I agree. I don't know if there is a trader in the town. At first I thought it was Dragon Bridge or Rorikstad, but since I've encounter a few dragons in both towns I find them more interested than Dawnstar that's for sure.

LOL WTF. Didnt even know that existed until I clicked the link. I thought you were kidding... And I put 500+ hours into Oblivion...

New Sheoth.



JK.

It′s kinda off track wouldn′t you say

So true.

Not that much, actually. You don't have to stray far from Leyawiin to see the map marker for it. Then again, I hear not many people spend much time in Blackwood, but I love just wandering around the wilderness there, it's my favourite environment type in Oblivion.

I have to disagree with this. There are a number of NPCs in the game who have no "function" other than to be there. Take Romana Faleria for instance: She's not part of any quest, but she regularly travels back and forth between the Imperial City and Bruma.

And the afore-mentioned village of Blankenmarch has no quest involvement at all, and none of the three people living there do either. Yet they all still have daily schedules that they follow.

Yes, but isn′t Blankenmarsch involved with a quest that got scrapped and the village was just left behind? But as you say there are people that aren′t involved with quests, both in Imperial City and elsewhere. And no, I′m not just thinking guards

Yes, I heard that, but notice that the village was still left there, to exist. There are lots of pointless but interesting non-quest people and things in Oblivion, like dead people with personal notes, dead drunken goblins, a strange chest with a weird book in it, sitting out in the middle of nowhere.

There are several people who travel on the road just to travel on the road. There are people all over the place who really serve no function other than to provide "local color" or "extras." (Most of the people wandering around in the Arcane University have no actual "function," for instance.) Every Daedric Shrine has "extras" whose function is to just sit around, and occasionally bow to the altar.

Quite a few have thoroughly disappointed me. But one has disappointed me to the point where I actually get mad when I go there.

That town is Winterhold. I thought that town would be massive, sprawling with budding mages and quite tightly packed. But no. It's three buildings. And it has the worst [censored] excuse for it's lack of population, there's not even any trace of buildings falling into the sea. That town has, by itself, convinced me to learn how to model and retexture buildings so I can fix it.

Other disappointing places:
Blakenmarch
Shor's Stone
Morthal
Karthwasten
Brindle Home
Harlun's Watch

Falkreath and Dawnstar could also be better too - but I wasn't expecting a whole lot out of them and at least they were more likeable than Morthal and Winterhold.

Winterhold, Falkreath, Dawnstar, Whiterun (not nearly as big as it could easily have been)

Blakenmarch is a good place to stop and have a meal or two as you're passing through when you're a vampire.

Dawnstar. When found out about a mobile game there I figured it was a huge city. So when I was traveling to what I thought was going to be giant city I saw the tower for that daedric quest over the mountain and I thought that was part of the city. Then I turn the corner and find out it is a small fishing village. I still laugh about it, one of my most memorable Skyrim moments.

It's got to be Mortgal for me.. I was doing the MQ for the horn of Jurgen Windcaller and had just fought my way through Labyrinthian and then saw it on the compass. So I sprinted towards it and realised it was just a damp, dreary swampy town. I don't mind the other hold capitals, I kinda like the other holds terrain and feel but Hjaalmarch and Morthal weren't there for me..

in Skyrim: All cities and towns EXCEPT Riften and Riverwood (though I liked the feel of Dawnstar, it looked beautiful at times with the northen lights and everything)

Oblivion: Imperial City, Cheydinhal, Skingrad, and Leyawiin.

Seeing as NPCs have changed by leaps and bounds throughout the series, as well as the general array of things you can do in the cities, I'll break it down per game:

Arena: The Imperial City, of course! Who picked out those horrendous brown flagstones?
Daggerfall: Erm...well, of the capitol cities, Daggerfall is rather bland. Wayrest has the gardens and manor, and Sentinel has a fairly interesting, organic layout with lots of scenery strewn about in the spaces between buildings.
Morrowind: Vivec. It's a beautiful city, but also terribly annoying to navigate at times.
Oblivion: Other than our beloved IC? Cheydinhal. I feel as though the castle grounds take up too much space, and the buildings themselves simply contrast too heavily with the trees around them.
Skyrim: Falkreath. It was actually the first major city I visited, so I was disappointed when I realized it was basically an oversized village. The woods around it are nice, though.

Winterhold, definatly winterhold. It wasn't even a city. I mean, come on.

I was in the http://steamcommunity.com/id/StoneFrog/screenshot/488878325829758154?tab=public of http://steamcommunity.com/id/StoneFrog/screenshot/488878795940692302 that one!

Leyawiin is easily the town I like least in all of TES. It's just so poorly realized. Extremely bland, horribly mismatched interiors and exteriors and the way it blocks the mighty Niben is just unacceptable. I can't shake the feeling that the entire city suffered a last minute overhaul to get left in such a sorry state.

When it comes to smaller places Winterhold definitely gets the Missed Opportunity Award from me.

Addressing common complaints:

I wasn't really upset with Winterhold so much. I think it could use a lot more ruin, but that is about it.

As for the Imperial City, I was neutral towards it mostly. What I hated about it was how underwhelming the interior of White-Gold Tower is. I was imagining a huge palace fit for a king, not a few chambers, most of which can only be accessed through the Thieves Guild.

I loathe Vivec. Cantons were a horrible idea. and they might as well made it so that was one gigantic palace. If it was a palace-city, at least it would be awesome and relatively easy to navigate.

Leyawiin is a slum that barely ought to be called a city.

Can't agree on the Leyawiin front at all. I love that place, such a nice mood, and the layout makes it the closest of the OB cities with Skingrad being the possible exception to feel like more than a small town. I can agree though that it's absolutely stupid that they made it block the river though.

Kvatch and Sutch. Kvatch was reduced to a plot device, and Sutch was just taken completely out. The Imperial City was cool, but I read the description in PGE1. It should have been more like Vivec City, but way cooler and richer and more fantastic.

I remember seeing that picture, and I have to say that Sutch also the most disappointing town, or lack of one anyway, for me. They could have potentially made it about the size of some place like Anvil, but instead what we got, was another bandit-infested, abandoned fort. At least it had one mission tied to it, I guess.

As for Skyrim, I was expecting to see a lot of what's in this map:


http://mlkshk.com/r/4WRU

Whatever happened to places like Pagran Village, Lainalten, and Amol, anyway? Do they still exist, and I am not aware of them? If not, that's a disappointment of mine that they didn't make it in the game.

Amol is now a fort, as is Sunguard and a few others, and also some are small settlements like Kynesgrove, but there are some that just don't exist.

Falkreath isn't close to the border anymore, Mt Hrothgar is south of Whiterun, the general layout of mountain ranges and plains... Skyrim's geography is very different.
Amol and Sungard (in that spelling) still exist as forts, but in completely different places (Amol is in the Rift, Sungard overlooks the Whiterun plains from the Reach), Lainalten looks like it could've been renamed Rorikstead, Markarth is much more important than tiny Karthwasten (and looks like their position's been swapped), Morthal and the Hjaalmarch isn't even on that map, and The Pale is now the region around Dawnstar.
So, in the end, they overhauled Skyrim's geography completely.

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@topic: Leyawiin. Of the larger settlements of Oblivion, it's the only one that I cannot remember (without looking it up) how it looked, what was there (except for rain and Argonians), and what the point of that city was.
Bravil cornered the "muddy slum" type of city and did it much better, Anvil was a nice port, but Leyawiin... no clue.

Vivec maybe a pain to navigate, but... There is a mod that adds shacks and wooden walkways and stuff and NPCs to the waterways between the cantons, and there are at least two Open Vivec mods (usually taking the Maar Gan open canton and building things on top). It only takes a look at my framerate (and there's plenty of time to do that) when running these mods to know why Bethesda scrapped the open city.
Although I agree that they could have made the cantons a lot more... appealing and easier to get around.

For small settlements, I don't actually mind them, even if they just exist without any point whatsoever. It would be nice to have the possibility to sleep there (doesn't need to be an inn), but that's it. They add colour to the land, just as forts, dungeons, trees and lakes. I like the small mills and farms around Skyrim, for instance, even if they serve as a random quest target at best.