Quick few corrections:
idiggory the Fussy wrote:
Not really, they mostly just move the timeline forward far enough that they can more-or-less do what they want with impunity, as long as they don't directly contradict past events.
Some examples:
In the time when ESO takes place, Cyrodil is supposed to be a massive jungle. When Talos becomes a god, he remakes Cyrodil into the landscape we see in later games. That's significant, as this game takes place 300 years before Talos is born. It's his really big "OH FRICK YEAH I'M A GOD" moment, and this completely erases that from the game.
Imagine Christian mythos in the same context as this. Now imagine that someone just decided the Resurrection didn't happen. It's pretty much that.
This is the change that has a lot of the kinder fans, people actively trying to forgive/ignore every other inconsistency, really pausing. Because it's a huge event in the ES timeline that they just retconned away.
The change might have been retroactive. There are a lot of fan theories on this, like you said. But it's really not cut-and-dry, nothing in the Elder Scrolls lore is.
idiggory the Fussy wrote:
(which is actually because a god merged alternate timelines into one, if I understand correctly, IDK - ES lore gets confusing)
Nah, the Dragon Break you're referring to was a pretty localized section of time. The Warp in the West caused a lot of weird timeline issues, but it's constrained to the three days it happened. The timeline before and after is as intact as you can be when time itself is a literal schizophrenic dragon god.
idiggory the Fussy wrote:
But what a lot of fans are taking serious issue with is the fact that:
1. It's being really sloppily done. Everything about this war makes very, very little lore sense in the context of literally anything else in the timeline. So even if it's a dark age and it "could" have happened, it happening would be really weird. The alliances they've set up just make no sense. But they were made because it's all gameplay related. The factions are split by landmass, which is so much less interesting than most ES conflicts, where different races ally and it's very often not about neighbors banding together. Add in the fact that many of these relationships strain credulity...
2. They're being really insensitive about it. Essentially, Zenimax is acting like a little boy. They've been generally really degrading to the longtime fans of the series; people who really invested in the world and its EU. They are really dismissive of peoples' issues with the inconsistencies, and their reactions typically range from "whatever" to "that's stupid anyway."
The EU is a product, and these fans are people who are a big part of providing the revenue for the product (both directly and through brand awareness). It's a shame that Bethesda is the one who is going to take a hit for this, but they made the choice to license the product. /shrug.
Yeah, pretty much agree with this.
Edit: Also, I'm wondering what the hell ALMSIVI, the Tribunal of Morrowind, the three living breathing gods actually on Tamriel are doing during this whole war. Anyone know what Vivec, Almalexia, and Sotha Sil are up to? Google is returning zilch.
Edited, Apr 11th 2014 1:17am by IDrownFish 
But differences from other ES games aside, it is a very story-driven style of game. The quests are all about story, and stories that build on each other as they go. There's a lot of continuity within a given zone in terms of all the quests being part of a larger story. The choices you make, people you meet, and things you do will actually change your environment, although often in small ways. NPC dialogue, for example, will change based on your fantastic feats. Or a village you liberated will then become a friendly place where you can use vendors and so forth instead of being full of bandits. 
