I'm really interested in what the expansions for Oblivion will be like, but rather than immediately start out by discussing what i'd like to see in such an endeavour, i'd rather discuss about things like how likely it is they have commenced work on it now, and the release date.

For research, I decided to find out what date Morrowind was released, and then the two expansions. I find the release date was May in 2002. Good. I knew it was 2002, now I know the month. So, the first expansion out, Tribunal was done in November of that same year. Yep, thats 6 months later.

Bloodmoon was released in May 2003, so, obviously thats another time period of 6 months. I think its safe to say there's a pattern there.

However, the question is if this pattern will contine, or will a new pattern emerge.

Part of me would say that they have staff members working dilligently on the new expansion already, as they had set a team to work on expansions and a new game when Morrowind was complete.

Though I wonder how much resources they will spend on adding new mods for download like horse armour, the orrery and most recently the wizard tower.

Chances are they will have split into three teams, one on expansions, one on TES V, and one on Oblivion, but then again, chances are i'm way off base, and they will set a significant amount of resources on their newest addition to the collection, namely Star Trek, with which they have two games in development, not to mention the "big one" Fallout 3.

Anyway, I thought it'd be an interesting thing to discuss.

Nope, The Elder Scrolls team at Bethesda certainly won't be working on Star Trek.

But they will be working on Fallout 3... Having not played Fallout or Fallout 2, I have no clue as to the amount of resources to expect Beth to throw at Fallout 3.

And thats a big part missing from my calculations into what they would be working on on the TES front.

Nope, look at it this way: Bethesda is a company: they have teams for different projects: a TES team, a Fallout Team, a Star Trek Team, etc.

Remember when the initial game is made LOADS of staff and time is needed. Expansions are much quicker, cheaper and easier to make. They also require far far last staff. After all the game engine is done, quest systems, construction sets. You only need a few artists and programmers. So while the artists are working on the expansions, programmers can move onto further projects