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I sincerely hope there has not already been a topic like this before.

I guess I'm asking my question because while I keep playing, I can't for the life of me explain why. Maybe it's simple addiction? o.o
Sure I like it but few of my characters last more than a day or 3 before I get bored or lose track of that character's intentions.
I guess I keep rotating between combat magic and stealth.

For me, the easy answer is because I haven't finished yet. I didn't get Oblivion until after Skyrim came out, and the character I'm using is a completionist. I've still got the main quest and Mage's guild quests to finish. Plus, it's slow going since I alternate between games, take months off from gaming entirely to do other things, so I'm a notoriously slow gamer.

There is a lot to do and a lot to try to do better. You can do the thieves guild quests wearing a chameleon suit, do them with a pocket full of invisibility potions, or try doing them without turning on Sneak at all. The Dark Brotherhood quests are the same way... can you kill everyone with a pocket full of summon Daedroth and summon zombie scrolls? Can you kill everyone without incurring any infamy points?

While it admittedly isn't the perfect RPG for me, in many ways, both graphically and mechanically, Oblivion suits me "gaming needs". Fortunately mods held bridge some of the deficiencies from what Oblivion is as opposed to what my ideal RPG should be.

To a degree it is a comfort thing, but also a huge distraction from getting "projects" done. But to be honest, the neighbors don't like hearing the table saw, router, and hammer of steel on steel from the hours of 10 PM to 3 AM. So being a quiet, sleep depriving alternative, there is Oblivion.

Well i started with skyrim first, although i'd played oblvion years back, i couldn't understand much about the game as i was pretty young . I completed about 75% of skyrim, i also installed morrowind. I liked morrowind so much better, i stopped with skyrim and completed morrowind(including the expansions). Now i want to play the series chronologically. So since i'm throgh with morrowind, i'm now playing oblivion. And after that i'll start with skyrim all over. Also i had a crappy character build in skyrim so i'm not bothered to start over.
So far i've liked morrowind the best in the series.There was just so much you could do. But I've yet to play oblivion so my opinion may change.

I for one have never played morrowind and so I am kinda lacking about dark elf culture knowledge. XD
What can you do in morrowind that you cannot do in oblivion? Other than levitation?

Haha yes. Well levitation is one of the things. Everyone seems to figure that. Plus there was a lot more, what can i say, 'freedom' to do stuff in morrowind. Stealing was much easier. You could create custom spells and enchanted items from almost anyone from the mages guild or an enchanter. In oblivion I've read you could do this only after getting into the arcane university. You could even enchant items yourself, although that was rather difficult(I don't know whether you could do the same in oblivion).
Morrowind had such a wide variety of weapons including crossbows, spears, throwing darts. All these have been removed from oblivion though i miss the deadly dwarven darts.
Skyrim is even worse, at least in the above mentioned aspects. Not much choice of spells. The only magic schools which will actually be of any use are destruction and perhaps conjuration. I did not like the alchemy though. Also it has become more 'open' with the removal of classes and attributes, i think it has lost an important rpg aspect present in the previous games.

Yeah well regarding "what could you do in Morrowind that you can't in Oblivion?"

Some weapons have already been mentioned.

A couple of spell effects. Mark/Recall, Almsivi/Divine interventions would be redundant in Oblivion, due to the fast travel that was not available in Morrowind. Sound, Blind, and Sancturay would also be redundant since there is no dice roll to determine whether an attack or spell is successful. Also, levitation and jump would cause problems in Oblivion because the cities are loaded as interior cells, not exterior cells. However, I do miss swift swim.

Also, there were overpowered constant effect enchants, like "Restore Health", and overpowered alchemy to create potions that restore 300 billion healths per second for a decade(I'm not joking. this was actually possible).

Gauntlesses were divided into left and right so you could wear two different types at a time. And also enchant them differently.

There was also a class of armour called "pauldrons" for a shoulder slot, also divided into left and right.

But what I'm missing the most is the "Cast on Use" type of enchants. In Oblivion, the only things similar to that are Staves, and Scrolls, but you can't make customs for those, so it's not that fun.

However, I do like that in Oblivion you can make use of the negative effects of ingredients. Poisons were useless in Morrowind(you could not coat your weapon with them, only drink them). I also like that instead of 5 majors and 5 minors, and every other skills in misc, now there are 7 majors, that match the fact, there are 7 governing attributes. It makes a lot more sense this way. Mounts are also a good addition to the game. I guess my expectations are irrealistic, but what I'd like the most is if they had kept the cast on use type of enchants, and the variety of weapons, and armours, in addition to the new things.

Coming back to the original question, I play Oblivion because I enjoy games with a storyline. It has a great world to explore and lots of things to do. Sure, it did drop a lot of skills from Morrowind and a lot of weapon classes, but it is still a good game. I personally liked Morrowind more than Oblivion or Skyrim, but I don't think the casualization of Oblivion and Skyrim is necessarily bad. The system in Oblivion is a bit twisted, since you can be in the Dark Brotherhood and the Fighter's Guild at the same time. In Skyrim the situation gets even worse, where you don't even need to cast a single spell to complete the Mages Guild (College of Winterhold) storyline. There is only a single incidence in Shalidor's Maze where you have to use spells of the four classes of magic. Even then you can use scrolls to proceed. Regardless of Oblivion's faults, I find that it is still an ES game, and the lore captivates me. Besides, there are always mods available for download that can make the game less casual, or hardcore.

My favorite things about Oblivion:
The look and design of Cyrodiil, and the variety of environments.
The questline stories, especially the main quest.
The range of moods, from relaxed and light-hearted to dark and stressful.
Alchemy. All of my TES characters are alchemists, and I think that Oblivion's implementation of alchemy is the best of the series, so far.

I'd play Oblivion even if the only things to do in it were exploring and looking for alchemy ingredients. I wouldn't play it as much, but I'd still play it.

Because it's better than Skyrim.

I play Oblivion, because I am a fan of RPG and fantasy. It may not have the graphics to make me feel as if I'm part of the game, but it is still immersive. The whole fighting against demons/deadra is a topic the suits to me in general even though I don't view myself as a cleric or paladin. It is similar to a book series that I'm a fan of. I like to watch horror movies and read horror books so some of the scenes in Mehrunes Dragon's planes of Oblivion give me the rush of a horror movie (though not as intense as they are not made purely for horror). It is also that I was raised into RPG/fantasy. I have many friends and close family members that play WoW and/or DnD.

I've gone back to playing Oblivion for one simple reason, I AM the Mad God. Sure, that's one tiny little part of the story that may or may not have happened before all the rest of the crap, but still, what other game let's you play as a Mad God? Not many, if any.

Oh, I thought of something else I love about Oblivion.

The voice acting. No, I'm not joking. I enjoy the voice acting in Oblivion probably more than in any other game. It's so amazingly over-the-top, melodramatic, hilarious, and just plain awesome.

Really? I was always somewhat disappointed by the voice acting. I mean, they start right off with Patrick Stewart. Patrick Stewart! The only way to beat that is if Morgan Freeman appeared somewhere in the game.

...I would pay big money to hear Morgan Freeman in an Elder Scrolls game.

Why do I play Oblivion?

Well, in truth, I haven't in a couple of years now, but I am feeling nostalgic and want to begin my journey once more. Anyway, for me there isn't another RPG like it. The graphics are bearable, the combat - whilst not up to standards of a game like Dark Souls - is entertaining, and the whole sense of freedom the game lends you is unrivaled. In Skyrim, I can't help but feel claustrophobic; large mountains surround you at every turn, and the world is bleak. Sometimes I like to escape to the high fantasy world that Cyrodiil offers.

Also, Oblivion was the first to game of its kind that I really invested a serious portion of my life too. Melodramatic, I know, however it remains a part of me to this day. I won't ever forget my amazement of departing the sewers for the first time; this beautiful world, untouched, sprawling out in limitless directions. Was I to play a caster? An Orc barbarian? The hours I spent planning out each character, finely tuning him, attempting to comprehend the workings of the game, must have reached 100 alone. When I wasn't playing the game, I was thinking about it.

The levelling system, whilst fundamentally flawed and requiring a great deal of effort to manipulate, is first and foremost fun. Raise 10 major skills - whatever they may be - and you'd level up. Each skill being governed by an attribute, each attribute in turn affecting your skills - no other game really has that level of complexity, whilst retaining a simplicity on its exterior. Anyone can pick up and play. Myself, aged 10, could play. I could get something out of the game at that young age. I didn't need to know how the game worked, spending much of my time on the easiest difficulty; I could cleave Daedra down like it was my job.

The magic is still nestled in there for me. Aged 16 I can still return to Cyrodiil, still regale in the exultation of my youth. Though I now know the game like no other, secrets remain abound. The beauty persists in the limitless ways you can play; you're only bound by your imagination.

tl;dr: I [&@%!] LOVE THIS GAME!

Just thought I'd share a small part of my feelings towards this masterpiece of a game!

Because I switch off between the three most recent Elder Scrolls games, and am equally addicted to all (maybe Skyrim the most, hm). For a break from the wooden longhouses of Skyrim or the arid landscape of Morrowind, I love going into the beautiful, foresty, cosmopolitan land of Cyrodiil. Change of environment suits me well, after a brief break.

Nowadays I mostly play Skyrim, but get back into Oblivion every now and then. In fact, I'm just starting a new replay, now that I finally have Shivering Isles, Knights of the Nine and all other DLCs. There are plenty of reasons why I still play the game:

-main storyline is great, except for the repetitive Oblivion gates. I like its pace better than Skyrim's, and the finale is epic. In this regard Skyrim fell a bit flat, since Alduin wasn't particularly hard to beat with a lvl 50-something character with full magic resistance. If that was corrected, it still would be a tie between the games.
-guild questlines are much, much better than Skyrim's. They start small as they should, and progress to more difficult things in a way that feels quite natural. Also, Oblivion's Thieves Guild is a masterpiece. I absolutely love that questline. Some sneaking is actually required, and the characters and plot are fantastic. Skyrim's lousy attempt at fake epicness is pathetic in comparison. Mages Guild recommendation quests were fun, too, even though the rest of the questline was only so-so.
-the environment is beautiful, if somewhat bland and featureless. This, however, is corrected with a mod that makes things more interesting.
-interesting sidequests. Glarthir and his madness, for instance. I still remember the first time I actually spied Bernadette a whole in-game day from nearby bushes, wondering when she would start spying on Glarthir.
-the game is just very relaxing. The mood is more lighthearted than Skyrim's, everything is colourful and vibrant, NPCs are for the most part friendly and polite, the exploring music is soothing... All in all, it's like one stepped into an old adventure book.

I still love some of the way things were done. Running across the country to work my way through the ranks of the guilds. The intro (I don't quite understand why I like oblivion's intro more exactly) and a few key quests just feel 'better' to me somehow.

I've put a sick amount of hours into Oblivion, so I like to boot it up every now and then just for nostalgia's sake. I can't really play it any more, having gone through the game upwards of fifteen times, so I rarely do much other than wiki work. My last serious playthrough attempt ended after a vampirism glitch broke my character.

For me, it technically some 30+ years ago. I discovered D-n-D. Followed by C.S. Lewis, J.R.R Tolkien, Weis and Hickman(?), I was hooked on the fantasy genre. Fast forward to 2007. Basically out of tabletop gaming (save the occasional Battletech game, I bought a PS3 from a local pawn shop. I went to my video rental store and tried a few fantasy RPGs, but none that I found really struck a chord. I happened by a Gamestop a few towns over from mine and found a copy of the first release of Oblivion. I took it home, popped it in, and WOW! I could go anywhere, do anything, and be anyone I wanted! All the fun of D-n-D, without the prep work, groups of dudes at the house all hours buggin the wife, or the bother of doing anything but sitting in my chair.
I have close to 4000 hrs in Oblivion now. and I have enjoyed every one. From simply decorating my house, to murdering a house full of people just cuz somebody thought it would be fun, Oblivion(bugs, glitches, and all) is a wonderful game. I have recently gotten the Anthology for PC and am working my way thru all the titles, but Oblivion will always be my first love.