Not sure what to make of this, as others have hinted, it could end up very good or will spawn the result of utterly abysmal products.
In the future, who's to say how this merger will change, for now, it's just a publishing agreement and iD appears to be still fairly independent.

Games with crappy programming AND design? :D

Oh shit.

Bethesda and id are not merging, so I'm not sure why people are talking about the games being altered. With this deal, id gets a publisher who has a real interest in their products rather than the negligent handling they seem to have received in their deals with third party publishers like Activision. They probably also get the funding to expand to the point where they can release a game more often than every 4 or 5 years. Being within the same company may mean some collaboration such as Bethsoft using id's engines in future games, but they should still remain separate. That's really the idea behind buying a studio who does games that you currently don't do: to diversify.

That would be kickass if that happened. It would bring the original Quake and both of its expansions, along with Quake 2 and both of its expansions, which are real kick in the nuts to find for some damn reason. Then there are all those other wonderful games that ID was responsible for.

Actually, it makes sense... Bethesda does Western RPGs like the Elder Scrolls Series and Fallout 3. iD does FPS's like Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein. There is both simarities and differences in each of ZeniMax Media's divisions. And heck, if they wanted to do a Platformer, they have Commander Keen as well. The combined Bethesda & iD makes a varied portfolio of games.