So my first character joined the College of Winterhold, completed that questline, and became Archmage.

My second character joins the Dark Brotherhood, completes those quests, and yadda yadda yadda.

I have to say, the difference between these two questlines, in terms of writing, length, variety, and overall quality are staggering. One can count the number of College quests on one hand, with only the final quest in Labyrinthian being anywhere near "epic". At the end, you're unceremoniously made archmage (even if you're a burly Orc warrior who only knows 3 spells) and everyone then proceeds to treat you as though you're still the newest apprentice. There are no radiant quests.

The DB questline felt as long as the main quest, longer even. The marks were all detailed, and you could even ask for snippets of advice about every quest before you did it. There were "main quests", misc quests, radiant quests, and at the end you definitely feel like the greatest assassin in Tamriel - and your guildmates definitely respond to that.

So my question is, why the huge discrepency? Why did Bethesda choose to allocate so much more resources towards the DB than the other guilds? In Oblivion, at least, they were all sameish in length, and while some were more interesting than others (again, the DB), I felt like it was just coincidental, and not because one faction was obviously given more attention than the others.

Maybe it's because the DB was a returning favorite? But that's not enough - the College quests were objectively stunted, right?

There are radiant College quests, but yeah I agree, the questline for the College was incredibly underwhelming

College and companions questlines felt rushed. DB and Thieves Guild were a bit more thought out and I think handled better. On the whole I find the quality and quantity of side-questlines to be lacking, but perhaps it is made up for by having so many fulfilling sidequests..

My guess is cut content and the devs needing to make the deadline for the 11-11-11 release date. The College questline feels like it only tells half a story.

Ah, I remember the radiant College quests now. They were so dismissable I forgot. Order of priority seemed to be DB > Thives > Companions > Bard's College, which isn't even a legit faction > College.

Deadline, for as long as this game was in development? They shouldn't be cutting anything, or rushing anything to make a release date. Work on this game started shortly after the release of Oblivion, maybe not coding, but story and artwork got worked on.

Bethesda relied too much on radiant quests to fill it in for them. And then promptly forgot to place restrictions in the Guild MQ so you can easily bypass the side quests and complete the GMQ in one go.

This is most badly done for the thieves guild. Until today, I still don't know if the reason everyone in the Red-Flagon still talks down to their guildmaster (me) is because I completed the GMQ first before completing the side quests, or is Bethesda too lazy to place in new dialog.

I think the college would have been a lot better if you had to attend classes for every mage, gradually going up in rank before the field trip to Saarthal.

Indeed, companions and winterhold collage needed more work.

Winterhold had maybe 4 or 5 quest, but all but one of them was either short or was a normall dungeon quest.
Companions was short lived too. One minute you're new blood, the next you're a werewolf and then not too long afterwards harbinger?

You do realize the developers don't set deadlines right?

Every RPG with such a huge scope like the TES games has cut content. While I agree with your statement in general and prefer a "when it's done" attitude when it comes to game development, that's just not the way it works in most companies. Like in any project people have to make deadlines and sometimes decisions are made that certain parts or features get left on the drawing board.

However I do think that when it is as noticable as it is here in the College and Companions questline then they should have taken some extra time to add some more "meat" to the story.

What do you think?

Regarding the College, I sort of hated how my experienced Altmer mage was treated like a student when he was the most powerful mage there. I understand we all have to start somewhere, but I thought the College was all about equals teaching equals, where students and teachers are one and the same? It was really embarassing seeing my mage relive Harry Potter.

Perhaps different writers for different parts of the game?

Yes Winterhold was very short, and I never felt I deserved it, best to force yourself to spread it out a bit imo.
Having just started the Companions questline again after some 300 hours of others it needs a serious overhaul too. You can't even do other radiant quests to try to feel like you earn progression

I joined this supposedly honourable outfit:
1) Get sent to punch some poor lady in the face. - At this points I am wondering already if the Dark Brotherhood might have been a better choice for a "good" character!
2) Delve one dungeon - OK fine.
3) Off to bravely slay a single errant ferret - OK a wolf. One single wolf.
4) I'm invited to join the Inner Circle and become a spoilerwolf...

Here's something. If the Fighter's Guild is actually the Werewolves' Guild is disguise, can we just label it that way so no one gets confused when they're forced to become a werewolf to progress?

Yeah the bully quest in the Companions was really stupid. Didn't go with it at all, luckily you can turn it down. I went with the other leaders for work since Farkas had the bully quest.

Also disappointed that they did not send you to go slay a 'skeever' in someone's house for old time's sake.

It's a wistful hope thing, because bugs can be fixed, missing content can't.

Actually I have no doubt the dragonborn can fight the entire collage and win. But power does not make you the master, knowledge does. Each teacher is the master of their own school and actually shows you the way to acquire the master spells.

The Companions is only six quests, I was pretty shocked to find that one out... The Brotherhood is the only guild with any substance. All of the others are too short and feel tacked on.

I guess i just felt odd having my Altmer, who looks like a mature gentleman (meaning, with the Altmer's extended lifeline, that he's about 700 years old) being talked to by the Alteration teacher about how his old age makes him a superior mage to me. I'm RPing as an old man. Why must the quest treat me like a young wipper-snapper?

Skyrim conceptualization started a few months shy of 6 YEARS AGO. That means main quest story ideas, art concepts, faction ideas and stories. 6 years ago. In 6 years, the final product has 2 main faction quest lines that when combined are barely a dozen quests, with many of them rather silly.

Just so no one gets the wrong idea. I love Skyrim, play it exclusively at the moment. I'm dying to get my hands on that CK, and the mods that will eventually flood the nexus. But several areas of the game are lacking, some severly so. I don't care about scope and limited resources (that one makes me chuckle, gamesas having limited resources, because Morrowind and Oblivion didn't make them buckets of septims) 6 years is 6 years, no main factions should be as content sparse as Companions and the College, let alone several of them.

Skyrim is gonna pull a cool billion plus in business by the end of the holidays, easily. Let's hope this means we got some serious DLC and maybe even a free content patch or two.

I would much rather attend a 5 minute class than read a book. That would be kinda cool.

I do feel not only the College questline is too short made. I think all the guilds I joined so far and completed (Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild, Mages Guild) has too short of a story line to them. It does feel like one day you are an Apprentice and the next day you are an Archmage for example. This is on the contrary to Oblivion, where I actually liked the questlines in the guild. You do a few quests and gain a rank up in the guild, slowly gaining a status within it. In Skyrim I was a leader of all of the guilds all too sudden..