Bethesda always minimize settlements, villages, towns and cities.

You think College is bad?
Look at Tenpenny Tower, Arefu or Republic Of Dave in Fallout 3.

It disappointed me too. It has hardly any students in it! They should have added at least a half dozen more students to make it somewhat believable.

well, magic is supposed to be looked down on by the Nords, so it isn't going to be a Hogwarts. Not even the movie Hogwarts, where each year had about 5-7 kids per house.

Say what you will about Oblivion, but the Mage's Guild puts the College of Winterhold to shame. It actually felt like a school, with libraries, practice rooms, enchanting and spellmaking buildings, regular classes, lots of students milling about.
I know there are some lore reasons why the college is small (A total cop-out imo) but still, the 5 instructors and 3 students is about as underwhelming as you can get. Which is a shame as the college looks awesome hanging out over the sea like that.

Hogwarts was a movie?
Anyways, this.

The movie version of hogwarts

They spend so much time building their world, perfecting every little detail (since it's their bread and butter), that they don't even realize how small it is. Kind of like building the perfect dog house only to find that your dog is about twice its size.

The whole theme of this game tends to be small things...

I would love to have actual classes at the college. It is very disappointing. There should be buildings for each major field of magic with a couple profs in each area.

I want to take classes in each area... instead of just paying people for one skill point, I'd like to be able to work for my skills. Actually having a place to practice magic with a higher level mage to learn how to hone the skill. Perhaps make fireballs more accurate or explosive... stuff like that. Research your own spells. Write your own spells. There is so much cool stuff they could have done. So small. So limited. Just like towns.

So, about the claims saying that the college is small due to the nords' disinclination toward magic.

I think it is stated in few places that the college is from back when the Winterhold was huge and the institute was prestigious. It is also noted that lots of Dunmers from Morrowind came to Winterhold to study.

Magic's current unpopularity in Skyrim may explain the fact that there's only so many students, but regardless the institution itself should be big.


I think there's only two possible explanation for the small size of the college

1. Technical issue
- This would mean that when the next gen console comes out, everything will be better

or

2. intentional design (for convenience reasons)
- In this case, future Elder scrolls games will also have small college/buildings/cities/etc.... which is bad news for me.

At least you didn't two shot the last enemy for the Mages' Guild with Flare.

Or did you? I haven't done the College.

My guess is fairly simple, and explained by one of the students. Nords do not like magic. 85% of Skyrim is Nords.

Harry Potter? :shakehead:

What bothers me more than the size and number of people at the college, is how fast you become Archmage. From apprentice to the head of the college in something like 5 quests, and they aren't even that long.

I was hoping for a lot more to do with the college, I love my mage cause it's how I imagine myself in a fantasy world, using my smarts to wield incredible power. Was a bit underwhelming when all is said and done.

its because you can buy the PC equivilent tech of an xbox for like $15. Oh what skyrim could of been if it were on the PC only. *long sigh*

A massive flop because the console audience makes up the largest chunk of consumers in the video game industry. That's slowly changing as PCs are becoming a larger and larger industry.

But Zenimax and the investors would have been pissed beyond belief if Bethesda limited Skyrim from ANY platforms.

That may be so, but then many people in the same situation as myself, unable to afford to upgrade or get a new PC, would be unable to play. Let's not turn this in to one of those threads though.

I'm still having a blast playing Skyrim.

Back to discussing the college though.

it's already a pain to find trainers and particular people who sell specific spell types as it is without having 50+ more people to look through.

Because of Big Collapse?

Oh wait, they said college was untouched

I just wonder why there are only 3 students...

I just see it as there really isnt much use for mages in Skyrim. The inhabitants as ive seen em seem to mostly warrior/archer type npc's due to the racial population being of warrioresc people.

mages just seem like a really small minority imo.

not bashin, have a mage myself.

Meh, it matches what they did to Winterhold itself.

I'd say it was actually worse.

To all of those saying that the College doesn't have many members because magic isn't popular in Skyrim:

What about the Companions (i.e. the equivalent of the Fighters Guild)? They have even less members than the College! The Thieves Guild apparently has less members too (according to Wiki).

In general everything about the factions in Skyrim is pretty pathetic.

the size of the college itself is actually fine. look at medieval castles, the vast majority of them arent the humonguous ones you see in merlin the TV show. the whole game sufferes from a severe lack of npcs. when they said that they could render more npcs on screen as a side effect of combining armor i was expecting a whole lot more people. it turns out that whatever gains were made with combining armor were wiped out by the increase texture quality and improved meshes etc on the consoles. not bashing them just saying that because skyrim looks so much better on all systems but there are limits with only 512 ram. as soon as the CK is released though im sure there were will be a skyrim alive mod and a better cities skyrim version. cant wait. and yes becoming the archmage after 3 dungeons is really really pathetic. i love the dynamic quests afterwards but they dont make up for the lame super short main quest. this game suffers even more than oblivion did with the "i want to head every organization there is" mentality. it destroys any semblance of logic or believability in this game.

edit: one thing i think that was definitely missing is where the heck do they do their experiments. am i to believe that the all do their most dangerous experiments in their bedrooms? they could have at least used part of the midden for that.

Most left Skyrim as the war is about the break out possibly?

Gotta love half truths. Can't say it surprised me, though. I was rather expecting it.

There's a number of aspects of Skyrim that just feels... small. The college is one of them. In fact, all of Winterhold. And the background story of it falling into the sea? Frankly it strikes me as an excuse to not put even less work work into one of the nine Hold capitals than they did Falkreath, Marthal and Dawnstar. The rest of the factions suffer from the same problem. All four joinable factions are tiny, as are their quest lines.

It'll be interesting to see a count of how many NPCs total are in Skyrim.