Realism? Seriously? That's what you're complaining about..? There's magic and dragons and all kind of undead creatures. This is a 'fantasy' game, I dont see why things have to make sense. Anyway this is Tamriel Glass, who says its the same as our glass? Glass is very hard, they might have found a way to stop it being brittle.
I don't normally like to use the "it's fantasy, it's not supposed to be realistic" argument, but in this case, it fits, because it's not the gameplay mechanics someone is calling unrealistic, but the setting, glass armor and weapons are part of the Elder Scrolls setting, they've been that way for some time, and they are, in fact, NOT like the glass you see in windows. They're made from a form of volcanic glass that is presumably much stronger than real life glass, just play Morrowind, you'll see that the glass used in glass armor and weapons is mined, not made, in short, glass armor and weapons are no more unrealistic than equipment made out of mithril or adamantium or any other fictional fantasy material you can come up with, because that's exactly what they are. And saying that dragons are okay and magic is okay but a fictional material that happens to be called glass but has properties very different from your window is suddenly too unrealistic is just absurd. It's like complaining that the presence of elves in the game is unrealistic.
Me, I just hope that this time around, glass is actually transparent, I mean, not that I expect to be able to see your character's skin under glass armor, but rather, that one could see through the glass parts to the material underneath, or if Bethesda went with the Morrowind concept with glass armor, it would just require making the glass spikes transparent, I was really looking forward to seeing the sort of impressive things Bethesda could do with glass in Oblivion, but what we got didn't really satisfy me, and the lack of transparency on the glass was one thing that always seemed odd to me about it.
Anyway what about Ebony? That's technically wood... why would you make heavy armour from wood? Except they decided to make it into a metal.. well that kinda takes away from realism doesn't it?
Ebony armor and weapons aren't made from wood at all, though, it's actually a form of volcanic glass (which technically makes it similar to glass, I suppose.) that is said to be crystalized gods' blood, once again, you can see mines for it in Morrowind, and you wouldn't dig a mine to get wood, that would just be stupid. The name of ebony comes from it's black glossy appearance, not any connection to the wood of the same name.
As to weapon customization, I doubt it, I suspect that smithing will behave like in most games that feature it, in that you simply choose from a list of generic items to craft, it's just a question of what you can craft, and maybe if we'll lucky, we'll be able to make higher quality versions of armor or weapons if we're skilled enough, or have a degree of control over its abilities, but I highly doubt we can actually customize the appearance of player-made items, I could be mistaken, I suppose, but it seems doubtful.
As to display cases, I'd definitely like to see more of those, and especially armor stands, I always enjoy collecting items in the game and putting them on display in my house, so needless to see, it annoys me when the game doesn't give me good places to display things. Armor stands would be specially nice as while a sword can look good if you just throw it on a shelf where there's space, to properly display armor, you need to be able to display it as it would look when worn by someone, and for that, you need a proper stand for it. I'd think that after seeing the mods adding armor manniquins for Morrowind and then seeing ones for Oblivion as well when the game didn't have them by default, Bethesda would realize that there's a demand for them.
Get off your high horse man jeese... you like glass items, i don't so what... just didnt like that the best light armor (bar amber) was made of glass and was green, each for their own...
You didn't simply say you don't like them, though, if you did, that would be fine, you said they were unrealistic, there's a difference there, I mean, I don't like Bosmer, it's not because they're unrealistic that I don't like them, it's because in past games that race has produced many annoying characters, and because certain aspects of them as they are portrayed in the lore I find quite unlikable (Being cannibals, namely.) I just don't like them, I'd certainly not say they're any less realistic than any of the other fantasy races in the series.
» Wed Sep 01, 2010 1:12 pm 
(well in morrowind it did, was a bit too shiny in oblivion xD ).
