This is a completely arbitrary comparison that I nonetheless found interesting. In being a part of both Heroes and Elder Scrolls communities over the past few years, I've noticed that fan response for both series seems to follow an intriguingly similar formula. In both series:

The first game is hardly played, and when it is, is mostly for interest's sake

The second game isn't the most popular, but still has a die-hard fanbase who to this day play it religiously and champion it as the best in the series

The third game seems to be by-and-large considered the best by a lot of the fans, and is the standard that the rest of the series is held to

The fourth game is a bit of a dark spot. A number of changes were made that proved controversial, and the quality was felt to have taken a nosedive from the third instalment. While it still has its core fans, it is largely disparaged by the rest of the community.

The fifth game is a return to form, with mixed reception. Fans found it better than the fourth game, and still enjoyable to play, but the highly changed gameworld and a few other issues keep it from taking the place of the hallowed third game.

Of course, where it falls apart is that Heroes IV was considered to be the death knell of the series, whereas Oblivion became wildly popular. Also there is no TES VI. Unless you want to count Fallout 3 ;)

Just an observation, but an interesting one, I thought.

Heh, never thought about that, but I think you are right.

I haven't played Arena, Heroes 4 or Skyrim, though.
Oblivion had a critical design flaw with the level scaling, but with the right mods and lots of patience it can be a good game.
Are there any mods that fixes Heroes 4?

Interesting comparison you got there, it's true that Morrowind is still considered the best in TES series.

But about HoMM IV and Oblivion, I think it's a little bit different. I mean, let's face it, HoMM series have always been a kind of "niche" games and such the HoMM gamers community is a small one. On the contrary, as Oblivion has been released to consoles, it appealed to many people who never had heard about Morrowind and thus didn't make any comparison. And if you don't compare, yeah, Oblivion is a very good game.

KingCrimson250
You forgot one thing. HoMM V (and HoMM VI) simply do not exist. 3DO collapsed. Ubisoft have bought the rights to the HoMM universe. And released some third party games from different developers (with absolutely no relation to HoMM universe) under HoMM label. HoMM V for example is an Etherlords clone.

I beg to disagree. HoMM V and VI are simply not the games HoMM hardcore fans wanted. It doesn't make them bad games, or clones of other games.

Interestingly enough, there have also been a small amount of people claiming that Oblivion and Skyrim are not "true" TES games.

KingCrimson250
Oblivion was the 4th installment in The Elder Scrolls franchise. In another series, HoMM IV (with both expansions) was developed by New World Computing (original developers of the entire HoMM franchise) and released by 3DO (original publisher). No matter how successful or unsuccessful HoMM IV was, It is definitely an integral (but unfortunately the last) part of the franchise.

Holy crap, this is an awesome comparison. There are differences though.

HoMM2 has lots of content while Daggerfall is notoriously old-school, randomly-generated, and repetitive.

HoMM3 had a very small learning curve while Morrowind had a rather large one.

HoMM5 was very niche and considered a disappointment from fans, while Skyrim was considered a great game that lived up to the legendary TES series.

And I can't wait to see how TES 6 will be similar to HoMM6.

If Skyrim was made by completely different studio, which would throw all of the backstory out of the window, then it might be a fair comparison.

And should TES6 be similar to HoMM6, then the TES series should rather end now and with all the honours, instead of suffering such a terrible fate.