You hate them, I hate them. I've added Integration Integrated to my load order and have seen the important actor outside of the door leading to the IC Market. She wants me to find Martin before anything else. If I bring him to where he is supposed to go, then you know what will happen, and he will be diverted to another location. Does his arrival to Cloud Ruler mark the beginning of the Oblivion gates appearing. I want to play Integration, but don't want those gates all over making the sky red and thundery.

I think you're right about when gates start opening up. I use Integration, by the way- there is a "backdoor" for starting the questline that doesn't require meeting Martin or anything MQ related. Try heading to Fanacasecul to get the ball rolling..I think that's the ruin anyway. Might try the Integration RELZ thread for a clearer answer.

Not entirely sure what you're talking about, but Oblivion Gates start appearing after you complete Weynon Priory iirc.

This page says that the random gates appear after you bring Martin to Weynon Priory
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Oblivion_Gates#Random_Gates

As my character never bothered with all that commotion, he has never seen more than one gate and we′re both very happy about that

You might be interested in the http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3586 mod. You can choose to enable only essential quest-related gates, or a reduced percentage of random gates.

I don't hate the gates.
I got rather addicted to closing them for awhile.

When I first played the game I completed and closed all the gates while I was level 2 - I'm not at all sure what triggered them but as all the enemies are leveled to you it's easy to do - just don't bother to sleep and you won't be pestered to level up all the time.

I made myself anhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISLoXFydvsQ and don't have to get involved with saving the world anymore.

I thought about doing the Main Quest first in Oblivion and shutting down all of the gates... but then I found out that the Sigil Stones get better if you wait, then I waited and a fair portion of these gates have me summoning help to clear them out.

Clear them out? Just run for the sigil stone unless you are rp'ing a completionist. Thanks for the replies. That Xivilai at Fanacasecul was the ticket to force the quest.

Nice town for a personal getaway, and I've never seen architecture like that in any Oblivion mod. Or perhaps I will in Integration. They look a bit Morrowind. If the town were mine, don't get mad, I'd fill it with modern things like pinball machines and karaoke bars. Sort of getting away from the world of Oblivion into a simulation of the real world.