I couldn't get it to work, it just made me load forever and then crash.

I haven't tried that map fix.  I did start using a collection of mods tonight with no issues.  I'll give the map "fix" a go sometime over the next few days and report in if it works, etc.  Map is so crap.  The more I look at it, the more I'm disappointed. It should really be easy to figure out where you are and where you need to go.  Super easy.  It's not.

I think you mistake people's satisfaction with some elements of Oblivion for love. The spell crafting, while less flexible than in Morrowind, was better than in Skyrim by magnitudes, because Skyrim doesn't have it and even the hard-coded spells are lame-duck cousins of Oblivion spells. Character creation, to me, was an enjoyable part of the game as well. Stats and all the things that could be done to stats (they could be damaged, buffed and altered to do things like run faster) provided a lot of places to affect game play in positive and negative ways. Getting to jump higher or run faster because you chose to be an acrobat was cool. I was satisfied with most of the character elements (after I got used to the fact that many things had been reduced down to which skill it was important to.) It was always the leveling rate that stuck in my craw. I wasn't satisfied with the world or the quests at all. TBH I'd put my long-term like of Oblivion only at about 75%, even with mods. I only kept playing because it was the only thing like itself at the time.

Anyways, these kinds of personalization elements are completely missing in Skyrim, from a character perspective. We got the chance to make ourselves LOOK how we wanted, but it's not backed up the game play at all. Except in the very generic sense of you perk toward what you want to be and the late game rewards specialists.

For an example of the lack of character definition, the brawling quests? What really sets apart a good brawling character from a not brawling character? Putting points into HP and Stam? That one perk in Heavy Armor, or that one enchant? What about how strong the character is, period? There's no metric for that in game. These things get no consideration in Skyrim and to a hardcore gamer, it's a pretty stupid and willful oversight. In that regard Oblivion _is_ better. The things that are keeping my attention in Skyrim like crafting, at the end of the day, aren't much more than a super fancy version of what Fable offers. The systems don't mix and match at all....they're linear, covered up the fact you'll need to reforge the same weapon 2 to 3 times because your BS skill keeps growing. But there, again, what are you honestly doing? You're improving the damage/armor value. That's _it_. Remember how materials used to be important to enchanting? They're not in Skyrim. An iron ring (if you could make an iron ring) can hold the same enchantment level as a Gold Diamond Ring. All that the material affects is the selling price.

And as for people attributing Skyrim's sales to Bethesda's simplification of the game...I call BS. People don't buy games because they heard they're simpler and more intuitive (and honestly, Skyrim isn't super intuitive. It can be really vague even when remaining simple and the UI makes it worse.) That stuff doesn't make it out to the general public's consciousness and it doesn't win you any fans among hardcore gamers.

The game has sold well because it has amazing visuals and produces a lot of player stories that sound interesting. Giants chasing dragons into towns and all that. Not because John Q. Public heard that the game was more accessible to people like them. If I wanted to be really cruel to Skyrim, I could say it's the best screenshot generating game out there and that's why its selling so well. Because let's be honest. A huge part of the draw of the game is crawling to the top of a rock, zooming the camera out and going "IIIIIIIII'MMMMMMMMM EEEEEEPPPPPPPPPPIIIIIIICCCCCCCCCC!!!!!!!!" I don't think a game since Prototype has quite made me feel like this in that regard. The game play systems in the end are a vehicle for that.

(I will say though that the dungeons in Skyrim are vastly improved and I've yet to come across one that I thought was boring. Compared to Oblivion where the copy/pasting was so obvious it killed your immersion. Each one feels like it's got its own thing going on...even as I'm starting to see the same textures and stuff a lot now.)

How am I doing so far?

Ok one nice thing I really like about Skyrim is some of the armors look fucking incredible...

Can't wait for mods to start popping up.

Has stirred my interest in Morrowind. Waiting for a $5 sale on Steam. Oblivion now $5 on Steam, but just cannot stand Oblibion interface. Alternative Start mod s sharp. Hate tutorials.

Skyrim = another console port = fail.

It sucks. Suckity, suckity, suck.

Just compare it to Witcher 2, its beautiful graphics, its non-cliche characters based on excellent writing of Mr. Sapkowsky, it is just a better game.

I don't want no more XBOX emulators hogging my CPU, with stuttering engines full of bleached textures, low-poly faces and crappy animations.

Animations in Skyrim suck extra hard!

I love Skyrim and still hate Witcher 2.

Wasn't Glass armor in Morrowind like black armor with ragged, jagged glass rocks sticking out of it?  That didn't seem very cool to me...

Pretty much. I think they actually have a tail and wing whack attack for people on their flanks. But yeah, fighting something that huge, you're actually standing about 5 feet away from when it when you hit. It's not like you can dodge something that big so.....most dragon fights end with me in its face, covered in dragon fire, stabbing it in the nose. Everything about the fights except how they feel is great.

Then again, when they throw dragons at you literally 3 quests into the main quest or so, they're everywhere and easier to kill than trolls....

I figure mods will make dragons as nasty as they're supposed to be. Maybe by making their instant kill "eat the adventurer alive" attack happen at 50% health instead of 10%.

I'm curious at what difficulty everyone is playing at?

Adept, which is default I guess. Light armor dual-wielding swords....and I have zero problems with health regen. The only enemy that is my bane is the occasional guy in heavy armor with a 2-handed weapon....those fights can suck a little. But with proper planning and paralyzation poison, very little phases me at this point. Least of all dragons. In general if I let my HPs get down 20%, I'm vulnerable to getting insta-killed, and that actually happens fairly often. But when I'm paying the minimum amount of attention to pop potions, it's all gravy.

And that's before you add in Lydia the ogre-bitch, the Sanguine Rose and what not. I actually went to Lvl 30 without maxing out Unrelenting Shout....now that I have it, virtually nothing is a challenge anymore. I'm tempted to do another play through on a higher difficulty....but I think I'll just wait for the realism/survival mods to come out, because then it really will be a totally different game.

Also I'm going to be a dick and give the story 4/5 overall. Because man....some of the major questlines are kind of ho-hum, particularly the Mages' Guild quest. The Thieves Guild quest has a lot of additional content, but the main quest in the Thieves Guild...well it just kind of goes off the rails midway through and meanders on for a while. Now, the world definitely gets 5/5 in my book and that's mostly what you're paying attention to. But the quests are only ok. Better than Oblivion quests, but only by so much. Still doesn't compare to the quests that were Morrowind.

I also find it really hard to care about the lore of the world some 200 years after the Nevarine and Oblivion, especially when you're off in some corner of Tamriel and they're trying to get you to care about this thing called the Aldmeri Dominion, which is new and apparently is giving the Empire a run for it's money. The world post-Oblivion doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Or at least, it doesn't make interesting sense.

If this happens use your Force shout to stun them and then power attack the nearest for near instant kill.