I really enjoyed the College of Winterhold's quest line. I really struggled early on with a number of the fights, and lost two followers in the process. It was very epic for me.

What really bothered me was that the player must act not like a mage but like a brainless goon. The other mages and the Psijic guy pretty much tell you where to go, what to do and how to do it, and at no point do you actually have any idea what's going on. You don't find out what the Eye of Magnus really is. You don't unearth amazing new arcane knowledge. In Labyrinthine, you don't actually find out who/what Mordekai is (why not have a bit of a conversation between him and the PC? It would have been a great moment of exposition, and just generally a very interesting encounter - instead, you release him from his blue prison ball and suddenly he's shooting lightning at you and then you kill him and it's over). You just go where some guys tell you to go, and bash various undead and elves until you are The Winner. Then the Psijics (aka fun police) show up to make sure you don't actually do something interesting. It's also aggravating that the Psijic constantly reminds you that he knows way more about everything than you and that he pretty much knows what you're going to do before you do it. I mean, you're supposed to be a talented young mage, not a braindead killing/fetching machine. I'm not asking for a complex multi-path quest; I'd just like it if the quest would treat my character like what he is: an intelligent, powerful, ambitious individual with the ability to warp the fabric of reality and shoot massive balls of fire from his fingertips. Not an ambulatory programmable vegetable with a flamethrower strapped onto its head.

Despite all that, Labyrinthine was a pretty cool dungeon crawl and the quest line was certainly great fun to play. It could just have been so much more if it was written in a more compelling fashion. It probably kind of needed to be a little longer, too...

I agree the end dungeon was a pretty damn epic crawl, but seriously, this was a very disapointing quest line. Jesus, In Oblivion, you had how many quests to do before you could join the mages guild? And atleast those quests were pretty fun and varied, then you actually got into the guild and started working your way up. Didn't like it at all The mage chambers are nice though, and the staff of magnus is as well. But it was entirely to short.

What? No, you're wrong.

I absolutely loved the extent of the Mages questline dungeons. Made me feel really lost and wonder if they were ever going to end. Fun times.

I remember stepping into the Labyrinthian and going "oh shi-, this is gonna take a while"

It was the first and only questline I've finished so far, and it was awesome.

for me it was like a second mainquest, i loved it.


well way longer the the companions?

i went to winterhold almost directly after i arrived in whiterun, and i still was a master in destruction and conjuration @ the end of the questline there

i didn't really count the number of quests, but they were way longer then most other once

While I don't agree with your complain, your suggested QuestLine is Epic! You need to suggest it as a mod, really.

I enjoyed it.

Even the 15 attempts to kill Morokei before finally getting lucky and getting him stuck in a spot where I could hit him with my Fireballs but he couldn't hit me with his lightning.

The mask, staff and robes of the arch-mage are all awesome gear. I'm very happy with my mage right now.

I was fine with it overall. I wish that Ancano hadn't started messing with the eye until AFTER you got back with the staff. The pacing seems [censored]. "Travel ~1 month to get this staff and bring it back, we'll hold him here" seriously, who played that and thought "this makes sense because fast travel is teleporting...oh wait".

Honestly just rearranging the quest line would have been fine, get the staff you come back to a college being harassed by a bunch of magic wraiths, fight your way through them / save winterhold, only to find Ancano trying to bloe up the world, thankfully you can *WALK THROUGH* (this should be a duel fight, having Tolfnir beat him up for you is lame) his barrier with the Staff of Magnus, and get in just in time to watch the archmage die to the eye's power, which you can shut down with the Staff giving you a real duel against Ancano, but you have an advantage, the staff of magnus! (the staff being your advantage is cooler than you having a few random mages slinging spells in your duel!

Quite a bit of handholding but I thought it was great and a huge improvement over past TES games.

This, so many times.

And don't badmouth Dungeon Crawls. Why do you need narrative hand-fed to you?

i thought the college at winterhold stuff was pretty fun, not very challenging and linear yes, but still fun, especially if ur already decent with Magic.

but it could have been a little longer but i think overall it was a decent experience.

I'll admit that the Labyrinthe is one of the best dungeons I've been in so far in the game (second only to Kagrenzel). And it is in fact, really close to what I was talking about before. Less linear dungeon progression, narrative development throughout the dungeon (both in setting and script).

And the mages guild quest line does continue on after you become archmage.

I think some of our tastes are slightly different. You must like faux-epic narratives. I enjoy quality and pacing.

In any case, I can appreciate it and I think that I was too hasty in my judgments.

To be honest, I never like the idea of a 'Guild' of Mages in the first place.

Mainly because it turns you into an grocery boy. You never really had the chance to discover anything new or make any advancements in magic....you just went and 'got the groceries'.

Bethesda's focus has never been narrative or writing, and never will be. I have learned to live with that.

That being said, I really hated that you were forced to join in order to get the better spells.

Yea true quest line svcked ,companion svck at the point I'm in ,who [censored]in cares about werewolves in a fighting guild?
I want epic battles, do I get them ? No , what I get is some werewolves.

One vote for "I loved the Mage Guild quest."

Maybe it's because I had no expectations (never played TES before), but this was a really wonderful quest experience for me. The Mage Guild questline was the first big questline that I stumbled into. And that felt awesome. I've never had that sort of experience in a game before, where I've been able to wander off the main narrative path, and stumble into a story that just keeps getting bigger and bigger. It was magical. Seriously. I said "whoa" to myself a number of times. When we discovered the eye. When I had to speak to that flame guy below the college. When the town got attacked. Lots of "whoa" moments.

It's the quest that made me love Skyrim. I was enjoying the game up til that point, but the Mage Guild quest made me love it. So big ups to whoever designed this quest - you done good.

the ops storyline is good i think, but i liked the vanilla questline pretty well. i just finished it, it was tough but rewarding.

I enjoyed it for the most part although it was too short.
I just really disliked how nothing was explained though. It seemed like I had learned nothing ultimately. I hated the dialogue options that made my character out to be clueless, too. Just annoying.

I liked the story, but it was way to short making it feel unrealistic on how it all happened. Plus the only magic you really had to do was the one spell to get in. It would have been way better if they spaced the important plot moments out a bit. And not to mention that it didn't feel like a college at all; there is 4 rooms(5 counting underneath the school) and about 15 npc. I was hoping for more of a Harry Potter kinda feeling with a big campus and lots of other students and professors, and a lot more magical involvement.

You were hoping for Harry Potter? Gross. God, I detest Harry Potter with all of my soul. I was hoping for the Telvanni. Now there was an interesting setting and quest line.

They should have at least put some type of promotion in the middle to say your no longer an apprentice so that it didn't feel like you jumped from student to archmage

Ahh, the Telvanni. Where anything goes, so long as you don't get caught. I'm just a few quests into the College questline, but I am enjoying it thus far. I've been playing more of a weapon-based battlemage who uses alchemy, enchanting, and destruction on the "magic" side of things. I wonder how playing a magic-oriented character goes. Is it viable? I always had tremendous problems in Morrowind trying to play a mage, and always ended up wearing armour and carrying a weapon instead. Oblivion was a bit better, but I still felt drawn toward weapons instead.

My friend did it and said it was great.

The primary mage questline can be quite short if you're ready to tackle all of it when you pick it up. If you're not then there are apprentice level and training quests that you can do in the interim. Even after you become archmage you can pursue spell-ritual quests for each college of magic to gain bonuses and access to high level spells in each of those colleges. There's also a strange daedric artifact and atrinach forge in the midden to play around with. For your 3 fellow new students, each of them has a quest you can do for them as well. They don't force you to go into any of this if to advance the primary quest, but if you're not powerful enough to complete it they certainly give you opportunities to practice your skills quite a bit.


In addition to making all the junior mages optional followers, you get some repeatable fast-cash quests added into the existing mix.

It also opens up another questline that involves one of the senior mages getting your help recreating a famous incident involving dwemer tonal architecture (their brand of magic).