Something doesn't add up. It seems that with the technology that was present in morrowind by the time the events of skyrim came around they should have been far past bows and arrows. They should have been refining flintlock rifles and pistols. What do you think?

That's if you're assuming TES technological progression is the same as ours. Running real-world parallels with TES usually doesn't work.

Nirn =/= Earth

The way technology progresses in TES world is not the same as the way technology progressed in ours. Skyrim is also in a sort of 'dark ages' era in which a lot of technology can be lost.

They've had the same basic technology level for the last 6000 years. 200 is small change.

That just furthers my point.

The idea of technological progress being inevitable is very much a modern, and, to a lesser extent, Western idea, and really it isn't necessarily true.* Whether it is in the long run or not, however, the fact remains that most cultures throughout history, including classical, medieval, and early modern Europe, have tended to view the world as slowly declining from an ancient golden age, and dindn't really have a concept of technology advancing with time. It's that tradition which most modern fantasy, including the Elder Scrolls, takes after, and since the genre isn't about recreating our world but creating a new one with different basic rules of how things work, I don't see why it should be necessary to bring our views of technology into them.

*For that matter, it's one that has wavered even in the modern western world - the late 19th century, and right now, tend to that view, but think of the idea of "World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones" - we still occasionally lapse into seeing how technology can stagnate or even go backwards, and there are in fact historical examples of technology being lost. Last I checked, we still don't know how Damascus steel was made, for example.

I can see what you're saying. We've gone from riding horses to space shuttles just in the last few hundreds years. But on the other hand, you've had that much time pass in real life without any really new, innovative technology. People used swords and bows for thousands of years before gunpowder caught on. Maybe Tamriel just hasn't had its "industrial revolution" yet. Plus, TES is a pretty established fantasy world. If you start adding newer technology to it, it might turn into something different and unfamiliar. Like the Star Wars prequels.

How do you even know whether there's gun powder in Tamriel at all? It's obviously not our world, so why take that for granted?
Also, which technology? Morrowind technology was (except Dwemer stuff, of course) on a level on which Earth remained for some thousands of years. They were not much more technologically advanced than classical Antiquity or even ancient Babylonians - so why should they suddenly make a huge technological leap?

Why?

Seriously, why?

I mean it. Why would a society where diseases and injuries can be effectively cured by magic study basemant mold for medicines? Why would a culture where a single person can literally burn a city to the ground from miles way invent bombs, cannons and guns? Why would a nation capable of magical spaceflight need to invent internal combustion engines? Why would people of a world where robots powered by soulgems is considered ancient history come up with the battery?

Aside from people wanting to somehow link Tamriel to the real world, which is plain nonsense, there is no cause for its denizens to develop earth-like technology in any way whatsoever. Seriously, why would a culture with none of the same stimuli that caused real-world development develop the way the real world did? It makes no sense at all.

Remember what happened to the last people to become pretty advanced? The Dwemer?

I'd say that serves as a pretty good warning to the rest of Nirn.

I understand the logic of this. However TES is like the only decent sword fighting/medieval fantasy game out there from what I know. If you took that away then what would we have?? I mean if I was going to enjoy a game with guns I would just go back to playing Fallout. (Not that I ever stopped playing that).

This completely ignores the fact that in a real life Tamriel, things simply aren't that clear cut. In the lore, mages tended to be the educated upper class and in the Nibian the Battlemages were lords of the land. The fact is that not everyone would be a mage nor could afford to learn magicka or have the aptitude to do so. Honestly the idea that magicka simply nullified the need to come up with more cheaper, and practical ways of doing things is absurd and implies that Tamriel is one dimensional in ways of thinking, which it clearly isn't.

edit: I'm not saying that I want this in the games, but I hate the argument that magicka simply means that technology has no need to advance.

Why would you need technology when you have magic? Also I don't think anyone in Nirn would dare to try advancing technology. Remember what happened to the dwemer when they did that?

First, there are a million reasons why technology should advance and has many advantages over magicka. Second of all, it wasn't technology that doomed the Dwenmer, it was magicka.

And if there's anything the upper class is never going to get in the way of, it's the lower class gaining the ability to usurp whatever keeps the upper class in power.

I agree with what Lord Titus said concerning the Dwemer. And as to technology lacking utilty due to the presence of magic? I don't agree at all. Not everyone is a mage, and those who are are not necessarily powerful ones. Imagine this, 2 rival nobles of High Rock are about to have a battle because of a land dispute. Both sides have 250 troops each + a court wizard each, who are not all-mighty nor mere apprentices. The first lord has 200 levied peasants armed either with light melee gear or bows, and 50 left are heavily armoured knights and a few mercenaries with similar gear. The second lord has somehow gotten his hand on a batch of AK-47s and ammunition and given it to all his troops, who are all levied peasants but who know the basics of handling an assault rifle. Now, which side do you think will win? In the end, the levies and knights/mercenaries of the first noble won't stand a chance. So then it will be a couple of hundred AK-47 carrying peasants and a court wizard against a lone court wizard. Even if they manage to kill most AK-peasants they will still be a threat since bullets usually hurt a bit and mages are frail beings. Not sure how long a mage is able to sustain shields while being showered with bullets either.. Now, going from a longbow to an AK-47 in the ES games is a bit silly but I figured it doesn't matter since it gets the message across anyway.

And that's only the military aspect. There's ship building techniques and new materials for it(ie bigger ships carrying more troops, supplies or wares), machinery to make every day life easier, agricultural advances etc. BUT. With all that said I personally don't want the ES too change much. Just like Lord Titus I just think that the notion of having magicka around makes technological advances unnecessary is a bit questionable.

But it may make certain advances less "necessary", i.e. take some of their advantage from them, and it may lead the technological advance in a different direction.

No one doubts that an AK-47 would come in pretty handy. But that type of a gun is very much the end of a line of a very long development. (You could probably argue that at the point in time when your fighting with machine guns on the one side, the other side will have similarly advanced magickal means at its disposal - not only technology can advance.) But the existence of flaming, armour-piercing projectiles (and a whole lot more effects) does take something away from the impact of early guns and gunpowder, so it may take longer to develop those. It might be more effective in terms of money and time for a lord to train his peasants to channel some basic fire magicks, instead of financing experiments trying to come up with some way of shooting things from a barrel by alchemical explosions. It could happen, of course, but it *might* take longer, as there are fewer advantages.

I agree, magicka lessens the importance of technology but doesn't null it. There are advantages to equipping peasants with early matchlocks and the likes though, since magicka users are usually more like the elite rather than your average rank and file soldier. It would help people such as the Nords too who aren't all that fond of magic in the first place. And I'm not sure if the mentions of cannons are canon, but if gunpowder isn't already around I doubt anyone would try to research it since they lack the concept of gunpowder in the first place.

We've been having this discussion in the Oblivion General forum too: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1356259-guns-in-tes/

My point wasn't "why we should have firearms in the game" or anything similar. I just used them as an example why technology isn't rendered moot by the presence of magicka. And for the record, I'm not in favor of seeing the ES universe become more modern.

To think that the general populace would just sit there and take it for three eras is pushing the realm of believability, even in a fantasy game.

Not really. Ancient Egypt was ruled by a line of royalty and pharaohs for about three thousand years, until they were kicked out by the Roman Empire. The system of Monarchies/Dynasties, in which the privileged few rule the vast majority, is the way most countries on Earth worked for many thousands of years. Individual empires came and went, but were typically replaced by new people doing the same thing. I haven't played Skyrim or read the books, but for a more relevant comparison, as I understand the Mage's Guild went under and was replaced by other, similar factions.

And while most places on Earth saw gradual increases in technological development, in things like metalsmithing and plumbing and whatnot, things didn't really kick off or change significantly outside of the occasional big discovery until a couple revolutions in the past few hundred years. It's a tiny period in history, and it still doesn't apply to the whole world. Native Americans lived in the region, and did not have significant technological advancement, for longer than the entire known history of Tamriel. They were still using bows and arrows tipped with stone.

While part of technological advancement is discovery, part of it is also need. Gunpowder let us do things we could never do before. The early stages of gunpowder would not be very useful in Tamriel, against the argument of "do a small portion of what mages can do, only you can't really control it and get to blow your hands off". If a new technology seems inferior to existing options, that line of development may never see fruition. I'm not saying that the advancement of technology wouldn't or couldn't happen, or that it's even unlikely, but that it's in no way an inevitable guarantee, especially with the important phase of "things we never had before" being muddied by magic. Neither the duration or forms of rule in Tamriel or its persistence without high technology are unprecedented or even unusual.

I guess you didn't bother to actually read the thread. That was a major topic of debate in that thread and was precisely why I linked it.

I only had a quick look at it since I've been doing other things and only gotten on here briefly at times, so I figured you meant it as a "go to this thread instead". Sorry for that. But now I've read it through properly.

In any world where magic was the dominant, easiest to learn way of doing big things, and generally with a much longer history...That would not stop technological progress, but it would hamper it since a portion of the people who wouldve been great invetnors are instead great wizards.

So would the obvious, really really real Deities, by their mere presence. And not to meniton, there may be an underlying nervousness about advanced technology, seeing as how the most advanced such race annihilated itself in a single brief burst.

And of course, there are people like Sotha Sil, who seem to see technology and magic as two parts of a bigger structure. And the magic users who could cause havoc...I had an idea once for a world where mages invented what we could call black powder, and tell everyone that its an alchemical formula so common people dont trust it.

While ultimately magic wont stop technology, it would put huge blocks in its way at every step. combine that with Numidiums and dragon breaks and...

And thats without even mentioning the constant war!

...So you see my point right?