Where Next in Tamriel?

I've gone back and started playing a lot of Skyrim lately. I've played through both sides of the Civil War quest chain, which is a very well-designed match of grey-and-gray morality. Both sides have excellent points, and both sides also have some serious problems - for example, either way the war turns out, either Markarth or Riften is going to wind up with a Jarl who's incredibly corrupt.

I haven't played the Elder Scrolls Online (though now that it's just a buy-once thing and it works on Macs, I might give it a shot,) but my understanding is that ESO bypasses the problem of just who won that civil war by setting it in the distant past, before even Tiber Septim rose up to unite Tamriel as part of his Empire.

Skyrim is one of my favorite games ever - it took nearly everything I didn't like about Oblivion out and it added in freaking Dragons, along with much better character models and much better voice acting (not to say perfect though - I don't know why brothers Vilkas and Farkas have totally different accents.)

So I'd love to see a new Elder Scrolls game in the main series, not only to see what new innovations they come up with, but also to see how the story progresses.

One thing that always struck me as unsatisfying in Skyrim was the Thalmor. I really, really want to fight the Thalmor, but you don't come across all too many of them that frequently. You deal with them in one of the earlier main story quests, and it's a Thalmor agent who you have to fight at the end of the College of Winterhold quests, but even if you side with Ulfric and kick the Empire out of Skyrim, there's never a really satisfying defeat you can hand to the Thalmor (though there is one fort in the northeast that's controlled by them, and I went full-on werewolf against those guys, which was tremendously satisfying.)

I know that most ES games focus primarily on a supernatural threat like a Daedric Prince or something around that level, but I the Thalmor are a great concept that I'd love to smash.

Most of the ES games have focused on one province or another. II was in High Rock, III was Morrowind, IV was in Cyrodiil, and V was Skyrim. As of Skyrim, the Thalmor have total control of the Summerset Isles, Valenwood, and Elsweyr, and I believe they control at least part of the southern half of Hammerfell. The nice thing about all of these settings is that I think they'd all be warm climates. Don't get me wrong - Skyrim was a beautiful environment, but I think it would be wise to go in the opposite direction next time. I'd love (love love) to play an Elder Scrolls game that takes us through a hot, arid climate.

I'm given to understand that Hammerfell and Elsweyr are both fairly desert-like, though given that Hammerfell is actually northwest of Cyrodiil, I'm not sure how that works (then again, magic.) Valenwood is, I think, more of a jungle environment.

Clearly I don't think we need to do a Civl War narrative in every game, but I think Hammerfell has a lot of potential for feeling very different as you pass through its different territories, with defiant hold-outs in the northeast and those suffering under Dominion rule farther south. On the other hand, both Valenwood and Elsweyr could have full-on revolutions, where you'd fight to free the entire country.

And on top of this, you always have the scheming of the various Daedric Princes and other supernatural forces at work. After all, while Alduin's return was the big threat that had to be dealt with immediately, in the long run, his impact on the world of Tamriel will be relatively small (well, except that there will be dragons flying around everywhere now.) So you could even put the mortals-vs-mortal story of fighting the Thalmor as a kind of background context that you can participate in, like the Stormcloak rebellion, while you deal with the supernatural crisis of, I don't know, Clavicus Vile bringing the Dwemer back to conquer the world.