You signed up 3 hours ago, and you've already started 3 bashing threads, and posted 30+ negative comments. Impressive. If you hate the game so much, why are you here?

I'm pissed.

Alduin ate them

"Yes but in any other industry this would be a criminal offense called false advertising."

Really? Using a nebulous term like "massive" in an overhyped way is a criminal offense somewhere? Hell, if I had a nickel for all the "massive" sales I've heard about... You're starting to exaggerate as much as the people you complain about.

Get real. Saying you had dragons in the game and not having them would be false advertising. Saying a virtual city that isn't massive by real-world standards is massive is a non-issue. I'm just glad they've started putting in a bit more farmland after the Imperial City had a total of one farm field supposedly supporting the entire population.

Game worlds are small compared to real life worlds. Cities are small compared to real life cities. Not to mention that this is medieval technology, and most medieval cities were far from modern-day metropolises. I don't mean this to excuse anyone, and undoubtedly many of the occupied cities could have been made larger with some effort, but this is hardly an end of the world situation. Just like the overhyped "Radiant AI" of Oblivion was disappointing but didn't prevent me from enjoying the hell out of that game, so too the tiny "massive" cities are no big letdown to me. A bigger city might be nice, but this isn't Assassin's Creed. I'm not in this to parkour around a city all day. I'm in this to explore the nation of Skyrim. Wading through a huge city just to deliver fire salts to Random Alchemist Guy #72 of 5,000 equally bland citizens would probably not be very fun for me, especially if they all had the same penchant for spouting off a twenty-minute monologue just for passing within five feet of them that the current citizens of Skyrim's cities do. And most of us would probably be gouging our eardrums out with all the "arrow to the knee" remarks the countless guards we passed would say.

Personally I think Skyrim is a huge improvement in the series. Well, maybe Morrowind was stronger overall, but frankly, outside of the technical issues, I've found Skyrim to be as fun and exciting as I hoped it would be. Not perfect, but I never came into this expecting perfection. What I got has been well worth the money, and then some. And there's more ahead.

That's more than I expected, but it's still small.

Did a quick count. Balmora has just shy of 100, Vivec has more than 300. The NPCs in both of those cities were far more useful as well. Beyond several major quest givers, there are a greater number of shop keepers and trainers. Markarth's NPC population likely feels smaller because a healthy chunk of them are largely useless.

That initial comment wasn't really meant to be taken too seriously. At least not as seriously as people seem to have taken it. I wasn't making excuses for Bethesda. It was meant to be more along the lines of sarcasm. I'm all with you regarding the woefully pitiful cities. And I'm even more disappointed in the remaining four. Particularly with their utter lack of variety in architectural styles.

They're in Skyrim, have fun searching for the obvious.

Every PR lies.. No matter what it is.. Cant believe some people buy things cause "PR said so.."

I'm sorry, do you guys even know what a ''lie'' is?

what are you guys talking about? the only massive city in morrowind is Vivec, and its super boring, the only massive city in Oblivion is imperial city, and every area is kinda the same.

Pedantic and semantic and you know it.

I payed little attention to the press releases. I had no idea they even said the cities were massive. The only thing I heard that disappointed me was they said we could play left handed characters.

It's incredible how in the videogames industry lies are not punished. Skyrim is a decent game and in some aspects unique. But the amount of false or distorted information released before has no excuses. In any other market, if a manufacturer spilled so many inaccuracies about its incoming product, it would be penalized, even fined, and rightfully so.

Todd Howard also said they were 'bigger than any city from oblivion' so um.. yeah.

I think we have a different definition on "Massive". There have been no truely massive cities in the Elder Scrolls games that have been released so far, Vivec and the Imperial City are bigger than the others but they are still far from the sprawling metropolis that are described in the lore.

Somebody's never paid a visit to the Iliac Bay...

Of course I know it.

Maybe I should edit that post with a /sarcasm or something. People keep taking it way too seriously.

Am I the only person who dreaded having to do ANYTHING in Vivec in Morrowind? Give me the outlying towns with character and distinctive flavor any day.

The unique feel of each city and its occupants, how they all have a story to tell through their quests, is worth far more than a dozen extra houses or a larger courtyard any day of the week. We got massive QUALITY in exchange for physical size.

If you can't find original content, lore, story and immersion in each major city marked on your map, I feel sorry for you. I'm not being facetious, I feel really bad. I can tell they put a lot of thought and effort into them, and it's one of the reasons they hyped them so much- they were proud of the effort involved and they hoped you would enjoy them.

=D Vivec and I have a love-hate relationship lol

Well I guess I'm the only one on THIS thread who likes the game, but it's HARDLY a hollow game. I played Morrowind, after it was ported because playing games on a PC is just aggravating. There's no way that game is better than Skyrim. It's a great game, but this one is greater! There is some shortage of NPC's? I've got a quest list longer than my whole body and I haven't scratched the surface! I can't get one quest done without three NPC'S handing me another! Leveling up is better than ANY RPG I've seen. I guess I don't get where you guys are coming from. So I'm sure some PC elitist will try to make my statement sound stupid, but the whining about this game is what's really stupid!

Oblivion was ALSO a better game than Morrowind!

Two Worlds II had some decent big cities and they were not even walled. While this game is not as fun as Skyrim, it sports a better graphic engine, higher resolution textures and the world design is not bad. In Skyrim cities are underwhelming, small towns are laughable. Roriksted is something like 3 (!) houses and a inn, it's not even worth it calling a town.

Seriously anyone who thinks 1-2 shops, a jarls longhouse and a tavern constitutes a city is smoking the good stuff.

Weird thing is, New Vegas had more 'cities' by far.

The only massive "city" here is Blackreach. That really impressed me, and it was the best moment in the game.

I tried to play Two Worlds II and I just couldn't. The voice acting was atrocious. I'd rather have Skyrim's cities than Two Worlds II's voice acting.

Same, that place is great.