Messy1's post about wanting more than 3 bard songs made me think. Why not have users generate songs.

For example:

Once a year Bethesda/Zenimax runs a song contest; while in game there is a Bard's festival. The 10 top winners are announced at the peak of the festival and consequently bards sing their songs throughout the kingdoms. Withing 3 years you step into a bar and to hear any of 30 songs.

With war in full gear, contest between black smiths could be held. Armor and weapon designs all provided by users.

So many users on this forum know a lot of TES lore why not have book/story contest? Talk about an Easter egg. OMG I just found a book a guild mate wrote.

Morrowind was one of the first games to demonstrate the power of the community. This tradition continued with Oblivion and Skyrim. I would argue that TES games and user content is synonymous. With a little creativity Zenimax could harness the community.

Because nobody at ZOS has time to wade through 10 million entries from the playerbase. (No I'm not saying there will be 10 million subscribers, but lets be real and assume people will enter multiple times one way or another)

I disagree with you. For example a dev might be able to write a couple songs or create one armor set in two to three days. The same guy could review 500 songs or 1000 armor sets in that same time and select the best 1% for pier review(5 songs or 10 armor sets). I respect the devs they do great work, but I wager the communities best 1% beats out a devs average days work.

Creativity and organization would be key. For example armor sets could be divided into armor weight and style(race and etc). Songs could be divided into categories such as love, war, home, sad, loud or home.

Take a look at WoW with their incredible revenue, and yet they use the same in-game paintings time and again. Other MMO's are seeing value in community content such as Sony with Everquest Next or RSI with Star Citizen. These are both well funded companies that are looking to users to aide in content creation.

test

why not just skip the op's suggestion. and make it like they have it in LotRO. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LYvem67qCs

And they're taking a risk in doing so, and since those games aren't even close to release, it is in no way clear whether that will be a worthwhile business decision or not. Zeni went with the less interesting but less risky option: sell an established IP on a standard MMO chassis.

this

even if it makes me cry