I have been and still am enjoying the hell out of skyrim. I have deliberately avoided wikis, youtube and what not to keep as much adventure out of it as possible. However now that I have been named Arch-Mage, and still have Alteration and Illusion being boardline useless due to lack of usefull spells (or even just fun play around spells). The only useful spells I have found in there is clairvoyance and that hovering light I don't recall the name of (both of these spells are AWESOME tho).

The wiki seems to lack a lot of information, so I don't know if I can trust the list on there. Is those listed there really all we got?

Shield spells for alteration are very useful. All those 'stoneflesh' and such spells are a good spell to have. And I think you mean the wikis seem to 'lack' a lot of info, and not leak? As for illusion, it's completely focused on making opponents frenzy against eachother, calm some others and maybe even command some of them, iirc.

I know there was a lot of trivial spells in Morrowind, but I can't help but miss them from time to time As for the miss spelling, I am aware. Its some sort of writing disorder, I can't really help it, and notice it, unless I write something done, leave the text for a good few hours (so I don't know it by heart) then re-read it. Trust me a small is nothing, it can be much much worse unfortunetly :/

Hehe, my worst misspellings happen when I try to type too fast than I actually am capable of. That often leads to the text having one extra letter somewhere or a missing letter, or an exchanged letter

I think that they did a great job with destruction school, really making unique spells from the same effect, but weren't quite able to get that same amount of greatness into the other schools. Restoration did get a nice addition too, the ward spell is quite handy and feels very mage-ish.

sadly charm, lockpicking, water-walking, frotiy attribute, spell absorption, armor degrading spells are gone

I'm particularlu miffed at the absence of open and charm spells.But the spells that are there are quite fun to use and finely tuned.

According to the guide, after you take out each varying level of spells, you end up with between 4-10 in each tree. Destruction having the most, Alteration having the least.

Agree with this
The enchantress Morgan Le Fay style I played in MW and Oblivion is dead in the water now
I'm pleased with the many improvements in playability of mages but a bit disappointed that Alteration, Conjuration and Illusion have lost some of their versitility

Exactly. Especially the open spell, god i miss that. it doesn't feel so mage'ish to be forced to stand there picking a lock. However compared to what we have, its really more a suggestion of what shouldn't be forgotten in the future, then a complaint

I can see why the open lock spells are gone. It would have made everything else to do with lockpicking obsolete.

Also doesn't Bosmer start with a Charm animal spell?

Not true. The way magicka works with regeneration, it would easily be made in a way that would only allow mage oriented chars to use it. Just like we can't buy chain lightning in the beginning, so could you make this spell and its different lvls not work until you hit set cap of Alteration