Never played a single CW mission, so can anybody explain, without spoilers, what makes so many of you despise this quest line? It seems like it would have some potential.

I actually really like it. I think most people consider it kind of repetitive and too easy though. Quite a few quests require the player and their chosen side to wipe out all the opposing forces in various forts and it's impossible for the player's side to lose. Those are flaws IMO but not nearly enough to justify all the flak the questline gets. If that's not it, I got nothing.

My main gripe is how intertwined with the MQ it is. I shouldn't have to become Dragonborn to fight with my Nord brothers/sisters or fellow legionnaires.

Some others may actually like it that there is no simple easy side to identify with, but I don't like the CW quests partly because both sides are hypocritical. I don't agree with everything on either side.

Going through the quests damages some select cities / towns which do not repair and remain partially damaged.

Taking over old ruined forts to claim a territory doesn't make much sense. At least it doesn't damage the living cities then.

No real closure to the end of that quest line. You go through all that fighting / war for what? Where are the fruits of your labour at the end of it all other then having Skyrim become all pro Empire or all pro Stormcloak (guards in each town).

At least you do see some changes like Jarls getting replaced but each side has some Jarls I don't care for making you regret replacing some of the old ones.

There is no happy medium middle ground in the quests. It's either Stormcloaks or Empire. You can't mediate with them to bring about a truce.

1. It's hard to pick a side since both sides svck.

2. I've no real desire to roleplay a foot soldier who takes orders.

Excerpt from the movie Willow:

You can't join a side until you do some of the MQ?

The Civil War and the main quest only intersect twice and they're both really minor. For one of your first CW missions you have to deliver a message to Jarl Balgruuf but he won't accept it until you complete Dragon Rising and you can't complete the main storyline quest The Fallen until you either complete the CW or negotiate a temporary peace treaty.

I don't hate the Civil War questline, but for a questline of such great importance it is kind of lackluster. For many people it is repetitive, and to an extent I agree.

A couple things to note:

1) Ambiguity is a core part of TES, so there has to be a good measure of it when it comes to something like this. If it were such an obvious choice, then it isn't really ambiguous who is "right" and there isn't nearly as much discussion to generate. It is just more fun, and better quality stuff, when some things and in a gray area. In the case of the Imperials vs. Stormcloaks, it is supposed to be a hard choice to make. I stayed out of the Civil War as long as I could. The presence of unsavory aspects to both sides is deliberate.

2) Along similar lines, you have to be careful with how you end questlines so that you don't invalidate some playthroughs in the future. If it were "canon" in TESVI that one side won, you'd anger those players who chose the other side. If you could clearly see one side won in the game and in TESVI this wasn't the case, you'd anger some players, not to mention it may not make sense to suddenly invalidate your clear victory. It's a fine line that Bethesda has to walk in this regard.

The CW system has so many cauterized leftovers behind the curtain that shows it could have had so much promise. What we got was... meh.

1) True. As mentioned, some people like it that way. Ironically I liked such ambiguity in FO3. For some reason I don't enjoy that kind of ambiguity as much in a LOTR style fantasy RPG

2) Fair point

*cough* Civil War Overhaul mod *cough*

I haven't tried it myself and I've heard it can be kind of unstable if you don't follow the instructions but it restores and finishes a lot of content that was dummied out of the CW.

Wait, what? I completed the MQ my first play through but I don't remember doing any CW.

You still had to get them to a temporary truce before the Grey Beards could host a meeting to thwart the dragon menace in Skyrim

I honestly don't remember that one, although I do remember the meeting.

The Quest was called Season Unending.

I thought the civil war had great potential. But they ruined it for me by tying it to the main quest. Whoever thought that was a good idea should be tarred, feathered, horsewhipped, and forced to listen to Slim Whitman's "Indian Love Call" over and over until he promises on a stack of bibles that are piled on top of his mothers' grave that he will never to do anything like that ever again.

It's a shame too, because I think Tullius and Ulfric, Rikke and Delphine are some of the most memorable, controversial, intriguing characters Bethesda has ever created. (Tullius in particular is fascinating. He is one of the few characters in any Bethesda game to display a bit of actual character development). For the first time ever Bethesda did not force us to aid the Empire. They actually created a quest line in which we could take sides. And Season Unending is probably my favorite single quest in any Elder Scrolls game.

For all these reasons and more the civil war could have been the most wonderful quest line ever developed by Bethesda. But, as with so many other things in Skyrim, its potential was not realized. The civil war entered with a flourish and then it fell flat on its face.

3. If you're a Thalmor supporter, you have no real reason to play the quest line once you play Diplomatic Immunity questline.

4. If you're a Dominion supporter but a Thalmor dissident, you have no real reason to play the quest line once you play Diplomatic Immunity questline.

I think that one reason is that you'd expect completion of the CW on either side to completely change things, and it can't without breaking the rest of the game.

The successful side should be able to turn its attention to bandits/forsworn/necromancers or other unlawful groups, but of course that's the player character's job.

I'd have been happier with a stalemate, maybe having Whiterun be the point of failure. Revert to status quo, and keep having quests that don't help, as the other side makes advances behind your back. You take one fort, but they take another you left weak. You could keep getting radiant quests - rescue prisoner, steal battle plans, etc. but the map remains in balance.

That also makes the history simpler for the next game.

I just flat hate anything that smacks of "war" under any circumstances. If I wanted to play war games, I would. I don't.

I like them, never hated them. The Civil War threads here in the forums is what I pass over though...

You can join a side, but once you get to a certain point in the CW questline, you will be pretty much forced into the MQ. There is a single reason for this, which is a slight spoiler. Arguably there are two, and oddly enough both focus somewhat on the Stormcloak side of things, though the second one is only how Ulfric refers to you at the end of the Stormcloak side(and on the Imperial side for that matter). The other is a lack of VO for a certain character, for the first few main quests.

As for the quest itself, I usually don't do it unless it makes sense for the character, and I've only played the questline three times in full, twice on the Imperial side, and once as a Stormcloak. I do have another character who is doing the CW quests, though I don't know if I'll finish that character.

I rather like the Civial War quest line, I think that it could have been better implemented like increasing the PCs role when he/she increased in rank, and getting special imperial styled loot instead of random loot, and battles could have looked much better, but overall I enjoyed being a kind of special forces operative for the Empire. lol

The Civil War background is well done, but the actual quest line is "meh", as if Bethesda wanted to portray soldier's life as boring - once the actual battles starts, there are few quests not involving assaulting another enemy fort. It could have been more varied and adventurous.

Afaik for instance Skyrim Unbound mod strips Civil War dialog off the moniker received during that fateful Main Quest mission, through some audio cutting and splicing.

The second of these reasons, however, pretty much forces a fixing modder to roll out an alternative version of that fateful Main Quest mission, one that wouldn't involve any of those NPCs who perish during the Civil War. Honestly, it's so fun that I don't know why nobody did it - until now.

I don't know that I'd go so far as to say that I hate the Civil War quests, but the issue I have is that it never they consistently realize the potential of the setup. The lore behind the whole conflict is intriguing enough that some of us still have impassioned arguments about it, and the main characters on both sides are also fairly complex and interesting. That's why it comes off as somewhat of a disappointment to many people including myself that the bulk of the playable storyline is actually somewhat of a boring slog.

That's not to say that it doesn't have it's moments. The Battle for Whiterun and Windhelm/Solitude depending on your side contain some highlights although the fighting itself still feels a bit too small in scale, and should you progress the main quest far enough to get the Season Unending quest, the negotiations at High Hrothgar are a personal favorite of mine.

Unfortunately, the middle part of the questline is virtually nothing but going hold to hold claiming territory by sacking random forts that wouldn't have otherwise seemed important.

It's also pretty blandly linear rather than feeling like a dynamic war. The fate of the conflict is never seriously in the balance once you choose a side because you can't actually lose any of the battles. There's not even any scripted counterattacks or territorial losses to give the illusion of a dangerous and uncertain war. Just a simple progression through taking the holds for your side until you've claimed them all. It's not unplayable, but at the same time it feels like it could have been and should have been a lot more.

My main gripe is that it feels "all for naught." Aside from a few Jarl changes and a few soldiers changing uniforms, nothing really changes in Skyrim once the War is done.

"War. War never changes." Who would have thought the opening to Fallout would describe Skyrim's Civil War so eloquently