Time to explain:

Overrated
I think that a lot of players are fooled by it's huge world and pretty scenery to actually look at the quests, characters and writing.

Overhyped
Mr Todd promised us al ot of cool stuff, but where is it?


Unbalanced
My last character, lvl 70 something, went down a draughr dungeon, I decided to use upgraded Orcish gear on that character, and either I had the diffiulty on Expert, where enemies simply couldn't kill me becuase I was too strong, or it was on Master where the enemies became damage sponges.
I ended up using the console command 'Kill' on all the enemies simply cause it was too unchallenging either way to fight them.
And nerfing myself is not balance.

Unrewarding
Well, what is it then? The last 20 or so dungeons I went down into had nothing of interest, the last 50 quests had nothing useful.
SInce things are randomly given through chests the chance you get something that you actually need is not big.
And since I had the best upgraded Orcish gear I could get and tons of money and other misc items I don't see why I'd want 1000 gold from doing a quest.
At first the game rewards you, but after you find the stuff you need then there's nothing to look for, nothing to expect, nothing that actually feels like a reward.

Badly Written
Save the world, again, Parthunaax was interesting but other than that the rest of the main cast was boring and one-dimensional.

Badly Designed
"So, a new Elder Scrolls game, how should we design it? Suggestions?"
"Dungeon crawler."
"Dungeon crawler."
"Dungeon crawler."
"Dungeon crawler."
"Dungeon crawler."
"Dungeon crawler."
"Dungeon crawler."
"Dungeon crawler."
"Dungeon crawler."
"Ooh...Kay? Well, I guess we'll design a dungeon crawler then, up to eleven?"
"*The whole studio* Up to eleven."
Designing an "RPG" to be a dungeon crawler exclusively is a horrible idea, especially when there are only about a dozen themes for dungeons and crap loot and boring repetitive enemies.


Tedious
Ah, this young man needs help finding his sister, let's see what he requires of me, a hero, to do.
"Go down that dungeon"
*sigh*

Repetitive
Dungeon focus, draughr, dragon bore tactics, same-y quest designs, for the actual content of the game (which is dungeon crawling) you end up doing the same thing over and over again.


Annoying
Oh yes I know that you go to the cloud district alot Nazeem, and guess what, so do I, in fact, I've been up there about 150 times already, how about you?


Oh and not my cup of tea.



The game is fun at first when you are put under it's illusion, but after a certain amount of time every game shows it's flaws, if you can overcome said flaws and learn to live with them or get mods to fix them then it can still work and be fun to play.
But Skyrim cannot be fixed for me. It's illusion wore off and I saw it for what it is, a repetitive dungeon crawler with apart from dragons and shouts has no innovative design what so ever and is a step down from previous titles.
It's a game that the developers didn't care to balance and thought it's up to us to balance out the game (Which, it should not be).
It's a game where once you learn what items the gameworld has to offer and you get the items you want the rest of the gameworld has nothing to offer and gives no incentive for wanting to go down yet another dungeon.
It's a game where the developers are so incredibly afraid of players losing out on content that they chose to make every NPC that is related to quests to be marked as essential.
It's a game who's economy and values and enemy loot is completely broken.
It's a bad game (for me).

Best of all the Elder Scrolls games. Can't wait for the DLC.

I have played 20 hours only. Can't say that much of the game for that reason.
Why?
Too big (visual/graphical/sound) problems and issues for me to enjoy the game; they are "entertaining-breaking" not gameplay-breaking. I wait for Bethesda to do their job properly and fix it, or modders to come for the rescue. In the meanwhile I have modded instead of playing. Modding is fun, and takes time, so the time has gone fast

when is YOUR game comin out?
I bet is gonna be way better...?

My game never came out, it was cancelled by Interplay, and it's successor was [censored] over by Bethesda by them not giving it a fair amount of time for the plannet content.

I have to agree.

I somewhat feel like that's our fault, for expecting so much, but then I snap back to reality. What exactly was holding Bethesda back from adding more than the bare-bones-minimum to the RPG aspects of Skyrim? (yes I know, 11/11/11 and outdated console hardware, but I digress)

The first 10 hours are very flashy, lots of story and "epic feel" to them. Then the other 290 hours you're busy doing fetch quests, talking to vapid NPC's with little to no backstory or relevance, "defining" your character in a very un-TES characteristic perk menu, etc.

The list of disappointments I have in comparison of Skyrim to MW, OB is nearly endless. Maybe that's my fault. Maybe Beth just wants to appeal to the larger audience. I don't know. Skyrim is now an enhanced screenshot tool, rather than the immersive TES game I had hoped for.

still better than nothing

I've been playing vanilla Skyrim since launch day, still enjoying it.

Dat it is, despite it's flaws I'm enjoying New Vegas a lot. With mods it's even greater.

Has it really been 5 months? Wow.

My thoughts- Bethesda good job and congrats on Skyrim. I would hope Bethesda takes into account these considerations for their next TES game:

• How to cater to all players. 'Casual' TES players (who play the game for 20-30 hours then move on to the next game) design the Main Quest for them. For hardcoe players (who sink 70+ hours into the game) design the guilds with leveled ranks and subplots and choices and consequences so as we spend many hours over many months playing your game we are given a more complex world that we can replay with different outcomes/enemies/consequences. And with it taking time for us to become leader of the guilds (leveled rank) we have to invest into our progression and get rewarded for it. In Skyrim there is no reward for becoming the leader of the mages guild even though my character is a Nord Warrior who doesn't use magic. That makes me sad panda.
  
• Reimagine the difficulty settings. Instead of standard choices of novice, hard, expert, ect give the player a list of choices that change how the game operates. After all no one here agrees on everything (example: essential/non essential NPCs or map fog of war/ clear map) this way the difficulty choices allow each person to tailor the game to how they want it and make more people happy

Did the game live up to its hype? I was totally excited to finally get my hands on a new TES game, since Morrowind and Oblivion where the best RPGs in my book. I've played Oblvion for years and even joined a forum RPG about the game, it really inspired my imagination.

I was holding my breath, when I first loaded Skyrim and once I found myself riding in the carriage with the other prisoners, I was sold. I couldn't believe to finally see the beautiful world of Skyrim with my own eyes. The game did not disappoint. The world is as detailed and beautiful as all the other TES games. It's open and you can explore it to your heart's content. The dragons ROCK! I mean, I probably would have bought the game just alone for the Dragons! I LOVE Dragons and I'm glad that they are at least a couple of Dragons that I don't have to kill!

The only disappointment are the dumb guards and their stupid remarks. At first it was funny, but they grew old fast. lol Why do NPC's start talking to you as soon as you get near them? I don't care about your life story, so shut it! *rolls eyes* And the other thing, that's actually pretty major for me, is that my actions in that world have NO CONSEQUENCES what so ever! No, it's not game breaking, because I love to RP and I use my imagination when playing TES games. I've played Skyrim for over 600 hours so far, across 5 characters. I completed the MQ and all the guild quests.

Right now, Skyrim is on hold though, because I discovered the ruins of DC (Fallout 3) LOL

I feel the game is what you make it, it's your choice whether you want to blitz through the quests and call it shallow or read the lore and text what can be found to see what else you can find out. The game never takes you by the hand and forces you to sit and understand the heavy lore.

People are also complaing that the game is boring after 100+ hours. Where's the RPG that is still fresh after that amount of time? I want buy dat!

All good points.
What really annoyed me the most about Skyrim is the lack of features from previous games, though. If I had the spells from Morrowind, I might get past crawling the same dungeon 10 times. If I still could make friends with people, taunt them, make them laugh, I might get past the same sentence every time I pass Nazeem. If I still could hunt for 8 different armor parts, I might get past otherwise unrewarding quests. But all of this and more on top of what you mentioned, makes Skyrim mainly a modding toolkit for me.

I think it's also fair to say I enjoyed The Infernal City and Lord of Souls much, much more than Skyrim. I hope there will be more media within the Elder Scrolls franchise, as the games have clearly lost their magic (pun intended).

I like the game, I still play it (modded of course, vanilla wouldn't stand a chance anymore), but I don't like the update process.

The last update didn't include one fix I needed and instead broke the game for me. I'm getting constant CTDs now, so shame on you Beth. Breaking a game 5 months after it was released (never had such problems before since the launch) even with a weeklong beta test for the patch is something few developers accomplished.

I'm convinced Bethesda fired all of their writers somewhere during the development of FO3 when they realized they can just copy-paste existing and cliché storylines instead of paying professionals to come up with new ones. The result being that FO3's storyline was half-assed (and unoriginal, stolen from the first two) but the NPC dialog felt quite natural (that must've been what the writers were working on before they got axed), and now Skyrim has the most generic BS storyline ever ("herp derp kill draguns cuz dey r evul n bad11!!") and the NPC dialog is on the same level as Pokemon or The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. AKA, every NPC just has one line of generic dialog they spout endlessly.

The game is bad and they should feel bad!

If you play with mods and the latest update gave you CTD issues I would suspect mods before anything else. My version is heavy modded, latest update and no CTD at all. Except for one time, but that I can trace to installing a mod and testing with. So before you go all "shame on you beth" Go through mods to make sure none of those gives you the CTD.

Strongest TES title to date with regards to gameplay, atmosphere and character development.

I am playing through the game with six different characters, and every single one of them are superior in definition and style to any other character I've played in a TES game. I also find all the playthroughs provide very unique and different stories, from the tough and suspicious bosmer fighter who refuses to join any cause, to the dark inquisitor of the empire who maintains a strict, and brutal, justice. They all really only have the main quest in common.

The individual stories does not provide so much choice or different paths, but on the macro level, the sheer amount of different stories to choose from means you can build a character around which stories they choose to pursue, rather than how to pursue them.

Still playing. Still enjoying my old characters and creating new ones.

Still love it, but time has shown me that it's too short. I've done far more of its content as a percentage than I have on Morrowind, and I've played Morrowind a lot more.

Second favourite game of all time.

im bored. done everything i can considering unbroken quests.

i kinda agree
best game single player game ive played in a loooooong time
played around 150-180 hours or so
i have had a thief on level 30 and had to format my HD etc now i have a thief on 20 again and warrior level 27 and a mage on 15
i never would have played a the thief twice to above level 20 when i didnt totally fell in love with that game

Because every Elder Scrolls game has always centered around quests and not exploration, right?

I have explored everything as well. Thank you for trying to put words in my mouth. Skyrim is far too small.

Biggest Elder Scrolls (not counting Daggerfall, because of the randomly-generated content). If you aren't using fast-travel, it takes hundreds of hours to explore the whole world.

Dogs bark and lava is hot. Oh are we done stating the obvious? Skyrim contains a massive amount of walls in the form of mountains that degrades the actual size of the region. It's actually not nearly as big.