I just hope they don't go with the Fallout "we took your equipment" garbage. We earned our gear. Let us use it. If it's not hard, then we earned that, too.
The Elder Scrolls have never done that before. Why would they start now?
I'm hoping it's like Morrowind, wherein you could jump right into the expansions if you wanted to, but the difficulty was ridiculously hard. It was wiser to wait 30 or so levels, but you could do it if you really wanted.