I've played a number of face to face (I won't say pen and paper, as it wasn't) roleplays which didn't contain numbers.

So have I, and I have the welts to prove it! XD

No it isn't. The community doesn't define what is good or bad for someone else. You also are putting the opinion of yourself in the mouths of everyone else. so your assertion fails on more than one level.

Enjoy what you like, and leave it to everyone else to decide whatever they want to like.

You didn't provide any facts in your assessment. I'll give you some.

The game averaged over 90/100 on reviews. (metacritic, just one example that carries many reviews into consideration, gave it a 94).
It has sold over 3.5 million copies... THIS DOES NOT COUNT THE LAST 2 YEARS.
Here is a quote from the wiki:

"Oblivion won a number of industry and publication awards. In 2006, the game was awarded the title "Game of the Year" at the G-Phoria Video Game Awards and at the Spike TV Video Game Awards.[144][145] At the 24th annual Golden Joystick Awards, Oblivion was awarded "PLAY.com Ultimate Game of the Year", "Xbox Game of the Year", and "ebuyer.com PC Game of the Year".[146] The game was titled the best role-playing game of 2006 by 1UP.com,[147] G4,[144] IGN,[148] GameSpy,[149] GameSpot,[150] Game Revolution,[151] and the Interactive Achievement Awards.[152] In 2007, PC Gamer magazine rated Oblivion number one on their list of the top 100 games of all time.[153] In addition to the awards won by the game itself, Patrick Stewart's voice work as Uriel Septim won a Spike TV award,[145] and the musical score by composer Jeremy Soule won the inaugural MTV Video Music Award for "Best Original Score" through an international popular vote.[154]"

So... nice achievements from a game everyone hated :P

And your point? Shitty games always get shining reviews from the mainstream press. They are crooked as fuck and their ad-space is paid for by the same companies who are selling the game.

Funny that I read most of the posts and was drawn to this. Yes, they did have tits didn't they....I nearly forgot. Also, didn't they often have long platted hair and did a weird little dance?

Re the series; I'm a bit underwhelmed. I soon got bored with Daggerfall. Morrowind was good. Oblivion was overrated and I really couldn't be bothered with Skyrim

What race/class did you play?

Goodness - now you're asking. I'm positive I was a High Elf and played as a Sorcerer with some points in Archery.

The character creation was great and the interactions were fun. I just got bored stupid with the dungeon crawling. It's probably my lack of ability but I would be in a dungeon for an hour and because I missed a single switch or door, would not reach the goal. I'm a little impatient as I feel like I have to progress, albeit slightly, in each sitting.

Thief or Rogue usually, though in D&D I like Lawful Evil Fighter/Thief. In Daggerfall I think I played with a dark elf Thief with the usual Pickpocketing/Stealth/Backstab skills.

I like magic classes too but not the ranged damage type.
Yeah, the (randomly generated) dungeons are p. weak in Daggerfall

All this discussion of pen and paper and RPG's made me realise exactly why I couldn't get into Morrowind and Oblivion (to a lesser extent). In a P&P RPG's, and in many computer adaptations, things are judged by your intention and by numbers. In The Elder Scrolls games, all of them (well, perhaps except the mobile ones I haven't played), combat is judged by how you move the mouse. Your intention isn't enough, you have to aim and swing. In Arena and Daggerfall the world was basically flat, so that was easier. Morrowind has some combat in a cave early on, and that's where I stopped playing because for the life of me (or my character) I couldn't get a hit except by random chance.

I knew before why I stopped playing, but this clarified to me that I want an RPG with tactical combat, not action based combat.

That's IMO where games like The Elder Scrolls differ from P&P games and is probably why Crosmando feels it's LARPing. It has nothing to do with how many rules there are behind the scenes, just that P&P RPG's (rule heavy or rule light ones) aren't affected in any way by the player's reflexes or other physical traits, while PC action RPG's are.

Someone finally gets it

Well, Morrowind is somewhat less guilty of that that the later titles in the series. Clicking on something to attack, in my experience, isn't really where the challenge in hitting lies. Instead, you have to choose which type of attack to do based on the direction you move the mouse (again, not difficult movements, except when you're panicking!) and a behind the scenes dice roll which *gasp* has a chance to miss. A chance which can be frustratingly high when your skill is low, which may be why it was one of the things removed when Oblivion was 'dumbed down'. It's advisable to be ready to run if something stronger than you turns up early on (and throughout the game, to a lesser extent). Dodging enemy attacks by moving really isn't a part of the game either as far as I recall, as performing an attack takes a comparatively long time, but that's made up for in your agility, speed, etc, helping you to dodge the enemy's attack and suffer no damage.

I haven't used a bow more than a few times in the game, so can't really say what that's like, but a friend felt that he was having to both aim with the mouse and then have the miss chance from the roll, so you may wish to avoid that if you don't like the action elements involved.

Yeah, Morrowind had attack rolls which checked your attributes, the type of weapon you were used, and then any magical effects on top of that. You could be right in front of a blasted cliff racer and swinging away and still missing because in the background your were failing invisible dice rolls to-hit.

One of the reasons it eventually got changed to Skyrim's "you always hit a target if you aim it correctly" is because of the visual dissonance that Morrowind's combat caused. It was an abstract system running in a completely non-abstract realistic first-person game.

You could argue that TES was always bound to end up as an Action-RPG because of that fact, the only way abstraction works in a first-person RPG is something like Wizardry or Might & Magic.

Don't forget Ultima Underworld.

TES has some elements from the CRPG genre, but it was never a true CRPG series. They are action-RPGs, always have been.

Btw, Morrowind sucked too. There are so many better action-RPGs out there of every flavour imaginable: Ultima Underworld, The Witcher, Gothic, Secret of Mana/Evermore, PSO, Monster Hunter, Diablo, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Rune Factory, etc. It is hard to understand why TES games are the most popular out of all of them. I have yet to play Mass Effect, I wouldn't surprised if those games are better than TES too.