Doing the same thing for too long is never good. I believe it's good for both TES games and the developers to make Fallout in-between. This way they do not only have a fresh wind of energy for TES, but also a fresh wind of ideas, perspective and technology. Or, in the case of the current gen: Familiarity with the 'new' technology.

Overall, a pretty sweet deal I'd say.

I am the same way. I have been playing Oblivion since 2009 (mostly on console but recently on PC with mods) and have just barely scratched the surface. Still have not completed fighters guild, DB, SI or main quest lines, despite several thousand hours of play.

I have dabbled in Morrowind and Skyrim. I played Skyrim every weekend for about a year on PS3 from 11/11/11 to 11/11/12 then got fed up with lack of attributes, classes and spellmaking and went back to Oblivion. Someday I will go back to Skyrim and mod it, but not until I get tired of modded Oblivion, which might be a while.

Once Open MW comes out I plan to dive deep into Morrowind again, running only a lightly modded game with the Open MW engine.

The reason many of us can get so much mileage out of a game is that we are roleplaying it and making up out own stroies, rather than just running around doing the quests Bethesda created. Many of us are also creating multiple different characters with not only different skill sets but also different personalities and quirks.

And with mods, you can really change up the game so it feels quite different. You can really change the way the game feels, looks and plays by changing your load order. Honestly, I get more excited about the release of a new mod for an older game than the release of a new game.

To paraphrase Emperor Uriel Septim, the next TES "will come when it will come."

You seem to be missing the point here. For many of us long time players, the game is not about doing "quests". It is about bringing a character to life in the context of the game and making up your own stories. My favorite "quests" are simple fetch quests because my character can decide why he is doing the quest, what is the story behind it, what the motivations are, etc. So, gettign a simple fetch quest can lead to a whole new story for the character, one that is based in the TES lore, but that is uniquely my own. Often the stories in my games are shaped by my character trying to make sense of seemingly randomn events.

Some people figure out the real value of an open world game, and some don't.

I'm all for roleplaying and I do a bit myself and try to imagine things a bit deeper than what the games give you but there still comes a point after a year or two where even every fetch quest has been done several times and every dungeon explored a few times and there is simply nothing left to do that you haven't already done too many times before.

And then you get into the reason why TES games last so long compared to others. Their modability.

i would rather they take as much time as they need in development, rather than spitting out games like a mini-gun..

Quality over Quantity

Well, I have not reached that point yet with modded Oblivion. After a couple years with vanilla Oblivion I may have almost reached that point playing about 10 to 15 hours a week on the average, and when Skyrim came out it was a welcome change. But my frustrations with Skyrim sent me back to Oblivion after about a year and then I decided I need to get a PC and learn how to use mods.

My modded Oblivion includes a whole new province in Elsweyr, significantly more complex and interesting cities with Better Cities, different and interesting landscapes to explore with Unique Landscapes, different and more interesting dungeons to explore with Snus Dungeons and Better Dungeons, complete game mechanics overhaul with Maskars, Enhanced Economy, Supreme Magicka, and Realistic Levelling, a ton of new guild quests with Guild Advancement and other guild quest mods Guild Advancement depends upon, a compeltely redesigned arcane university with Universitas Acarnorum, an Imperial Legion guild with Fort Akatosh Redux, etc. etc.

It will be several more years of playing ten hours or more every week to exhaust all of that new content, and once that happens, there will be a slew of new mods, not to mention the hundreds of mods I want to try that are not in my current load order, like Lost Spires, two different rebuilding Kvatch mods, new province mods for Black Marsh and Hammerfell, Ubanga, Integration the Stranded Light, TIE, OOO, Origin of the Mages Guild, just to name a few. There is a lifetime of content out there just in Oblivion mods alone, not to mention all the Morrowind mods like Tamriel Rebuilt and the upcoming Open MW.

Exactly.

Well, if you are making up your own stories then even the same content can yield vastly different results, but I understand what you are saying here. On the other hand, with mods, you may not know what's around the corner or through the next door because it may be different than what you expect from your unmodded game or even from your modded game with a different load order.

I agree, there comes a point when you just become "burnt out" with the game as many forum members have stated in various threads over the past few months. It doesn't matter how deep anyone role plays you still know what's around the corner or through the next door etc when you've played the game regularly for a couple of years.

Don't be silly, of course I play more than one hour a month. More like 5-6 hours per week split between Morrowind and Oblivion. Thing is I don't do straight line game quest. I do a lot of independent exploring. My main character in Morrowind and Oblivion has a backstory that I spend most of my time on. Becoming the game's foretold hero is secondary to his true role in life, that is to reclaim his lost heritage. The search consumes him and that's how I play him.

Yes everyone explores. 90% of my last Skyrim playthrough was just me wandering around and ending up finding some things that led me on quests across Skyrim which led to me finding more places with more things and so on(To be honest, exploration in Skyrim is way funner than in Morrowind and Oblivion). But how haven't you explored every single thing ten times over in the last 8-12 years?

Well, for one thing, unlike Skyrim, Morrowind does not have icons for undiscovered locations showing up in your compass, so you can walk past a location without even noticing it. Oblivion does have such icons in its compass but I have turned them off with a mod. So, it is possible to discover a new place you have not visited before that you may have passed many times before but not noticed.

When I used to play Oblivion on console, I would put a piece of cardboard over the compass to block the view of these icons. I did the same thing in Skyrim with a towell hanging down over the top of the TV, when I played on PS3, so there are a great many places I never found in Skyrim despite a little over a year of playing every weekend.

Not at all. Just this past year in Morrowind I discovered the Cave of the Incarnate and became a leader of my first great house. I've never met Vivec (the worm is going to die when I do), been to Mournhold or to seen Solstheim for that matter. Recently in Oblivion I stumbled across a drowned bridge troll, about fell out-a my chair laughing when I read his note. What does happen a lot though is I have to go back and redo certain quests like save some rats in Anvil or save a healer from the mage guild executioner in Maar Gan or my Daggerfall favorite quest the King of Worms Lich's Soul (his messenger just slays me). I keep permanent saves so I can replay my favorites.

Well, speaking as a guy who is getting into programming, and from what little I do know about Bethesda's programming, I can say that building an engine from scratch is long enough. Buildin an engine from a custom scripting language which you wrote up before is even longer. More people just = more people to point out when something won't run, why it won't run, or figure out why the hell the f&$#ing thing won't run.

This is assuming the planning stage is the same amount of time as the last one, which it probably isn't. More people means more to manage, which means more time spent just getting everyone together to make sure everyone is on the same page with what has to be done.

That, and the open worlds.

The Elder Scrolls, considered purely as games, are not as good as other games. Their stories tend to be simplistic and fairly unimaginative "save the world" standard fare, their graphics are middle-of-the-road, their animation is terrible. The voiced dialog is cheesy, their combat tends to be "strange" (I'm being kind), and many of the characters are forgettable.

What makes them work is the "be who you want, do what you want, when you want" nature of them, and the huge, fully explorable open world. You can create the character you want (or 100 different characters, limited only by your imagination), and you can choose your path through the world.

I have a character I've been playing for several years who has never done a single quest, never been inside a city, and doesn't speak to anybody. Such a character would be totally boring in another game, but it's completely reasonable to roleplay a solitary hunter in an Elder Scrolls game. There are hundreds of dungeons for play, respawning bandits for supplies of arrows, and endless animals to hunt. That's just one of many characters, but it's an example of the endless possibilities.