Past games (ignoring mysticism and thurmataugry or whatever)

- illusion affected the mind and senses. Made lights ,Tricks the brain into not Knowing how to move, Stirs emotions and whatnot for fear/calm/charm/raly.
- Conjuration. Summon creatures and turn undead
- Alteration. - Walk on water, shield, open locks
- Restoration- Heals, Fortifies


Skyrim

- Alteration makes lights. Illusion does not. (although the game still tells you otherwise) Same thing with Paralyse
- Restoration now makes shields (alteration's job) and turns undead (conjuration's job)

- Alteration Was once for practical spells (water stuff, locks, at one point flying) . In skyrim it's only function is the armour spell.
- Illusion- I miss charm. Plus paralyse is more of a "sneaky theif" skill (illusion magic) rather than part of the Alteration "tool" magics
- Conjuration- Has five summons (only two being usefull with the leveling) three weapons to bound and a resurrect

They probably shoved a lot of spells around, because after all the spells they cut; some schools were left with only one spell

Kinda like how you got the feeling wards were ment to be in alteration originally.

And then there's mysticism, which is gone completely.

I think they tried to make it more straightforward. I can't remember where I read it but the reason Turn Undead is now restoration is it said "Mages in the 4th Era managed to develop Restoration as a weapon against the undead," which makes sense to me.

Maybe when the Mage's Guild fell apart some knowledge was lost, or someone else took over. I'm a librarian and I know that knowledge is only as good as the last person who tried to organize it.

With the lack of stats, and the way that many skills have been shuffled and changed it's crazy to see such a change within the magic schools. What would restoration fortify? Your non existent attributes?

No, they redefined them
You can argue that they were wrong to do so but theres nothing to indicate they were confused in what they were doing
There are logical arguments in favour of all the spells being where they are

Bethesda's only concerns with magic were making it pretty and nerfing it to kingdom come. Caring about how badly they were messing with it never really came up.

The schools are an artificial construct made by Tamriel's mages to categorise spells, so they can be swapped around and redefined. Magic is magic.

I find all schools to be incredibly boring. I picked Conjuration for my archer as it seemed the most useful, but I still only use 2-3 spells. A wider variety of spells for every school would help a bit. They don't all have to be combat oriented, but at least give me something useful, some reason to actually learn develop magic (since we're all born magicians whether we like it or not).

you know... it's a different game, it's not oblivion 2

Don't worry. In Elder Scrolls VI, there'll only be a "pewpew" spell and a general heal spell.

Mysticism was a crock. There, I said it. A bunch of disparate effects bundled together that didn't make sense. Apparently that's OK, you can justify it because 'these spells tap into magic differently' (why only those particular spells?), or with 'things were better back then....'.
Put a few spells into alteration that kinda make sense, however, apparently we have a problem.

The real problem here, taking no spellmaking as a given, is not the schools or what is in them, it is the serious paucity of spells. We need more tomes, that is all there is to it.

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/origin-mages-guild-1 and http://www.imperial-library.info/content/galerion-mystic

Magical schools are nothing more then a name giving to magic to make it easier to learn for most people. They can specialize instead of having to learn it all, and can learn without truly understand it. That's the main difference between magic in and outside of the Psijic order... Where the Psijic order keeps making things difficult for people. So changing things from one group to another isn't really a problem, there is a reason for all decisions. Mysticism because of that also makes sense, at least to me

I've read all that. I don't have a problem with a school of mysticism per se, just what was in it, and what was in it being given a justification that could be applied to any spell you liked.
Here's an old post of mine :

Misunderstood you, sorry about that and please ingore my previous post.

Good, god, no need whatsoever to apologise to me. My tone might be a bit in your face, sorry, but I spent the best part of a year arguing about this pre-release. Some guys were going mental because what we knew of Skyrim then wouldn't allow their 'Mystical Warrior' or whatever builds. My rather trite answer : have a character who primarily uses alteration, and call them a Mystic, for one very good reason : Alterer, Alterationist, and Altress are just terrible words.

I didn't mind the removal of mysticism or mixing up the spells. Seemed to me that this way they could make each remaining school more functional as well as balanced. But there are just too few spells left. On the one hand being a mage plays better with the new combat controls. On the other hand, a lack of spells also makes being a mage in Skyrim boring compared to previous titles.

Some spells are indeed overpowered but I feel it is up to the player to ruin their own fun. Just like you can max out smithing easily with a glitch, just dont do it if you dont want to ruin the game. Same with levitation. You can float around and be out of range of most enemies but you can choose to not use it as such. I would love for them to bring back levitation (really made being a mage special). And when you get close to a walled-off city, they can always build in invisible wall around the city so that you can only enter via the gate. They already have invisible walls around the city cells so that you cant jump out of it.