You misunderstand Oblivion. That was never intended as a game. It is just a tech-demo for a graphics engine. If you want an actual game using that engine, you have to download a good total conversion. Like Nehrim - a great, fanmade RPG using the Oblivion engine.

Or you might try Fallout - New Vegas. It uses basically the same engine but managed to be a decent, post-apocalyptic RPG nontheless. Nothing comparable to the original Fallouts, but much better than Oblivion or Fallout 3.

But yes, Morrowind did things a lot better. It was the last really great Elder Scrolls title. You might want to try it.

I have yet to play Obvlivion or Skyrim. I love Morrowind, but MW also has a ton of shortcomings. It's been years since I played but IIRC you can qualify to enter every single guild from day 1, and it doesn't take much improvement to qualify for guildmaster of every guild. That's completely wrong IMO. Fortunately, as others have said there are a ton of mods out there. There are, quite literally, thousands of mods for MW. I imagine the same is true for the other games. Whatever aspect you don't like, find a mod to change it.

I think my favorite challenge for a thieves' guild was in Gothic 2. I really love the way they did that. It also has the best pickpocket system I've seen in a game. Unfortunately, the only thrill is in finding and joining the guild. Once you're in, there's nothing else.

While there are no dungeon crawls, you might possibly find Mount & Blade entertaining. It's a medieval setting without magic or monsters. You start off as a loner but can eventually join one nation and wage war against others, with their opinion of you shifting as your nations waffle between peace and war. Win battles and you can become a lord, with your own castle. It's a sandbox game without plot or story. It's mostly about the combat, and leading troops to battle, with a thin veneer of NPC interaction outside of combat, doing a few quests.

I recommend you check out the mods for this game before uninstalling.

They focused on accessible gameplay for people who never played that kind of game before. Also pretty new graphics. Depth and story got lost in the shuffle, weren't made a priority.

They have done better each game since.

The best roleplaying games allow you to do everything at once. The worst roleplayers decide to do everything at once.

Not really. If you enter two contradicting guilds at once, there should be some reaction. For example, Dark brotherhood requires killing from you, thieves guild forbids it. If you kill someone, you should be expelled from thieves guild if they find out about it.

Worst roleplaying games have zero consistency and consequences tied to your choices.

They should allow you to do whatever you want but not without consequences. Just like, I don't know, Fallout 1 and 2.

Did you mod the game? I consider the TES games to be more along the line of toolboxes, allowing me to craft my own game out of the components in there and whatever modders have created for me.
Still, Oblivion could not be saved by mods, it just had so many small flaws that were hard to fix. I enjoyed Morrowind, and I enjoyed Skyrim though (heck, Skyrim was fun out of the box, but now that I've modded it, I won't return to an unmodded version). Daggerfall was interested when it was new, but it has aged poorly.

Typical Bethesda game. Beautiful world, occupied with retarded NPC's, no coherent plot, terrible writing. Nothing in their games make any sense. And sure Skyrim is better but it's like saying that gonorrhea is better than HIV.

Actually no, the worst RPG's do this. But typically Bethesda likes to allow players to "do everything" because their fanbase are a bunch of spoiled children who want to play as the "chosen one" badass who can do everything, be a master of fighting, magic, stealing all at the same time. If the game forced them to make a choice, a "trade-off" between one skill or another, then they would spit the dummy.

The game received great scores because its a fantastic game. However, not everyone agrees all the time on everything :p

To make one point: You can do whatever you want if you don't get caught. Just like in real life. You can join both the thieves guild and the dark brotherhood because you aren't being watched 24/7. When you kill someone.... how would anyone know if you aren't sloppy? When you steal... its built into the game engine that you can either get caught or NOT. My greatest irritation about games before it is when they imposed artificial limitations on factions and skills.

What you seem to want is the add on where you can't complete it if you have any status with the evil guilds. In this case, a god-like entity is ALWAYS watching everything and you can't go perform a service for any of those guilds, even with no one else around... ever. To me... this is just lame and unimaginative. Give me the ability to play how I want and let me figure out how to balance all of the conflicting objectives.

There is choice and freedom. At any rate, I'm not going to try and convince you to like a game you don't like... but there is reason and logic behind the game, and I still find it one of the best RPGs to date.

They have good visuals and music. additionally, you can easily mod them to have GREAT graphics and you can drop ANY music in the games folder and it will play that as well (some great fan made music along with your own choice collection can really help.

There are also mods to help with the auto-leveling. I wasn't a fan of that either, but each mod handles it differently.

Protip: "Choice" in regards to skills etc is meaningless if you can eventually get all those skills anyway. "Choice" only becomes meaningful when you aren't just choosing what your character/s strengths are, but also what their weaknesses are too.

One of the most interesting things about Morrowind was the fact that the more you got into bed with one faction/guild, the more factions that disliked that faction would come to dislike you. If you got high enough in a faction/guild then it became almost impossible to deal with opposing factions. This created a huge amount of potential replayability, replayability with Oblivion/Skyrim lacked because they allow you to become the master of ever guild in the game, to get 100% of the content in terms of quests.

Forcing the player to take sides, make choices that aren't just false choices, that is the heart of a really good RPG. Take Fallout for example, you can make a character which has high Charisma, who can get all the good dialogue options, but that means having bad skills in other areas in combat.

Dialogue is an important comparison too, Oblivion's laughably bad dialogue system was not about choice in any way, it was the conversational form of grinding, the player being forced to exhaust "topics" with NPC's by taunting them, admiring them, etc, all AT THE SAME TIME. I don't think anyone needs to example just how retarded it is if a player can boast to an NPC, threaten the, admire them, one after another, and the NPC doesn't reacts individually to each option.

In everything from the character system, quest system, dialogue system, modern TES games play like offline MMO's, everything is about some OCD content grinding. Just like in MMO's how players must farm out every quest and available XP point, same as in Oblivion/Skyrim you do the same thing.
"Mods fix it" is not an excuse for bad gameplay. Bethesda use modding as a tool for dampen the fallout when they release buggy/broken games. So the fanboys then can say "Well why don't you mod it". A game can only be judged on it's vanilla state.

Morrowind has some impact, if ypou join one guild, your standing on other guilds will either increase or decrease depending on what other Guild you are talking too, for example joining the Fighters Guild and you will be warmly accepted at the Imperial Legion, but you will be on the shit list on the Tribunal Temple, here is an example:

[url=http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Fighters_Guild]http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Fighters_Guild[/url]


As for what I think of Oblivion, well I don't hate it too much, that unimmersive feeling I sometimes feel in Morrowind, but Oblivion was my first Elder Scrolls and I complained about somethings like where are the spears and crossbows, and that was before I knew Morrowind and Spears and Crossbows.

But I like the Traditional Fantasy world of Cyrodiil and if you want strange alien world than Shivering Isles got you covered.

The conversation comes to abrupt end when someone has to pull out "fanboy" simply because someone doesn't agree.

you seem convinced that you hate the game. No issues there, but you aren't going to convince anyone else to change their feelings towards it. We permanently disagree on this game and RPG fundamentals in general.

Since you pulled it out of context, I'll restate... To the person that mentioned the issue with mobs autoleveling... it can be changed via mods. The mobs auto-leveling does not in any way affect the previous conversation about the rest of the game.

The toolset being added is a pro in every way as it further lets people play the way they like. Companies make bad decisions. All of them do. Giving you the ability to correct to your preferences is pure bonus.

edit:

and as for Morrowind... I was master of all guilds. There are choices that allow this... even in Morrowind.