I mean the niche best known for Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls III, IV and V.
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(Fantasy) The setting is a fictional world with fantastical elements, and a comparable level of societal progress as the 1600s or earlier.
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(Character Creation) You create your own role: character and class. It is a permanent character.
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(Action) You have direct control over your characters actions in real time.
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(Open World / Sandbox) You aren't forced to do the main story and can roam around the whole map finding items and doing side quests.
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(Single player) Not having to accommodate for multiple players, your choices can make a lasting impact on the world.
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(Alive world) There are events that can happen by chance, like meeting people on the road.
Less importantly, they are first person. This connects you more to the character, but downside is you don't see how cool armor you are wearing. First person combat might also keep it from reaching high action potential, although games like Mount&Blade and Kingdom Come Deliverance features good First Person fencing.
What are the competitors in this genre of single player, open world, fantasy, RPG?
Baldur's Gate is not an action game.
The Witcher forces you into a premade character and thus I don't consider it Free Role Playing.
Kingdom Come Deliverance is not fantasy and you are a set character.
Elden Ring has few NPC interactions, choices and well executed quests. The world is heavily hostile. I don't see it fulfilling the niche quite, but it fills my craving per now.
With Oblivion and Skyrim being real hits, why aren't there more competitors in the Single Player, Open World, Fantasy, RPG niche?
What
We have multiplayer Skyrim in 2026
We have whole ass multiplayer Skyrim roleplay with 500+ people on servers simultaneously in 2026. No NPCs, all people. The world feels full. Like, it has as many people as it should to feel alive. The voice acting is impressive. I've met many people that feel exactly like running into a character in the game. I've also met a talking mudcrab that sold me mazte at a feast of St Veloth.
Public servers are predictably extremely goofy, but whitelist servers are really good. Right now the only English speaking server that's currently up that I'm aware of is Keizaal, but Mereth will be launching their beta soon. Mereth seems to have cracked the NPC sync issue, so they should be able to fill the world with roaming creatures where Keizaal currently has spawn zones that trigger when you enter them (thus spawning NPCs in the same location for everyone), which then have a cooldown.