Skyrim, a game i played for a good 200 hours, and i still have yet to explore 15% of the world including caves and just general parts of the map. Oblivion i played for probably more and only explored maybe 60%.

The mechanics of this game are as follows.

Level up in an area by completing the local quests, move on.

Never a need to go back to any previous zone (to my knowledge) therefore content does not overlap as much as skyrim nor oblivian.

Thus, people have already hit level 50, and done over half of OTHER factions zones as well as pvp, which would be roughly 70-75% explored in under 200 hours

So is the world really that big? It cant really be representing the universe of elder scrolls correctly, can it?

Well alot of pts players power level to test what builds work, discover bugs, etc. If you dont power level, take your time in cyrodil, or craft you will get alot of time out of the game. I mean in skyrim you could probably speed through the main quest as well as the guilds in less than 100 hours easy. its all about how you spend your time in the game.

you will be about vet rank 1 or 2(i have heard) when you finish your faction.

Also NO TES game since Daggerfall and Arena has represented the actual size of the world. if we went by skyrim/oblivion/morrowinds measurement Tamriel wouldnt be much more then an island(a small on one at that).

And trust me, stonefalls and cyrodiil felt large enough, and apparently the part of Cyrodiil we are given(heartlands, uper nibbenay valley, south jerrals, northern colovia) are larger then they were in oblivion(and it did feel that way).

JSknight hit the nail on the head

I explored a bit of cyrodil during the last beta and it seemed (ironically) small to me, roughly half the size of say, a planetside 2 map. That said, it also has some things to do, but based on my expirence, there are very few things to do there.

But what about imperial city?

Will imperial city ever open up? if it did, it could potentially increase the amount of things to do in cyrodil by like 10x or more

I have heard a couple of youtube/twitch streamers talk about the imperial city opening up eventually. Personally i think the chance of them not opening it are 0.0001%.

I hope if it is opened up that it is ruined(as would seem likely as there ios A GIANT ASS DARK ANCHOR floating right over the city. I want it to be a ruin, not a city were all the people go happily about there lives despite the war stealing there children and a daedric invasion from the king of [censored].

Also, I think it is likely it will be opened up. another thing, while I would like survivors, I would not want a fully functioning city.

Imperial city will be another darkness falls

That would be amazing.

Please I would like a good source other than "it makes sense"

Although from what I have heard of it, that does sound cool.

Dude, This map is stupid big. I mean I spent 3 days in 1 zone and I'm sure I didn't even hit every quest and find every dungeon. Taking a look at the wayshrines I saw at least 12-15 more regions and some were much larger than the one I was in.

I ran from the bottom of Dominion to Bruma, with a lot of sneaking, and I wasn't too impressed with the size of Cyrodiil to be honest.

i mean making a beeline from one side to the other can make it seem somewhat small

BUT if there is a ton of really fun things to do quest wise between point a to point b then it can make it feel big, as with all elder scrolls games.