I think the point PhonAntiPhon is making is that you yourself seem to think there's a difference between playing for six months, starting with release versus playing for six months beginning several months after release.

I think what some of us don't understand is why you brought up the issue of buying the game at release in the first place. If one plays for six months they get the same value out of the game whether that six months occurs immediately after launch or two years after launch, no?

I think people are just confused as to why you mentioned the date of purchase.

Oh crap. I gottcha. I mentioned when i got it , and how much ive played it, only cus im not sure if im minority or majority as far as when we all got the game, and how long we have played. Just got it? TONS of stuff to see. Got at launch? Not so much. I wish i knew then what i know now lol. Wait,no i dont, cus id be too eager to play!

Aside from that, the burnout that was a big part of this thread, which i was lucky enough to get answers for, its nice to speak to like minded people who have good advice.

Whether you got it at launch or now wouldn't make much difference. You will still play the same number of hours.

Sound the same as my situation in other TES games. Maybe even the Fallout games. What I tend to do is put the game down a couple of weeks and play something different. Been playing a lot of Team fortress 2 and BF3.

Then I came back to my mage, decided it was high level enough, made a warrior. Now I'm leveling it as a templar, or more akin to Paladins from WoW. Resto shield warrior that can 2h also. Also cranked the difficulty up and not only spotted more dungeons, but the ones I previously visited seem like new.

On the old titles there could be huge gaps between wanting to play again. Heck I was playing through Oblivion again last summer. TES is just one of those titles for me at least.

+1
This is, in fact, what I meant.
I was just rather blunter about it.

You won't know what you have, till you lost it.
My Xbox has Recently been broken, and now I have all these crazy ideas of what i want to do next, but seemingly according to the OP, it looks like you've played so much not even a 2 month break, or longer could make it more interesting.

But its worth a try,
Just have a long break from it.

It's foolish to buy TES games or even any Beth game at launch. It's never completed anyways, so they finish their beta testing and they put up their updates later on. I would say either at 1.6 or the first DLC, whichever comes first, would be the optimal time to play Skyrim for the first time.

Nope, you didn't make a mistake. I got Oblivion when it first came out, along with FO3, watching a game grow through the patches and the DLC's really lets you feel as though you have grown with the game!

Frozenwastes, i feel your pain. My launch, fat ps3 crapped out just as i was really into fo3.

My personal opinion: It's a truely bad idea, to buy any game with a big open world designed gameplay at release or slightly later. And I think, that wouldn't change anymore.

buy at launch
play the hell out of it for a month or 2
trade it in for $20-$40 dollar store credit
wait like 1 year
buy GOTY edition
play game again plus all the delicious DLC.