Was wandering around for 6 hours, and now I'm on level

1! Sooo much to explore. Is it bigger than Oblivion?

Apparently, the landmass is similar to Oblivion, but there is a lot more stuff (quests, locations, "random" encounters, etc) and the mountains make you take detours increasing the travel time.

As mentioned, the map is about the same, but apparently the mountainous terrain means there is much more total surface area.

Bigger than oblivion, smaller than morrowind.

It feels freaky huge to me and I never got the feelings of exploration in Morrowind or Oblivion that I am getting in Skyrim.When I stumbled upon the huge ice lake south of solitude I thought to myself that Bethesda are now masters at world making.Even walking into a house feels more real to me because of the hand placed items strewn about which I at first thought why bother with that but over time it makes the world believable.Then a huge boat that had water in the bilge and other realistic stuff strewn about make it my best exploring game ever.Funny to think I only have covered maybe 1/3 of map.

I'm 43 hours in and I probably am close to uncovering only 1/3 of the map. I've only seen 3 major holds (Whiterun, Markarth, Riften), haven't even explored the others yet. The game is massive. The amount of content is ridiculous. I'm even still finding new quests in Whiterun where I spend most of my time. New things are constantly popping up, such as couriers, new rumors at the tavern, etc. It's really nuts how much content is crammed into this game. If the other holds have similar amounts of content, I'll be playing this game forever.

It definitely feels smaller than Morrowind but I agree it feels larger than Oblivion (Cyrodiil). The greater region variance is a big deal for me too, there are 5-6 very distinct looking regions compared to Oblivion which was pretty similar all around.

I was not hooked by oblivion at all and played just a little while.Morrowind I liked and played for maybe 20 hours.But now Skyrim is weird in that I find I am more immersed as I keep playing and I can see me going a loooong time with it.