Since with every new installment it feels like common magic is going the way of the dwemer, is a lot of nuance with magical abilities simply becoming lost with time ?

Not justifications based on game play considerations. Its not like they all got simplified and re-classified into other schools, ability to dispel, teleport or reflect simply no longer exists. So did several hundred years in the dark and suddenly caused everyone to forget magic completely like levitation ?

Stuff like levitation was hand-waved out of existence (and somehow the knowledge to make levitation potions along with it), I guess the telvanni don't grow towers like they used to anymore.

Its like going from forgotten realms into dragonlance. sorta.

In particular, the school of thaumaturgy, what ever happened to that ?

A lot of thu'um abilities would seemingly fall under thaumaturgy, if its description is to be believed; such as turning ethereal, haste, or slowing time; all fall under "temporarily manipulating laws" quite nicely. Or Psijic's seemingly moving the dragonborn out of space and time just to talk. Are they related?

The schools themselves are artificial in origin. A real mage knows ALL magic is connected, but the schools were created in order to ease noobies into studying. The power of a mage is just the ability a mage can maniplulate the environment around him.

Also, Thu'um is not outward magic, like what the mages practice, as it requires magicka from the Aetherius. It's inner magic, coming from the person, which is also seen with the sword-singers of Yokuda.

As to why spells have began to disappear, there was a decline in magical study during the third era, as the Mages Guild began to restrict more and more spells. With the fourth era, mages are trying to rediscover the lost spells, and at points have become more lax about certain rules, because it was a reason why the Mages Guild and magical practice, in general, was on a decline in the third era.

Other than the ban on necromancy and the apparent law on levitation; were there more policies on restrictions enacted during the Third era before the dissolution of the guild ?

But the policy making on behalf of the official mages guild should not have affected organizations that worked out side of the mage's guild jurisdiction?

Although, the college of winterhold seems to have suffered anyway while claiming they have always operated autonomously from the guild (in regards to necromancy at least) and losing a whole lot of their books altogether.

In general there was a general sense that magical teaching was being stifled, in favor of knowing the right people. Just look at the headmaster of Bruma and Leyawiin. It was less about teaching magic, and more about poltiics (funnily enough, it's the same deal with the Synod).

Also, you know what a guild is, right? With The Mages Guild, working outside the Guild was illegal, and the Mages Guild was legally able to personally put down anyone who dared defy their legal charter, issued by the Septim Empire. This was seen a few times in Morrowind, where the player was tasked to muscle out freelance trainers (though you could not rat them out). If you wanted to teach and learn magic, you had to join the guild, or be caught committing illegal activity.

Also, the Mages Guild was so tied to the Septim Empire, most of it was practically ran by the Mages Guild. Then the Septim empire fell, and so did the Mages Guild as their charters meant absolutely nothing.

why do people have to be so thick about this...

levitation no longer exists because it hurt the gameplay. Dispel no longer exists because it's not needed. Teleport does still exist, you just can't use it. Whenever you summon a creature, you are teleporting it to your location. Some enemies in game (I can think of 2, a Hagraven and a Warlock) also use teleport or blink while fighting you.

I understand the organization of the mages guild is charted under imperial control; and do see the mages guild, at least in morrowind, actively putting a stop to independent trainers. But that didn't exactly apply to House Telvanni, who were practically enemies to the guild. I don't see how they would be bowing down to imperial guild legaleses, while there were treaties that guaranteed autonomy of the province. Granted, house Telvanni may not be as interested in teaching and education and all that; they did have trainers in the craft. Them losing the knowledge altogether as well is hard to believe.

On the other hand, the guild didn't appear so stringent about stopping independent trainers in oblivion; for example the alteration trainer in the imperial city whom is often referenced to about the Levitation Act of 421 is a thieves guild member providing training to the public.

And was the college of winterhold ever a part of the mages guild ? Since they claim the necromancy ban was never an issue to them.

Or some how the mages guild sometime before the 4th era went and burned down the entire Ysmir Collective..

Wheres the fun in that? Although I would like this to be so if it means next game we have all the spells back.

Anyway *minor spoilers* in Lord of Souls, we see a group of Imperial Legionaires use levitation spells (either through casting or potions, can't remember) which suggests that they have the knowledge of levitation, it's just that it only seems reserved for matters of direct danger to the Empire - I imagine the Mede empire either kept or made something similar to the Levitation Act of 421. And even if the college of Winterhold isn't regulated by the Empire, the knowledge was probably lost with the Great Collapse.

From what I understood from dialog, the College was part of the Mages Guild, as required by law during the Septim empire, but largely ignored the formal rules and regulations of the Mages Guild.

Whoa whoa whoa.

Let's go back to this.

Levitation was banned?

I'm inclined to thinking that it's often better to ignore gameplay mechanics from the perspective of lore, rather than try to invent some clumsy justification or retcon about why something common in one game is absent in another.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Levitation_Act. Was more of an offhand mentioning, while linking with a trainer of Alteration. The lines of dialog are,
"He still teaches, though he lost his passion for it after the Levitation Act was passed. Can't say I blame him."
"He's getting older, but he can still teach a bit about Alteration. He's been teaching it since before the Levitation Act of 421."

I don't think you really get the general mood of the lore forum. If you want to be told "gameplay purposes" when asking why you can't use certain spells, you ask in the Skyrim sections. If you want an actual in-game-world reason for why they don't show up, that's what the lore forum is for.

Lore-wise, some of the spells that have been dropped made problems for the setting: you'd have to wonder why, given the robust teleportation network we saw in TES III, the Empire doesn't invest heavily in building teleportation networks, with the obvious benefits of instantaneous travel. That sort of thing comes up in other fantasy settings, and there are various directions you can go with it, none of which are completely satisfactory. It's similar with flying. You end up with perpetual questions of, "Why can't we just teleport? Why can't we just fly around?"

I'm a little more disappointed in seeing the School of Mysticism dropped as a category. Yes, we already have it established that the distinctions between schools are somewhat arbitrary. But I liked the description of how mysticism, as a discipline, involved temporarily going mad; it made for a nice contrast with the School of Alteration, which was about persuading reality that it was different, temporarily. Come to think of it, that aspect of magic might have been fun to explore in Shivering Isles.

Both explanations can exist peacefully here. Though often they're framed as "gameplay, but here's how it's handwaved if it isn't handwaved, here's a possible handwave.

I agree.

In a way, I don't think the classifications of magical schools are completely arbitrary strictly to facilitate learning for novices.

Rather, they may signify the approach in which a problem can be solved; similar to research methodology is for scientists.

We've already seen that different magical effects can be distributed into different schools; because each can be achieved by different methods or "brute forced" in others.

Taking Levitation for example;
While in mysticism one may simply will themselves into flying,
One in alteration may opt for making air traversable like water-walking,
Or in terms of thaumaturgy, attempt to nullify gravity altogether.

All come to the same end result; but with very different methods.

In these terms; the loss of the schools of mysticism and thaumaturgy (and/or necromancy) is anologous to something like the banning human cloning for stem cell research. Which is very significant.

Are we told how old the teleportation system is in Morrowind, or if they have something similar in the mainland? I'm thinking the idea of a teleportation system, where an everyday person can teleport to one set place to another miles away for a few gold, is a relatively new invention by that time and the Empire used Vvardenfell as an experiment to look how effective it was.

This was to make sure there were no side effects (you don't teleport with one leg) and to see how economically useful the system was - but also note that Vvardenfell is cut off from the mainland. I think Vvardenfell was choosen as if other people managed to create their own teleportation system to, say transport criminals and bandits around Tamriel so they escape their bounty, they would have no idea if it would work or how it would work teleporting to the mainland (I understand that you can teleport to Mournhold's royal palace, but I don't think bandits would want to do so unless they are feeling suicidal and they probably don't know you can do that anyway). Vvadenfell criminals stay in vvardenfell, and the legion doesn't have to track them down in another province.

Maybe the Mages guild were going to implement this to Cyrodiil around the time of Oblivion, but Traven used all the guild resources to ban necromancy? Then the Septim Empire fell and so did the ministry of truth, making it harder to repeat what we saw in Morrowind. And even if there are teleportation systems around Tamriel, it wouldn't be in Skyrim due to the Nords' attitude to magic.

3E 432[REVERSE-GRADIENT] Administrative and Excise-Egg of Imperial College of Double-Standards and Mnmeasures:

From: Five-Legged Desk of High Never-Mind Archibald Thelosius---

Deer esteemed colleagues, associates, and other renowned five-pointed lies;

I write to you through fungal-possipography from the closing days of the 432_nd year of the 3_rd Er( r)a(nd) in future postsponse to the past [and passed] Act of 421, which is to say the past [and once again passed] Act based on past knowledge from future advice which you are looking at now, 11 years ago.

Excuse this obtuse occipital occlusion by which you are [by ICDSMn future-axiom] observing, but it was of the utmost importance that I contact you all by any means necessary to impress upon you miserable lot [INDENDUM: We still had[ed] fun at your New Life Festival party though! Please apologize to Vianis for the drunken groping incident, for in 11 years, 2 days, and 15 minutes we will be sporedacting that event from history.] the need for the immediate passing of a law that prohibits all forms of levitation included, but not limited to:

Levitation, flying, upward-falling, reverse-grounding, Aurbic frame-dragging, stasis absolution, Jumping, and over-agilifying.

While many of you [You know who you are, Zeno] may think it overly-authoritarian, counterproductive, and simply joyless to ban such a spell which has had much utility over the years, it is simply imperative that the spell must be stricken from all learning and usage. We here at the college are of the sometimes-opinion that if this spell should stay in existence for much longer, a chaos of which has never been seen will blanket the Empire, the crux of which will occur at the White-Gold Tower itself. Make no mistake, the pandemonium this spell may soon create makes all past acts of airborne tomfoolery [Zeno, you bastard] look like trifling child's pranks by comparison. See the mirror-annals of Vvardenfell six years from now.

You may be mystified currently, but take our back-word on this, that much horror and other assorted silliness will be averted if you pass this formal Act banning Levitation. Thank you again for passing this Act 11 years ago, good sirs.

More instruction concerning related scourges upon society such as over-wearing of clothing, enchantment, lack of direction, crossbows, and throwing is soon to come.

Yours under the Annoying Cloud,

Never-Mind Archibald Thelosius

haha, you're getting good at this Chaplain. I like that a lot.

All it takes is to free your mind from the paradigm of rational thought and humorless logic. And rum.

*edit*

Also a thorough recollection of http://www.firstfound-blog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/grandpa-simpson-shakes-fist-at-cloud.jpg.

The old 1st era strongholds on Vvardenfell had the propylons, meaning teleportation was something that was around for a long time there. Then again it could always be viewed as a regional specialty, common in Morrowind but not necessarily so in other provinces.

Make that 3. I remember a Draugr lord who is part of that amulet quest who uses it every 3 seconds.

"Fus Ro Dah!" (shoots 3 arrows) (teleport) (repeat)

I had to do that fight at least four times. The first time I got thrown into the texture. The second time he disarmed my weapon, which basically meant I lost it. He did it again the third time, and the fourth time I killed him, but his body glitched, so I couldn't loot.

At least whomever designed the encounter was nice enough to give the real one (non clone) a different helmet.