No the thives guild is horrible. I can complete it by being a heavy armoured orc with wrhammer, with only one mindset and thats "orc crush".

It has no stealing, just dungeon crawls.
Its HQ is know to everyone.
You are known to be a member.
The first few missions arent subtle. Just being maven black briars thug.

Then you havethe nightingales things, trying t be epic. [censored] it couldnt be more horrible, now im in some magical thief order.#

Thives guild is THE WORST guild. It hs nothingto do with stealth or thives. Atleast the mages guild had magic, this wasonly a thives guild in name.

I agree wholeheartedly, worse faction ever.

That can be said for the companions guild too , you go there to be an honorable mercenary and you join the -lolwhat emo werewolf club- kill them with fire I say! :flamethrower:

I felt like I was given the keys to the college for doing a few basics tasks.

Did you know there's a dungeon with a quest to it that has you collecting a lich's blood so you can bring him back to life and vanquish him for good and put the ghost guarding against his return to final rest? There's also a quest that involves taking a "Lexicon" back into the Dwemer ruins from which it was first found, and throughout your trek through the dungeon, you'll witness the memories of the explorers that first recovered the artifact. What about the excavation site in Markath? I feel like each of these quests could have added to the College quest, even if they boil down to dungeon crawls. Heck, they could even be Arch-Mage quests. "Hey Arch-Mage, we heard the excavation in Markath has come to a halt, and the lead researcher has requested our help. Perhaps you'd be interested?" When I initially heard about the dragon priest masks and how they were connected to a mysterious site, I thought that it would be a guild quest.

so much lost potential-> magic energy thing underneath college underused
-> UNDEAD DRAGONS

the thng that annoyed me the most was that it was 100% doable without casting a single spell.
you can enter the guid by using a scroll.
then sowrd and bourd everything and then staff and sword the end guy.

The guild quests kind of all svcked HARD in Skyrim.

Oblivion, for all its many faults, had a decent Mage Guild quest line and I did feel like I accomplished something at the end of it.

Not so much with the Mage College in Winterhold. So much lost potential. It really fell short (pun intended) of expectations. Thank god the CK is coming out soon. Modders once again fix what Bethesa did wrong.

It would be nice if you could at least try to expand your influence, there is a lot of court wizards, why don't you try to restore the mages guild?

And the Synod? and the Thalmor?
You messed up with both of them, and it is just like "oh,ok"

Enthir is the only one that recognize you as arch mage <3. " With all the due respect archmage, but i'm running a business etcetc"

This. A swath of side quests as mandatory fillers before further advancement would have made a big difference.

And higher magic skill level. "We need someone to do this for us, but we can't send a novice mage like yourself" if skill > 40 in any magic skill or something. And then they could, if your illusion was over 40, say something like "an illusionist like yourself could handle this nicely!" and give side quests based on your highest magic skill or something. And then each quest in the MQ line would advance once you've completed a certain rank say at 40, 60 and 80 in a magic school and all the side quests at that level.

*sigh* I think most of us given 20 minutes could come up with an acceptable alternative to what was given.

I just finished the college quest this weekend.

The length and the story of the questline didn't bother me but ending up as arch mage did.

There just seemed to be a jump in logic somewhere. Sure you saved the college and the old arch mage and the second in command are both dead but to be named head of the college at that point is just wierd. It would have been like being made the jarl of Whiterun after you killed the first dragon there. Plus you actually haveno duties as arch mage and no reason to ever go back to the college if you don't want to.

Also from an RP standpoint, the whole reason I went to the college was to learn magic. But unless you bought books and/or training the college actually doesn't teach you anything.

I still love the game but really when he said I was the arch mage and just walked off, I could imagine him muttering "svcker" under his breath.

OP, I would suggest doing the Thieve's Guild. It seems obvious to me that it's the guild that got more love from the devs this time around. The storyline is pretty good, but the best part is when, [spoilers] after finishing what seems like the final quest, you're not guildmaster, and there is still a ton of work left to do before you get to be. [/spoiler] Add to that the fact that, as you progress through the guild, the Flagon gets new NPCs, more decorations, and there are new options for evading arrest in various holds. Whether you like the story or not, it's definitely got much more of a sense of progression towards being guildmaster than any of the other ones.

Really, Companions and the College were awful.

The problem is that that makes up the majority of the questline. You have a few large dungeons to muddle through, and while they are indeed decent dungeons they're still only dungeons. There were so many things that could've been expanded upon to make this questline exponentially better. The addition of some filler quests, even if mildly bland, would've helped. The ability to take classes in your spare time from the senior mages would've done loads for the RPers out there especially. One class plus a field trip gone awry doesn't quite cut it.

Nothing will beat the pure awfulness of Manamarco.

Actually, as much as I hate how Oblivion portrayed the King of Worms, I think overall the College of Winterhold's questline is significantly worse than that of the Mages Guild in Oblivion.

It was unreasonably brief and ultimately had little to do with magic. The storyline was cliched and obvious, raised more questions than it answered and wasted so much potential. So much potential.