticed that cave of vampires 50 yards outside our west gate!). In spite of this, it's it the best game of the series so far due to the wonderful hand designed dungeons and extreme attention to detail. In spite of that...

I'd like to see them take another crack at procedural landscape and NPC generation, while maintaining the personal touch for dungeons, cities, and (non-radiant) quest NPC's. Since (almost all time) on personal touch is on cities and dungeons, making them that much larger. I dunno how likely that is, I just thought I'd throw it out there and see if anyone else would get a huge kick out of this.

Skyrim is actually a larger scale than Oblivion, but they are both on a smaller scale than Morrowind.

I'm pretty sure that is the exact opposite of how it is.