It froze in the first fifteen minutes of playing.. that's probably not a great sign.
Not unexpected, but still disappointing.

Er.. it hasn't released yet has it? Release date is 11/11/11

I am guessing any hacks/overrides to get it to play early won't work properly [They might have pre-loaded all but some essential files like other games have done].

Edit: Wish I could justify getting the game, but winter means expenses almost triple [heating oil :/] and with a part time only job I am pretty much screwed.

Torrents for the game are up and running by known pirates, so I guess the preload is genuine. But my elite internet skillz (typing "skyrim" on the piratebay) have discovered that no crack is yet out there ...

Anyway, I won't tuch this game for at least half a year. The whole Oblivion disaster has teached me a valuable lesson.

Cracks are pretty irrelevant until all the DLC and patches are out. That's when you want to get a crack for archiving purposes. Unless you actually want to pirate the game, in which case fuck off.

Cracks are pretty much useless for TES games anyway, as you need a proper exe to run the mod manager (afaik). But I sure as hell will give this game a trial run before and if I buy it. I've wasted enough on Oblivion just to be sitting nice on my shelf ...

No, they're really not.
I have owned every console (and own every current gen one) and I have a very nice gaming PC and the graphics are not that far apart.
Bug-wise, I've encountered waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more crashes on the PC versions of games than on the console ones, perhaps I've just been 'lucky' that way.
I'm talking plain vanilla Bethesda games of course, after you add the mods and texture packs and such the PC versions are better looking and less buggy.
The problem is the crappy engine they use, not the hardware on which it runs.

Oh and in case anyone's wondering, it's very much Oblivion 1.5.
The graphics are somewhat better, most noticeably in the landscape.. the PCs and NPCs still have faces like apes and still walk around with a gigantic stick inserted in their rectum.
I really love the fact that a new 'feature' of the character generator is dirt though, because I've always hated the fact that my characters didn't have enough dirt on their face.

I know this might be a bit early to ask, but how is the level scaling implemented? Does it feel more like Morrowing or Oblivion? And have you noticed any obvious "dumbing down" (only one weapon skill left,e.g.)

By far the most genuine sarcastic statement I've ever seen.

I don't have a PS3 or play PS3 games, so I am only repeating what I have been told. I have seen so many complaints about Bethesda games on the PS3 that it was very noticeable. I know that Fallout 3 especially got a lot of hate for the PS3 version, which had no AA or AF at all and suffered from freezing issues and a lower native resolution. Again though, this is all info I picked up from forums, not firsthand.

As for the PC versions crashing and not looking much better... well, agree to disagree there. I won't say more because I don't want this to turn into a PC vs. console topic, but suffice it to say I think the visual improvements are massive and have never had crashes with Bethesda games (or any games, really... it's all about maintaining your PC).

Yeah sorry, that's too early.
I did get a nice "One Handed Weapon Skill Level Up" message with a progress bar after I whacked someone and I did a sort of backstab finishing move, which every game nowadays has.
There was also a soldier that yielded to me which was amusing, but my sidekick at the time simply killed the guy while he was on his knees so I have no idea if you can do anything interesting when that happens.
I need to spend more than 15 minutes before I can tell if the level scaling is still as terrible as it was, although they've said it was now more like the Fallout 3 scaling.. which doesn't really tell me much.
It was blatantly obvious in Oblivion when every cave had Daedric Princes running around :P

Edit: lol, I've just now tried the game while connected to the internet and there's already a 2.00 patch available. Also I have now lost most of my faith in the poster above me.

If I remember correctly, it was mentioned that level scaling is region sensitive, or cave sensitive. Once you go into a cave, that cave becomes your [insert your current level] cave. When the monsters respawn, they are locked to that particular scaling system.

So.. you should enter everything at level 1 before you really start playing?

Well, that's the general idea, I guess, if you can / want to do it. I don't know how recent this info is, or even if it's accurate. There was probably some effort done to prevent bandits with elven armor at level ten.

Just cancelled my order from Amazon.

It kept reading 'Not yet Dispatched' whilst other people have had it dispatched already from other sites not to mention that i preordered it in august and First Class.

I sent a message to them and they could not confirm it would arrive on the day, they stated it may arrive on the 12th instead.

So yeah, fuck them leaving me in the dry here it's too late to preorder anywhere else and get it on time so i am pretty much forced to buy the Digital Version now. Sent a message to GAME asking if i preorder now will i get it on release date but i very much doubt it. Sigh i really wanted a psychical copy and the cloth map but i guess i can just buy the map off ebay or something, still i've pretty pissed off at amazon at the moment.