now bear with me hear.i loved the amount of towns,shrines,ruins,caves,mines,and forts in Oblivion just as much as any other TES fan, but i must say oblivion was a little too dense for my taste. I mean look at this map of Cyrodiil.- http://guides.gamepressure.com/theelderscrolls4oblivion/gfx/maps/198696190.jpg - I mean really look at it and zoom in on the pic. I am hoping for Skyrim to be atleast 50% bigger than oblivion. Then just spread out the locations, add some more variety and detail to them. (and a little more towns would be nice.) i think that would be the best way they could go with Skyrims game world.

P.S. iam just hoping for Skyrim to atleast 50% bigger than oblivion. Oblivion was still quite large..(although to honest i would be a little dissapointed if Skyrim wasnt bigger.)and i would be really bummed if it was smaller

There's kind of already a topic on this... you could use that

I don't care if it's a bit smaller, I just want a more varied and interesting landscape and larger cities.

I wholeheartedly agree on the variety and detail matter. The size of the map is nothing if there aren't interesting and unique places to discover.

thers a topic on world size,but not exactly on the problem of world density (although this thread handles both.)

Agreed, there was a generic fort ruin around every corner. What's the point?

hmmmm.its seems like a fair amount of people have been saying this.personally i love rpgs with a big open world.but empty space dosnt count for shizz. so yea to me i think size and detail both play a big roll in a TES game

I'm about to venture forth into LotR Online for the first time.

I'll report back on how I feel they handled world size.

If I had to I would sacrifice size for diversity in architecture and content, but to be honest I want both because I know it can be done.

I'm of two minds on this.

On the one hand, I like for there to be lots of varied content and interesting locations to discover. On the other though, I like huge expanses with very little in them, so that finding interesting locations is like finding a needle in a hay stack, too. A good example of what I mean would be the Grazelands in Morrowind. (Of course, Morrowind was smaller, so once we leveled up Athletics and Speed a bit, we could traverse all that empty space more readily.)

I think the important key to balancing the two is creative and appropriate design of regions. Certain regions should be dense, while others should be sparsely populated in my opinion. But only where the context and atmosphere of the region calls for it. That way even the sparse regions are still interesting. The Grazelands had a lot of rolling hills, little alcoves, and hidden caves that made the open spaces make sense to me. There was even a vampire lair hiding out there.

Exactly.

Morrowind's map to Oblivion's map size was an increase of six square miles. Morrowind being 10, Oblivion being 16. Morrowind was first released in 2002, Oblivion was first released in 2006. Skyrim will be released in 2011. The time taken between Morrowind and Oblivion was four years, between Oblivion and Skyrim there will be five years. It just seems to me the map size should at the least be an increase in size by six square miles. This makes Skyrim's map 22 square miles. 22 still doesn't feel right to me, it's such a miniscule increase in size. Even a double in size of Oblivion isn't going to feel so much greater. The reason for this is because the map is expanding on all four sides so it's just factoring on what you already have - reducing the noticeability of the increase in size.

personally i like traveling out in the open, looking at great scenery. imagine traveling across a great open plain with great snow capped mountains in the distance, beckoning you ever forward, without some annoying goblin running after you every 100 feet. or how about wandering through a great wood watching the sun stream through the trees, listening to the sound of rolling brooks and birds singing. imagine a game where the experience in the natural world was second only to a great story, that compelled you to travel long roads and see far away natural wonders.
i'd like to play a game that felt like i was reading one of prof tolkein's passages where he describes the environment. thats what i want.

I'd like them to render all of Tamriel to scale and then Google Earth it. Not for the game or anything, just so we can see what it would look like if it were real.

They said its the same size as Oblivion and it has less dungeons.

I've been playing it for 2 years. It's big. And far from dense. But not big enough to be the Middle-Earth I'd pictured after reading the books and watching the films.
But it's an MMO. You can't really compare the two genres. (Even though it's the best MMO in the world!)

The Unlimited Gamer magazine in Europe says the game is as big as Oblivion.

I wouldn't even mind if Skyrim was smaller, as long as they went back to hand placing everything rather than just generating generic dungeons. Even though Oblivion was bigger, it was so redundant that it felt like a much smaller game than Morrowind for me.

Don't expect this game to be double the size of Oblivion. You are just going to set yourself up for disappointment. Size isn't everything. Quality and immersion is!

What worries me is that we've been told that the map will be the same size as Oblivions and that there will be 5 huge open cities. Plus lots of big mountains and diverse terrain with long view distance. It's going to feel very cramped - even more so than Oblivion.

I don't know, there is a screenshot in GI of a town called Riverwood. It looks big enough to be classified as a city in Oblivion.

Approximately as big as Oblivion, could mean a little bit bigger.

130 unique dungeons for Skyrim vs 200 dungeons for Cyrodiil.

Meaning the dungeons will be more spread out than in Cyrodiil. Also the unscalable mountain ranges are going to make the world feel bigger when exploring.

Another point is that Cyrodiil was formed like a bowl basically you could see basically everything from the sides of the imperial city.
Skyrim seems to be formed just the opposite with High Hrothgar and some mountain ranges near the middle.