Yes! we can join the companions, but what if we could join the The Silver Hands to fight against the companions?
you know, If we are enough evil to join the Dark Brotherhood, so we can join the Silver hands too!
there is also other opposite groups like Forsworns which I like to join!

Yes, I'd like this too:

Companions - Silver Hand

Dark Brotherhood - Pentius Oculatus

Thieves Guild - non corrupt Riften city guard?

College of Winterhold - Well, the only faction that opposes them is

My experience with this game would be so much better if they made mutually exclusive guilds, guilds that require specific relevant skills, guilds that send you to sabotage other guilds. before Skyrim Bethesda was pride to advertise "this time around the guilds are not disconnected to the world events any longer" which was equivalent to a criticism of Oblivion's guilds. I hope before TES VI they will say " this time around only a mage can lead the mages guild" or "this time around it lasts longer than one week to be leader of all guilds".

@ silus(threadstarter), your idea is amazing. i nvr thought of it. I hope there is a mod that enables us to do that but...
@gt409, maybe:

Thieves Guild - mjoll, jarl laila, and yea non-criminal guards etc. Root out evil in riften.

Thanks to you for sharing you thoughts,
I think It would be a real RPG!
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there should be guild to support/fight vampires too.
think of it; there is a bunch of vampires which travel at nights, when the town is asleep, they start to wake up and live!

The silver hands aren't even evil, i'd rather join them than the companions...

Even in Morrowind, which had more guilds and greater depth of guild questlines, there were no mutually exclusive guilds. You could join the Mage's Guild and House Telvanni. The Tribunal Temple and the Imperial Cult. The Thieve's Guild and the Imperial Legion. Heck, the first time I played, I thought that Telvanni and the Mage's Guild would be allies, since they are both arcane guilds. Sure, theres a few conflicts here and there, notably Thieve's Guild and the Fighter's Guild, but not many.

Would it be intresting to see the other side's story? Sure. Would I want to join all of them? No. I might have a Breton join the Forsowrn, but I would never have a character join a group like the Thalmor.

Heck, Morrowind's Fighters/Thieves Guild conflict is a glitch -- completing the Fighters Guild quest when you haven't joined the Thieves guild mods you faction reputation down by ten. That makes it negative, and you need at least 0 fac rep to join the Thieves Guild.

Morrowind was like that. You had to choose between Houses Redoran, Hlaalu, or Telvanni. If you wanted to join both the Fighter's and Mage's Guilds, you had to do the quests in a specific order which was kind of an exploit.

I have a lot of guild in my head! like:
- bandit's
- Hunter's
- Vampire's

Surprisingly, I would have a character join the thalmor. Not my namesake though. It would be interesting to see how they justify what they do, whether all of them are that bad or not, whether they really want to destroy the world, if so, to what end? etc. The two that I talked with seemed quite reasonable, and they were both high in the hierachy, which would make you think they'd be even more zealous.

But yes there should be more sides you can choose rather than Stormcloaks or Legion.

I agree. I think they should really flesh out each guild and make you choose one guild that kind of fits your character. If they did it right it could enhance replayability by giving a unique experience depending on which guild you affiliate with. It could fulfill the function of definitively aligning with a faction - maybe like you say going up against other guilds. Unfortunately, Bethesda seem wedded to the idea of 'Each character can do EVERYTHING' rather than making you make decisions that affect your relationship with the gameworld. To me, being able to run every guild and be dragonborn saving the world and win the civil war seems a bit over the top.

Just because you can be the leader of the known gameworld doesn't mean you have to...

And besides, where else would a battlemage go to learn about magic and swordplay than the Mages guild and the Companions. And why wouldn't a thief join the college to steal stuff? There already is one there doing just that for crying out loud. How would the companions know you and your family worship Sithus if you've never gotten caught?

Me and a friend are currently working on a mod that adds a joinable Silver Hand faction and quests due to seeing topics just like this

The idea has been stewing since Oblivion (Blackwood Company anyone?), but I think it is a great one and one worth mentioning over and over so Bethesda will do it. Todd said that they could have easily implemented so many things (but he didn't want to make certain things too important) but chose not to.
One example is storage on the horse; he said it would be easy to implement, but it would detract from the game by making horses too important. Well I say NAY (no pun intended)! the addition nof anything without subtraction is a thumbs up for me.

Look at what the team was able to come up with in ONE WEEK. GameJam was awesome and I hope they implement everything from it into a DLC (hopefully free, as we have been asking for those things since Oblivion and before)

Well, you can't join them. But for this purpose it's close enough

I agree with this him/her!
I don't want to be dragonborn -.-
I want to be a dragon! Why can't i be a full time dragon!
I don't want to do quests, i want to fly around and stop the NPC's from doing quests! -.-

I think on your College of Winterhold idea, that faction only wants that ball/item floating around for the possible power it possesses. I don't see them as the opposite to the college.

Sure you don't have to. The game wants you to though. For example there's a quest you cannot complete unless you at least join the college of Winterhold. So a pure warrior has to enrol as a mage or be stuck with a quest (that gives you a useful amulet) they can't finish. So then they're in a questline they either leave unfinished or end up becoming archmage even if they don't use magic.
How realistic is it that one person is archmage and running the thieves guild, dark brotherhood and companions all at the same time? Oh and you're a bard as well. You may as well be crowned high king - you're in theory if not in practice basically running Skyrim so you may as well be.
I think it would be a lot more interesting and realistic if you had to choose your guild, work your way to the top and get specific benefits tied to that guild. As it is, within a week you;re everyone's boss but are going round doing burglaries. Dressed in your archmage robes.

The game does not want you to do anything. You just have an overwelmingly but ultimately pointless desire to for some reason finish all the quests you pick up. They're not going to hurt if they just stay in the log.

And you do have to infact use magic to finish the mages guild questline. There's no way through the Labarenth without it.

Of course it's not realistic to be the head of every guild at once. Why do you feel the need to play that way? If you don't want to, you really honest to goodness do not have to. What is unrealistic is expecting a company to create a magic system you literally have to spend in game years studying to even be able to cast a simple fireball and have said company still be afloat to make dlc.

Definatley this would bring so much more depth to a game that really needs it. Would love to play on the opposite sides and have a choice on what side to join. Definatley making or joining a group of bandits would be a great idea would love that.

I would love for certain guilds to have requirements to join such as companions or mages guild want only certain races, or full commitment and not one whose joined with another faction as there time won't be fully devoted. It would limit you, but role playing is basically limiting in its definition. It would encourage multiple play throughs with different races and skills.

Which quest requires you to become archmage (except the College main quest)? In Morrowind, sometimes it wasn't possible to play a faction just because you did not choose the exact skills they expected, even if it would have fitted from a role-playing perspective. In Oblivion and Skyrim, I have all my main skills maxed by the time I have completed the main quest and the factions that fit my character, so there is no need to do the other factions.

If you don't want to master all factions, just don't do it. Any hard-coded restriction would just hinder people who want to play the game in their own way.

The game design clearly nudges into different questlines. It doesn't make you do it, but it really encourages you to. And yeah, I don't like starting a questline and leaving it hanging. I'm far from alone in that - a lot of people don't like having a quest log full of unfinished stuff. Like I said, with the mages you have to start the questline to complete another quest and either leave it hanging (when that quest is telling you it involves something really important) or follow it through to the end - in which case you'll end up being archmage. You can bypass the thieves giuld, but the game really pushes towards it and gives you the impression if you fail the initial speech check with brnjolf (sp?) you have to start that questline to get the info you need to carry on the main quest. You can bypass it, but the quest log leads you to believe you can't.

It's simply a personal preference that I'd like it if the game asked you to choose a guild and stick with that guild, maybe coming into conflict with the others. As it is it's "oih right I'm archmage. Cool. Now I'll go be boss of the thieves guild too. Then I'll assassinate the emperor, become a bard and then take over the Companions". I'd much prefer it if you had to think about what your path is and make a choice. It just seems stupid to me that you can end up with one person running every guild there is. Or at least not be pushed towards actions that might be very out of character for the character you're playing. It's not about having to do magic, the point was about shutting someone who wants to play a pure warrior who never uses magic out of complteing an unrelated quest (they've perhaps already completed half of) with a decent reward unless they go join the mages college. Why is that apparently so difficult to understand?