I do agree that a in-game year would be too long. ~90 days would be enough to get into a role.

Many people only sleep/wait longer than one hour (because 1 hour of waiting/resting heals you completely in oblivion) when they are waiting for shops to open. Even 90 days will take forever.

And of course if the main quest starts with a city being destroyed it would be problematic if you start weeks before the main quest starts.

90 days isn't that long and sleeping will cut into it. 90 days would allow a decent amount of exploration, some decent percentage of a single guild's quest line and 6-12 side quests. 90 days isn't that long or too big a percentage of the game.

I think it's a great idea, although a year might be a bit long. A week or two would be good, plus people could just 'sleep' for that long and skip it if they didn't like it.

Really there is no need for this. In Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion you could start the main quest whenever you felt like it. If you wanted to wait a year game time, fine it's your choice.

There is no need to force someone to wait for the main quest when you yourself can wait as long as you want, or never start the main quest. It's your choice.

Easiest way to solve this would be to have the MQ not start until you talk to a specific NPC. That would make it easy to start the quest immediately, or delay it for as long as you wish.

I like the concept of a delay before the actual main quest starts but not as it has already been suggested. I'd like there to be some time before the main quest actually "starts" (much like Shivering Isles). However, in the time between you starting up the game and actually beginning (or choosing not to begin) the main quest, I think there would need to be some form of a flowing storyline. Whether that be in a faction you choose to take part in or a healthy bombardment of quests to keep you occupied. Merely wandering around, exploring and roleplaying will just not work here.

Bethesda has a large audience to appeal to; trying to fully appease us roleplayers would be bad business.

I'd like at least if they implied in game the main quest was less time sensitive at least until you progressed it till near the end. It feels kind of silly to be doing X side quest when you know the end of the world is about to happen and you have a quest that could stop it from happening.

Interestingly enough, this is pretty much exactly how I'm playing my newest Oblivion character. I'm using an alternate start mod that delays the main quest (you have to actually get arrested in the Imperial City for it to start) and I'm basically playing my game as if it were taking place just before the Oblivion Crisis. It's really fun and adds quite a bit to the immersion.

A simple way to emulate this would be to have teh MQ start off in a similar manner to Morrowinds.

As in, make it so the main quest starts off not-urgent and a little slow to encourage players to get into the world and invest time in it first. As a matter of fact I tihnk at one point early on the guy who gives you the low level starting MQ quests tells you to get some ranks in a faction before returning. That way the game focuses more on the world at first than following some 'OMG URGENT DO NOW" linear boring quest like Oblivion.

Morrowind did progress way to slowly though - the MQ didn't pickup until half way through the game. If it was done in this manner simply have it so the juicy MQ parts start happening sooner for those who want to trudge through it. I just hated the sense of urgency Oblivion had, when I wanted to get involved in the world first before joining the MQ.

I think events in the Main Quest of Skyrim should be handled the way the building of the 3 main faction fortresses were handled in Morrowind. It should start with key events, building up, lots of action, and some involvement, reward, feeling of power, and then you reach a stage where your trying to accomplish something (The building of the fortress), and you accomplish your immediate goal, and now you have to wait. Either for an event to occur, for time to pass for the nations to gather forces, for political decisions to be made, blah de blah de blah, et cetera et cetera, and during this period events happen in the world regardless of your direct activity, things are changing forces are moving and gathering, settlements are being built, so on so forth. Then you get a message, begin stage 2, and this continues for several stages until the finale, and then the descent.

It makes for a more epic and immersive story, it adds anticipation, it provides player opportunities to take a break from the main quest, and of course just like Morrowind, the quest itself wouldn't be triggered until the player triggered it. However, this is a new market, and a new type of gamer, I assure you, even if many Morrowind fans would support this notion, the majority of Oblivion fans that didn't play Morrowind will not. There will be complaints about the interruption in the main quest, about the pace being too slow, pointlessly rhetorical questions like "What are we supposed to do now" and the general type of impatience you expect from a 9 year old waiting to go to an amusemant park at a set time in the day...

Ultimately, unless Bethesda steps away from the mainstream, we're going to have fast paced, action adventure style main quests from this point on, because thats the driving force to most storytelling, and often the element that makes gameplay feel most epic, and urgent, and for people looking for a quick fix, fun. That's the new market, old school role-players are not.

There are plenty of people who played the past TES games just to explore it and do side quests, especially with the first two games. So I think there are a fair share of people who would like this idea. But I think there are even more people who want and need a main quest to proceed with the game.

I like the idea of a good chunk of time to let the player get seasoned before his role in the MQ begins, but a year is much too long. Hell, I found an in-game month could drag on in Oblivion.

I'd either go with a few weeks before the [censored] hits the fan, or an indefinite time-table like the one given to you by Caius Caseds(sp?) to get some experience and funds in Morrowind.

Edit: I fixed something that didn't make sense.

I really love this idea, but there is a problem. See, WE hard-core roleplayers would absolutly love this, but I don't think It would appeal to 12 year old kiddies with the attention span of 30 seconds. They would complain that the game is too boring or what not.
But I would absolutly love it. In oblivion I often used MQ delay mod, that didn't start the main quest untill you were actually sent to prison. An interesting mod, but the problem was... you still didn't care about the world. We need npc's who mean something to us. Someone with who we connect and if anything would happen to them, the MQ would be far more meaningfull - fighting to save the loved ones, failing to do so and then... REVENGE!!!

Doubt it will happen though.

I know I said something like this before, but I'll say it again anyway. I think the problem of addressing the separation of hardcoe RPG'ers vs Console Action/Adventure Gamers is easily addressed by having two start modes, "Normal" for the Console Action/Adventure Gamers and "Prologue Mode" which will give some settling in time for the player's character. I don't see why this would be so hard to implement.