I was first introduced to the Elder Scrolls series through Oblivion, shortly after it came out. I played a little bit of Morrowind, but the game was so clearly designed for PCs as opposed to consoles (pushing fully forward on the control stick would cause you to run, which drained stamina, meaning you had to carefully just press the stick hard enough to move, but not too much) that I gave up on it.
Anyway, what should surprise few is that Skyrim, the fifth game in the series, blew everything before it out of the water. Many of the more annoying aspects of the old game were excised (like Oblivion's odd level scaling that made you feel less powerful the more you played) and they added many awesome elements (like Shouts, Dragons, and Beards.)
They are currently working on an online version of Elder Scrolls, set in the distant past, and arranged largely as most MMOs are, except that rather than two opposing sides, there are three.
While some kind of multiplayer Elder Scrolls game sounds interesting, my hope is that this does not sink the franchise as a whole into the MMO world. When it comes to Warcraft, WoW was my introduction to the series, so the fact that the games are no longer RTS's does not concern me too much. However, I can sympathize with those who wish they could command their peons to gather lumber while they send a mix of raiders and grunts to take out that pesky human encampment with a pretty fresh goldmine. To an extent, these people still have Starcraft to fall back on, which is mechanically similar even if its setting is not (though the Zerg and Scourge are pretty darned close to each other in feel.)
Anyway, Skyrim was a freaking fantastic game - few can argue that. I would love to see the future of Tamriel is subsequent games.
The only real issue I can see coming up is the outcome of the Skyrim civil war. Players can choose one side or the other, or (of course, being an Elder Scrolls game) stay out of the war and allow it to remain a stalemate.
Just as I'm not sure that they could ever do a true Mass Effect 4 (to an even greater extent than in this case,) due to the radically different ways the world could look, it would be difficult to reconcile this. One could set the next game another century or two in the future, at a point when Ulric's rebellion is just a footnote to the legend of the Dragonborn. They could find a way to gloss over it, or they could even have some sort of tie-in feature to link the game's save files with a previous one (or, for a simpler way, simply have you choose through dialogue early on.)
But there's a pretty cool story to tell that it only hinted at in Skyrim, which is the inevitable flare-up of conflict with the Aldmeri Dominion and their ruling Thalmor. Even though theoretically a high elf character (or even other non-human races) could back the Dominion, it's clear that these are bad guys - basically Nazi Elves.
In the lore, Hammerfell broke away from the Empire and thus does not have to abide by the laws banning Talos worship. It's clear from the civil war chain that either way the war ends, the Empire's position is weakened - they either lose an important province or they reinforce the Thalmor's position.
So I would love to see a new fully-fledged Elder Scrolls game that would get to deal with that. Set in either Hammerfall (which I imagine having a cool Arabian/North African desert feel) or the Summerset Isles we could see a reignited war between the Empire and the Dominion.
Skyrim came out in 2011, and Oblivion was in 2005, so it's not exactly like the next game is imminent, especially given that they're probably focusing on the MMO. But that said, I really hope there's some new Elder Scrolls action coming.
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