There’s also the question of mods – many fans are worried that Bethesda will give another try to the idea of a paid mod workshop. The first iteration of that experiment failed spectacularly, drawing a lot of criticism for both Bethesda and Valve, forcing them to backtrack on the decision quickly.
While some fans seem convinced that a paid mod workshop could ultimately work, the basic plan would need to be changed a lot before something like that is ever brought back into the Steam store.
If done right though, this could elevate the modding community on another level, and give gamers access to even more high-quality, polished mods with active support going into them. Hopefully, if Bethesda really are considering this idea for “The Elder Scrolls 6”, they are going to do a test run with another one of their games first.
“Skyrim” could be a good platform for testing something like that, but of course the studio would need to be extra careful to make sure that they handle it correctly this time. Many gamers still have bad memories from the initial experiment, and everyone would be making such comparisons as soon as this project is announced. But Bethesda also have a good PR team and they generally know how to communicate with their fans well enough – even if they make the occasional mistake – so we trust that they would approach something like this with all due diligence, and will ensure that their motivations are made clear this time.
An online component would work great with Skyrim as long as they don’t try to make it MMO. Borderlands is fun as multiplayer when you can hop on with a few friends, and I wouldn’t think it would be much different with Skyrim. As an option I would love it, but wouldn’t want it mandatory or trolls are going to be joining random games and going around killing non-essential quest givers.