This is good news, however it sounds like it's still going to be a while in coming.
That said, I confess that the idea of a "direct sequel" doesn't impress me. To be entirely honest they were poaching Morrowwind heavily for things like the stuff in the various books. Creating a direct sequel seems like an excuse to basically recycle a lot of the same old material.
Oblivion was a GREAT game, no doubt about that, and technologically it surpassed Morrowwind by a substantial amount. However one of the things that made the "Elder Scrolls" series for me at least was all the details and reading the scores of books and such that they put into the game. I enjoyed RPing a scholor of sorts and collecting and reading them. It's things like that that made Elder Scrolls cool.
It seemed to me that Oblivion put a lot of focus on the game itself, but not enough into the supporting details. That bugged me. This news makes me think we'll see that again.
Still, more Elder Scrolls is a good thing. Aside from doing away with the level scaling, I'd like to see them work on the magic system a bit. Simply put we're supposed to have "Imperial Battle Mages" and the like, yet I think the way they have been working the magic system with racial aptitude really makes certain concepts like that difficult to work with.
I'd also like to see it so playing a dedicated mage would be a bit easier. Truthfully in most of the Elder Scrolls games, especially early on, I wind up having to use a *lot* of melee in order to succeed in combat. I rarely if ever wind up feeling like a mage, using magic as my primary means of battle through the entire game.
