Ive been reading the forums for a while and thought I would share my Skyrim experience:

My girlfriend pre-ordered Skyrim with the intention of giving it to me for Xmas. I knew she was getting it so I had read the forums from release and was kind of glad that I wasn’t playing with it yet. I watched the updates come out and the replies saying that it broke more than it fixed. I crossed my fingers for a stable patch before Xmas.

Xmas came and I installed Skyrim. I avoided the download and installed from the DVD (because I had read the forums).
I patched up to (is it 1.37 now?) date.
I updated my Nvidea drivers to the latest beta.
I followed the Nvidea tweak guide carefully (took over 30mins).
I turned off auto save in the game. I avoided fast travel (at least at the beginning).

Initially I had a great experience, no FPS issues at all (1920x1200, Win7x64, i5, GTX460, 4Gb RAM). The game was amazing! I’ve only had 3 or 4 crashes to desktop in the 70+hrs I’ve played (I am aware of the problems when you get over 150hrs). All the crashes Ive had relate to the same thing, my companion. One was after he disappeared and I couldn’t find him even after fast travel, two others were after he got killed.

The only other problem I’ve had is a slow area load when it uses the Whiterun tree as the picture. For some reason when it’s showing that its takes 30sec + to change area where as its only 2sec or so with any other picture.

I consider these minor bugs and it doesnt affect my play much.

I haven’t used any addons, I haven’t edited the ini files at all. I do clear out the save game directory every day and move the saves to another location.

Skyrim runs fine for me! ...so far.

There are the infuriating controls and the low volume, but I just turn up the volume knob on my speakers when I play Skyrim. I use a Logitech G13 controller to run all the game controls. This helps a lot and I dont need to remap the keys in the game, which we all now know causes chaos. Even with the G13 I have to admit that at times it’s still a bit like trying to rub your head in a circle and pat your tummy at the same time. I cant imagine playing without it, you deserve a medal if you are playing with a standard keyboard

Inevitably these forums get filled with people being negative about the game, but I just thought I would let the developers know (although I doubt they will read this) that there are people that are happy with the game. But, please fix the remaining issues to make it even better!

Thanks

Ditto. I updated by Nvidea drivers and followed the tweak guide. I'm running only 3 to 4 mods, all texture/meshes changes only. I'm slow to adopt the newest mods out there until they've been running for awhile and gotten most of the bugs out. Crashes are rare for me -- maybe a handful with over 120 hours played. Maybe not a perfect game, but darn close. Bethesda has done a fantastic job.