Why does it have such a bad reputation? Also, does anybody else think that this is totally [CENSORED] awesome?

Bumpety Bump.

Don't bumb questions a 5 year old would ask..

College of Winterhold*

Cheers for that, I'll bear it in mind for the future.

(y)

Edit: Ahhh, crap. There's too many cities beginning with W.

I recently joined it and haven't gotten far, but so far it's been great. The very first quest was interesting and very refreshing to me who had gotten used to the rather boring quests in Oblivion. I had kind of expected the quests would be similar, but I was glad to be proven wrong. Of course, I cannot say so for the whole questline as I'm still at the beginning.

Also, I think it was explained at least to some extent why the college has a bad reputation, but I didn't pay much attention. xD

Yup, very awesome. For the first part of the question the reason would be the eruption of Red Mountain in which the sea rose up and destroyed Most of Winterhold yada yada yada...... which they totally blame on mages and magic users in general. If you go talk to many Nords they comment on magic as being weak like the other races ect......

If you ask the mages about the great collapse, that should answer your question.