Well, same for us veterans, but it was Morrowind, and not Oblivion. Morrowind was just revolutionary. It more than one regard.

I think this is a pretty good summary :goodjob:

No, when it sets up one side as the champion who can do no wrong and everyone else as an idiot, and instead of addressing arguments it contents itself with name calling, then it is good only as a shining example of the bad.

It really depends on what kind of information is release.

I wasn't here for the Daggerfall/Morrowind transition, but I was around in 2004 when Oblivion was announced.

There was uniform excitement and several webpages by prominent members to track every little bit of detail. Screenshots were heavily scrutinized for any piece of information. When the E3 videos were released it was as if someone had given us the Holy Grail. Then, when they started releasing concrete information, specifically about what would be taken out... then things got ugly. Huge multi-part threads about crossbows and thrown weapons, the nine divines, the genericness of the setting. It got absolutely brutal. Many were banned and many were silenced.

The main reason people were angry is because the situation was a lot like Fable. Lots of promises were made ("Just look at that Radiant AI!" "Wow those NPC's really make good conversation with each other." "Look at those shadows!"). Oblivion was supposed to be bigger, better, and more of everything. And then the cuts started rolling out. Sorry guys, we just can't do dynamic shadows. Sorry guys, we just can't get Radiant AI to stop killing each other with rakes. Sorry guys, we decided to cut this and that skills, but its okay because what's left is going to blow you away!

THEN, we see people complaining about these new features and how they are dumbing the game to please the mainstream community and casuals. Now that might be true but arrghh, I don't know if it was Morrowind lovers or critics(who didn't really enjoy it) who complained about the new features but either way, I say what I said before: Hypocrisy.

It pretty much starts off with everyone extremely happy and then everyone gets pissed off when they realize Morrowind is better

Now, if ZOS is working on an Elder Scrolls MMO and it's announced before a new Elder Scrolls game from Bethesda that could cause a lot of disruption on the forums, but I doubt a TES V announcement will be that problematic.

I usually find it stupid that people compare morrowind to oblivion. I think oblivion opened the seires up to alot more people than morrowind then which why we shouldn't be comparing the two. There just two totally different games.

We will see a new class of jaded of Oblivion fans who will complain about the lack of fast travel, quest compasses, and leveled world.

One of the biggest mods for Oblivion was the open cities mod, and so we could see even smaller cities in TESV as Bethesda makes them all part of the main gameworld and smallness is kind of required to keep them within a reasonable framerate... because, hey, people want their open cities, right?

Everything in the timeline is unbiased, based upon what I've read of how the forums acted during Oblivion's release and what I observed during Fallout 3's release.

The commentary and anolysis doesn't start until after the timeline. I think that people are reasonably able to tell what in the post is fact and what is anolysis. It's when others dismiss the anolysis based on nothing other than the fact that the author has clearly made their bias known that it is a shining example of the bad. Perhaps instead of dismissing the commentary you might try and respond to it - if you can.

Well, same for us veterans, but it was Morrowind, and not Oblivion. Morrowind was just revolutionary. It more than one regard.

Not all of us veterans. I dare say not even most of us.

I hear that. Well, aside from the "confidence" part. From reading the numerous posts around here I don't think there will be any significant percentage of people that will lament changes from Oblivion (unless they go back to Morrowind style magic casting of course!). I can see a continuation of the Morrowind/Oblivion conflict, only with TESV instead of Oblivion, as if TESIV never existed, as it looks like everyone still fondly remembers and mods the hell out of Morrowind.

I did read somewhere in an interview with Todd about addressing the complaints with Morrowind and how they "went back to their roots" so to speak with Oblivion. You can actually see this in the game. The only thing is, IMO, they brought back the wrong elements from Arena and Daggerfall and not the stuff people actually liked. For example, fast travel was basically required because of the huge worlds, but is was implemented totally differently. I assume people wanted the huge world that required fast travel, not fast travel as a feature just because it was so awesome or something. In another example, the Argonians and Khajiit were given a more Daggerfall like appearance, not only because of programming laziness but also because there was a complaint that the beast races couldn't wear boots and helmets, and in the process were stripped of all their uniqueness. Instead of making shinguards and specialty helmets for Argonians and Khajiits we got re-skinned humans. One idea that circulated around the forum back way before the release of Oblivion was how it was kind of boring that you always were some huge hero saving the world, and wouldn't it be cool if instead you were part of a process with other NPCs that allowed the world to be saved, or even if there wasn't some major crisis at all? The big boss fight at the end was so tired! In fact, it might even be cool if you assisted the "true" hero of the storyline (because the most fun in the ES series is going out and doing your own thing and living another life)! And so in Oblivion, we got you basically going on the "save the world" quest while being denied the final boss fight in favor of some NPC who didn't do anything else the entire game except steal your fame.

Unfortunately I can see this happening again for Oblivion. The developers could end up wrongly reading the communities wishes. Follow me for a second... So everyone basically liked the Dark Brotherhood questline, right? "Well, they probably liked assassinations just because killing people is so awesome." Hence, we get three different assassin guilds and none are as good as Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood story line, and the developers say "Well, we listened to the community, I don't know what's wrong." People say the huge forested world, while pretty, wasn't really that interesting. So instead of getting landscapes with varied terrain we get a huge uniform tundra, or jungle, or something. People complained about not having the nine divines or a religious faction, so instead of getting something like in Daggerfall or Morrowind, we get a Fighter's Guild with churches. One of the biggest mods for Oblivion was the open cities mod, and so we could see even smaller cities in TESV as Bethesda makes them all part of the main gameworld and smallness is kind of required to keep them within a reasonable framerate... because, hey, people want their open cities, right? People say they were disappointed in the main storyline, so Bethesda takes that as meaning they just wanted to fight the final boss, and so we get basically Oblivion Part II where you fight the giant demon at the end and the heir looks on.

Anyways, I guess I do have some confidence, just by the virtue of me being on this forum and looking forward to an announcement. I just hope they're able to discern what people actually want. Barring that, they should just really ignore all opinions. Were they heavily into public opinions before Morrowind? Maybe Bethesda should just do their own thing if they can't read correctly into an often disjointed public.

I think if I could narrow it down to a word, the word would be "Intricate". That is the word the good parts of Oblivion deserve, the word Morrowind's MQ/most Guild Quests deserve, it even describes the parts of Fallout 3 that really shine.

The more you can apply the word intricate to level design, lore adherence and quest structure, the better TES will be.

ALSO, LET THE LITTLE GREEN ARROW TELLING YOU WHERE TO GO TOGGLE ON AND OFF. [This is such a simple thing to do that I will cry if I am stuck with being led by the hand]