The weapon/armor type is the same but the styles have changed. I for one don't want to see the invention of gunpowder but i would like to see some innovation like crossbows and differen't types of melee weapons...flails and spears come to mind

If you feel condescended upon then that is your doing. My aim is to teach.
In fact, Tamriel has always been a magical place, and there is no real shift towards more Earth-like.
Arena featured demons, but did not have daedra yet. Daggerfall introduced great swathes of lore, such as the daedra and the creation myths. Morrowind took place on the secluded island of Vvardenfell, who's isolation and influence to Red Mountain produced quite distinct animal and plant life. In Oblivion we saw a return to a more Daggerfall style of inhabitants with many mythological creatures as well as Beth's own inventions. Skyrim is similar to Oblivion except for less daedra, which is logical considering the gates to oblivion were closed the previous game.

Some elements that have been removed from the game due to technical limitations or design decisions such as levitation and teleportation are not suddenly forgotten, but still exist in lore. They are just not accessible for the player anymore.

Things like shadows appearing on grass Im not even going to adress apart from pointing out that graphical quality of a game reflects its year of production, not its lore.

Nirn only resembles Earth in the most superficial of ways.
In the fundamental, it could not be more different.
It is the centre of its 'solar system' for instance, everything orbits around Nirn.

1- seasons lasts like 20 days instead of 4 months, there's nothing like dwemer ruins or draugr ruins or falmer ruins (talking about looks)
2- after you kill, let's say a bear, it magically respawn after 30 days (my dead cat didn't respawned yet in real life)
3- I followed some people in skyrim to see what they were doing all day, no one ever ate something or took a bath or talked to someone not quest related

why? because fantasy =/= reality, live with it

these are only some examples, but still, time passes differently, there's different flora and fauna, different places with different architectures that don't exists on earth, different gravity, magic is acknowledged and used, you can learn magic by reading a book and lots more

Tamrielic society is very apt at tearing itself apart. Even the mightiest empries routinely get razed to the ground, libraries get burned, earth gets salted, etc., etc.. Never mind the Dwemer, let's remember Ayelids. These guys were at the top of the heap, then along come Alessia and Pelinal Whitestrake, and now convenient mana-recharging stations are all that's left. Gods only know how much knowledge and progress got ploughed under. And it happens over and over and over again.

Then there's magick, which is common enough to undermine the need for technological progress. Why invent a lightbulb when you can cast Candlelight? Or buy an enchanged Staff of Candlelight from the nearest mage shop. Why invent a steam engine when you can Mark and Recall? Etc., etc.. While society on Earth works towards building a better mousetrap, society on Nirn works towards creating a better Conjure Mousetrap spell.

And since there is magick, the reality is a lot more malleable and "thin" if you will than it is on Earth. Technology requires science. Science requires laws. If you cannot establish scientific laws, there is no scientific progress. No science, no technology, no traditional progress.

And then there are Aedra and Daedra, and the latter constantly insert themselves into mortal affairs and mess things up.

And then there are multiple Dragon Breaks that re-write history altogether.

And who knows what is happening in Akavir. On one hand you have Tosh Raka and his kitty buddies, who don't give a toss about progress and technology, because they want to be dragons. Then there are the monkeys, who are happy to be primitive, and the snow demons that are a force of nature. And finally the Tsaesci; now these guys just might show some kind of traditional progress. Of course, the catfolk may have wiped them out by now (why not? Tosh Raka wants to conquer everything). But if not, chances are Tsaesci are riding around in hovercars and use guns, which is why no invasion is ever successful...

It appears that this needs sorting out. I will, but after I have eaten, I will be back and reopen it .......... later.

OK. I have deleted a dozen posts, left them in a cozy little place where I can refer to them again if need be. So, the two of you who lost posts for taking this thread off topic for the purpose of flamebaiting, making condescending remarks and personal attacks be aware that both this topic and you are on my watch list.

Thanks to the rest of you who stayed constructive and civil.

Merari, in this instance, the lore isn't relevant since for the purpose of evolution it can be twisted, and has been in the past. The notable example being the dwemer and their 'gods' of Reason and Logic.

As much as I enjoy Skyrim, there are certain technological devolutions which seem to make very little sense when cosidered alongside the lore. The lack of seige weaponry in a world dominated by forts and castles, the lack of spears, when spears have been present in previous centuries, the mechanised sawmills, yet not a sickle in sight and I can't remember seeing a plough either, the lack of ballistas and other such weaponry outside dwemer ruins and the lack of defenses against dwemer devices. The chimer, the nords and the falmer all fought against the dwemer but there's little physical evidence of this.

And when you boil down the lore to its basics, Nirn is the product of Lorkhan and ultimately of Sithis, of change.To see that reflected just a little more could make the world seem more alive and more realistic than it does at present.

Guess it all depends on how you play the game. I dont really play tes games for their history, but more for the adventure aspects. FFT i do play for history and story because it was made to be one of its very strong points.

I would say that for the purposes of technology and its advancement or lack thereof on Tamriel, lore is the most important tool we have to try and make sense of things. What appears in the game-world only goes so far as to describe the world, the rest comes via the in-game books and out-game dev texts. All these things together form the lore, which is the collection of knowledge and speculations about the world of Elder Scrolls.

Im not familiar with lore twisted concerning the Dwemer and their gods of logic, could you elaborate please?
As far as I am aware the Dwemer worshiped no gods though they recognised their existence.

As for the ommissions and regressions, there also isnt any milk but we sure see a lot of cheese and cows.
Its a case of game design factors and decisions.
You cant judge things solely on what appears in-game, you have to factor lore in too and logical assumptions based on evidence.
We have never seen a printing press in a game but the abundance of books on any conceivable subject does lead one to infer they must exist.
Things like spears, levitation, teleportation and the like still have their place in lore, its not like they suddenly dissapeared from the world, just that version of the world filtered through the game that we experience.
Siege weapons do exist, they are the battlemages.
It is they who fire volley after volley of destruction and alteration magic at a city wall until it crumbles. They are defended by archers, spearmen and supplemented by healers.

Nirn may have been a project proposed by Lorkhan, but Magnus was the Architect and all of the Aedra sacrificed (parts of) themselves into it.
All Aedra (and all Et'Ada) are neither soley Anuic or Padomaic because all them were birthed via the interplay between Anu and Padomay. Some are decidedly more chaotic or orderly, but all are a mix of the two.

200 year stretches didn't necessarily involve much technological progress. The period from maybe 300 AD, at a guess, to probably 800 or so saw little technological progress in the west, and in terms of what the average person saw, used and did, you could easily say there was a technological regression, at least in practical terms. It took a few centuries for medieval technology to surpass that of the Romans. And of course before Bronze age technological developments, humanity went centuries and even millennia without seeing any real change.

So I'm not sure there's much strength in the argument that Tamrielic technology should show an advance between the time of Oblivion and the time of Skyrim.

I agree with your point about the background lore vs what you see displayed in any one game, but I don't quite get your point about printing presses. Which in-game books make you deduce that the printing press must exist? Just the availability of books?

Yes, the sheer availability of them, also the many copies of the same books and that there are books on anything, from cookery to fictional novels to history books etc.
Before we invented the printing press bookmaking was a timely and costly process and books about the more frivolous things of life largely did not exist. Religious tractates and books of law, yes. The occasional scientific volume.
There are also stores that specialise in selling books, there is the newspaper in Oblivion and now I come to think about it there is http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tribunal:Muckraking_Journalist, so possibly a printing press isnt a good example of an inferred technology.

Now I need to come up with a different example.

I am an old kid!!! 25 years old.

It is a fact that science was thrown back for centuries. this has nothing to do with glorified romance. If there was no vatican and his christian fundamentalism progress would be further on nowadays.

But as a said it is not a good comparison because auf the magic and all that stuff.

In 900 AD people lived pretty much the same as they did in 600 AD...in reality, it was only in the last 200 years that the western world really started changing, with industrialisation.

In some parts of our world, people still live the way they did a thousand years ago.

I wish people would stop talking as if game mechanics were lore

Also consider that technology such as iron, fire and magic (which in most regards can be viewed as a "technology") in fantasy environments are often associated with Gods and divine influence, rather than human innovation. Most of the lore and myths in fantasy environments regard these things as gifts from divine beings, and as such there is no natural development or innovation within civilization itself, only due to divine intervention.

It would be cool if you could flip around on horse back and offload a few arrows at npc's trying to give chase,that's how the persians use to fight on horse,roll in close,loose a volley,roll out and loose again as retreating,thats what tookout ol marcus when he got stomped by the parthians,people should checkout what the eastern empires armour was for those era's,it's frikkin amazing.

We do fight on horses??? I wonder why I haven't seen a horse in my life! not really! I have seen one or two, but never ride any!

but there was vast changes in eastern history, believe me!