As I with this post now get the Master rank, it struck me how much I′ve been on these forums and of course, how much I′ve played Oblivion over the years. Naturally it′s a different experience now compared to when I was new to it. Back when I started to play in Feb 2007 I wasn′t aware of these forums nor the wiki, and therefore I did everything based upon what I thought was the best course of action.

I remember avoiding the Imperial City out of fear of getting arrested from escaping. I remember fighting a troll just outside the walls which actually brought my dear Lothran a brief existence in the Aetherius plane.
I remember spending so much time in the market district when I finally dared operate in public. And I very much remember one of my first quests, Unfriendly Competition, which I enjoyed very much. Not to mention I remember my very first visit to Bruma. I have never felt so at home as when I first laid eyes upon the town gates while the snow was falling to the sound of Jeremy Soule′s amazing music.

Unfortunately I also remember having serious performance issues which actually was the main reason I spent so much time in the Imperial City, I couldn′t go outside without lowering the settings significantly. New sound cards, more RAM and whole new systems was needed before I could crank up the settings to where they are now.

It was worth it though, and it would be interesting to read about your first memories of playing this game

My first memories are only a few weeks ago - my love for Skyrim inspired me to play other Elder Scrolls titles, namely Oblivion.

I got lost almost as soon as I set foot in the Imperial City, and spent about twenty minutes trying to find the bridge out of the place - it didn't help that I couldn't find the map! I almost immediately joined the Mage's Guild, which is probably my favourite questline. I feel quite a connection with the people of the Mage's Guild - in the Cheydinhal branch especially.

I think I'm going to have to bookmark this thread - I have a feeling it's going to become a very interesting read!
Somewhat off-topic: happy 5000 posts!

I posted this before, but I still remember my first time playing Oblivion. Which was right after the release. It was my first Elder Scrolls game so I was completely new to the universe and the type of game.

Well after the the tutorial, I remember seeing the strange ruin across the river. I didn't know what to do. The Imperial City was behind me but I was afraid to go there - I was an escaped prisoner, so I figured if I did that I would be arrested again. (I see Morocu thought the same thing, I thought I was the only one ) So I decided that I'd try to head to what looked like the closest city, which appeared to be Cheydinhal.

But I didn't know how to cross the water. I couldn't find a bridge nearby. Eventually I figured out that I could swim! That was amazing.

I guess I had problems with the bandits outside Vilverin, but do remember see a mudcrab and probably got killed.

After loading a save I passed Fort Urasek and saw a strange creature outside. Then I realized it was one of the Goblins like in the tutorial. I think I just avoided it.

I then took the country side to Cheydinhal and ran across another ruin, Belda. That I remember very well. Because my Breton with 50% magic resistance keep getting killed from fireballs from a stunted scamp or two. I remember thinking that stunted scamps must be particularly powerful scamps indeed. Eventually my character survived. I was wondering about the ruin and whether it was possible to go in, I didn't know what they were there for, and didn't even realize I could enter the ruin.

But I continued on to Cheydinhal and ran into a beautiful waterfall. About that time it was getting dark! That was amazing to me, because I had not expected to see day and night implemented in the game. I thought it was just going to be day forever. And then admiring the night sky.

I eventually made it to Cheydinhal and rented a room. Then got my first quest -- A Brush With Death. I was thoroughly amazed and wondered if all the quests where going to be similar to that one.

Just a really great first experience!

(PS but then due to poor leveling I kept getting killed at around level 8. At that point I discovered level scaling, and got a very early version of the OOO mod, and have been using it ever since).

Oblivion was my first game, on my first 360.
I stepped out of the sewers (glorious music in the background)
My jaw dropped at how beautiful this world was
I heard music that sounded dangerous, looked down and got taken down by a mudcrab.
(reload)
I ventured to that ruin over there, and promptly left, getting chased by two mean people.
Then I ran for my life for the city on the hill, with wolves chasing me.
And I stayed there for a level or two. Phew.... I'm safe in here... oh yes I am.

I′m glad you like it, and thank you!

I also remember Vilverin. I swam across the water and heard battle music. I crouched behind cover and they lost track of me, but they searched and I could hear them taunt me, saying coming there was the last mistake I ever made! It was terrifying!

Like Savlian I remember the goblin at Fort Urasek. I had grass turned on so I couldn′t see where he was but I heard the battle music. When I had defeated him I remember looking with awe at my iron sword. It was beautiful and I felt so powerful just holding it!

There are many good games out there and I′m glad Oblivion is one of them

Oblivion was my first TES Game. I was searching for a nice roleplay and found it on a rummage table. I bought it.
After climbing out of the sewer I was in fear to be imprisoned again. I decided to avoid all cities, because I wanted to be free. So it took more than 70 hours of gameplay, before I was encouraged enough to enter a City...
I felt so quick home in Oblivion. I am currently playing Skyrim, but sometimes I need a small excursion home: back to Chorrol, talking to Seed Neeus, riding to the Imperial City and buy something in the Godess Store. Now that I am writing it down I am full of homesickness.

I remember my first few hours in Oblivion very well. My reaction was very ambivalent. My first disppointment the theme. I love music and I'd loved Morrowind's theme and I had been looking forward eagerly to hear the new game's theme. And I was very disppointed when I realized they had merely recycled Morrowind's theme.

I thought the tutorial dungeon was extremely well done. In fact to this day I think it is probably the best tutorial I have ever played. I still start new characters every so often just so I can go through the tutorial. I find it to be a very relaxing experience.

I was aghast when I left the sewers. The land across the water looked horrible. Absolutely awful. I had never seen LOD before and to me the distant terrain looked like ancient 90's-era graphics technology. I actually had to shut the game off for a few minutes at that point and walk around. I was actually kind of depressed. I'd been hearing about how wonderful the game looked and that distant land just looked like crap to me.

Bethesda realized it looked bad. They improved the appearance of the game's LOD with each patch. It's kind of bearable now but, boy, back in March 2006 it was poor. You could actually see and count the individual pixels in the landscape textures. I still don't think it looks that great great (and made a mod to bring fog close to my character so I wouldn't have to look at it) but it has improved, I'll say that. To this day there are still a few spots around Cyrodiil where you can see terrain stretch in a vertical wall and then suddenly "snap" into place (in my game this usually happens on the road between the IC and Chorrol, among other spots).

[Disclosure: I'm not a fan of infinite view distance in video games anyway. I hate having to see the White Gold tower from every square inch of Cyrodiil. It makes the game world look like a model train layout and removes any feeling of mystery the world might have had. So I'm biased to begin with.]

My next stop was Sideways Cave. I was tremendously impressed the design: the underground lake/Ayleid ruin atmosphere was phenomenal. But there was something even better across the water: Vilverin. Vilverin is an excellently-designed and laid-out dungeon. It's not quite Skyrim quality but I'd say it's better than any dungeon in Morrowind. I remember panicking when the door closed behind me. I'm terrible with puzzles and at first I couldn't figure out which button did what. I must have been in Vilverin for about two hours. I breathed a sigh of relief when I got out.

I trekked up to the Imperial City, wondering why, if this was the center of the Empire, there weren't more roads leading to it (I still wonder that). I went into Jensine's shop because I liked the name. And I got my next disappointment. Merchant gold did not go up or down with transactions. I can still see myself sitting in front of the computer, can still feel the disappointment when I realized this. I would expect something like this in Dungeon Seige but not from a detailed, in-depth roleplaying game like Oblivion. I still think that is cheap. Fortunately they have corrected this in Skyrim.

I hate dialog zoom. But I knew it was coming from the promo materials and I knew from Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (which also used dialog zoom) how to turn it off in the .ini (which was my first modification to the game, made before I started my first character). So I dodged a bullet there. But my other hated feature of Oblivion, closed cities, had to wiat for a mod to fix that. Unlike Morrowind or Skyrim, I doubt that I could play this game on a console.

I got untangled in Thoronir's shananigans next. I think this is a great quest to this day, one of my favorites in the game. It is probably meant to remind us of Fargoth's Ring (spy on the Wood Elf who is doing something shady) only this time it is reversed (as so many Morrowind references are in Oblivion): the Wood Elf is now the one being taken advantage of. Very clever. Bethesda's writing at it's best.

My only other memory of my first day is spending at least an hour trying to find the Fighter's Guild in the Imperial City. There was noplace to look this information up back then. I started a thread here in this forum asking anybody if they knew where the Fighter's Guild was in the IC. Nobody knew yet. I finally gave up and left for Chorrol. To this day I still don't understand why there is no Fighter's Guild in the Imperial City.

I eventually adjusted to some of the things that annoyed me that first day (I have learned to avert my eyes when I see vertical LOD). Other things I have been able to mod out, or in. I had a great time doing combat that first day. Combat in Oblivion is one of the game's fun features. Oblivion is a great action game. I still have a lot of fun going in and bashing monsters all over Cyrodiil, and I think I always will.

I don't remember much more than that about my first day. I played the game for about three weeks and then lost interest in it and set it aside. I picked it up again when mods started coming out. I've been here ever since.

Oblivion was also my first TES, and my most vivid memory is exiting the sewers for the first time. I agree that Oblivion has one of the best dungeon/tutorials available and the entrance into the "real world" was a real Wizard of Oz moment for me. No other games including (Skyrim, FO3, etc) have been able to duplicate the feeling of that moment. I was one of the few who immediately set off for Weynon Priory to purue the main quest, but it was the actual exit from the sewer into Tamriel that was the most memorable. A close second would be my first entry within an actual Oblivion gate. Oblivion is full of some of my most memorable moments in gaming.

Again, exiting the sewers was a special moment for me, the tutorial led me to believe the whole game was dungeon crawling, and after seeing the outside world briefly in the intro, I was really happy about this fact. Seeing Mud Crabs and stuff outside the door and across the lake was awesome, until they attacked me, I had to save it before killing them, I was so paranoid, haha.

Of course, like most other people, Vilverin was the very first thing I did, I remember walking right up to those bandits thinking I could talk to them! But they just tried to kill me, and I thought I would be in trouble for killing them, so I ran away and hid, then killed them figuring not many people would know. And then I went inside Vilverin, and I loved the sort of mini story in there with Jalbert the Necromancer. But it also scared the hell out of me, and I was relieved upon exiting that place.

I was having trouble getting through the tutorial because I got lost somehow. I also kept getting owned because I didn't know how to surrender to somebody so when I attacked Emperor Uriel Septim to get his sword and robes I kept getting owned and I re-loaded right to the fight for some reason every time.

Then I went to Bruma as my first town and I went on a killing spree and my bounty was somewhere in the 20,000's.... Ah Good Times!

One memory that stands out for me is my first character's arrival at Kvatch. Rather than going by road, we went south from the Priory, and approached Kvatch from the north. So we never encountered Hirtel ("Run while you can!"), never saw the encampment, and had no warning...

Our hero climbed the "back side" of Kvatch's plateau, and was distracted by having to fight several wolves. We rounded the city walls on the east end, and were just becoming alarmed at the burned trees and red sky when we came into sight of the Gate. I still remember how the hairs on the back of my neck stood up when I saw that thing.

Sorry to know that you had such terrible memories there, Pseron. But I′m glad you like it now

Of course I also remember exiting the sewers. I loved it and just stood there with awe! I had never experienced such an open world and at that time specifically, I understood how open it really was. It was daytime, the sun was up and the invisible birds were chirping in my ears

I remember starting in the Imperial Prison, and being amazed at how the chains in my cell moved when my character walked into them. Walking out the sewers were a favourite moment as mine, seeing the open-world for the first time, a ruin just over the lake waiting to be explored.

It was all a blur, i didn't really appreciate games for what they could do back then and my first memory i recall of Oblivion was looting a bandit for his leather armour just by the water at night (wierd i know).

My best memories of Oblivion were after taking a good year break coming back and starting fresh (about 2008), it was then that i realised how amazing the game was, i spent a few minutes just wandering around the sewer exit looking a vilverin, the water, the mountains and just taking it all in and thinking... "this is amazing".

Everyone's first memories seem like a lifetime away, from how they're written! Glad to see most of them were good memories, and all of them ended up as such!
I remember seeing Vilverin, but I was too afraid to go near ... I doubted my mage with a weak fire spell and some Mythic Dawn robes would be able to cope with BANDITS! Of course, that Mage soon discovered that bandits WEREN'T the very definition of formidable foes

It wasn't all bad. I wanted to give a sense of things I liked as well as things I didn't, but I'm not sure I did a very good job. Overall, I liked much more about Oblivion than I disliked.





Well, we're talking about the year 2006, for some of us. Many things have changed in many of our lives since 2006. It almost does seem like a lifetime away.

::EDIT:: March 20, 2012 will be Oblivion's sixth anniversary! Two days away, as I write this. Boy, it seems even more like a lifetime away now.

My first memory is galloping across the countryside on a stolen horse

My fondest and most vivid memory was when I came out of the sewer the first time and was(and still am) floored by the world that was unfolded before me.....one of my favorite memorys of all time.

Congratulations, Mirocu, on 5000. That’s a lot of posts. You do well to hold this thing together. Thanks.

I started with the GOTY addition, so I guess that saved me a lot of grief, unlike you.

I just reviewed my notes from my first Oblivion character, Tara. When she came out of the sewers she teleported to Chorrol, wandered around a while, then joined the Mages and Fighters Guilds because that’s what she did in Morrowind. She was so terrified of the Oblivion world that she went scurrying back to Morrowind where she had been for a few years. A couple of months later she came back and did a little more, mostly just jumping around to the various cities. Then she went back to Morrowind again. Finally she came back to Oblivion for keeps in Nov 2008.

She lived in the tower of the Chorrol Fighters Guild for a loooong time - the floor was covered with loot she wanted to save - and I killed that porter just to make myself feel better - reverted to an earlier save because the Guard came and killed me. She gradually found a few caves to explore. Got killed for real the first, and last, time at Black Rock Cave when she didn’t have any silver arrows to kill those pirates.
She stayed around Chorrol doing the local quests for a while, then at Anvil, she got involved with the Prophet-Knights of the Nine thing. By level 9 she had found the lost shrine and continued down that path.

She finished the Mages Guild recommendation and got promoted to Apprentice. She thought that was a major achievement. The most terrifying early quest was finding the tears for S’draesa at Frostfire Glade.

Didn’t have the internet back then to look it all up and I had a lot of fun after I got over my aversion to the strange new world of Oblivion.

Love it! Great story

My character did this too. Its all a little hazy as to what she did exactly as soon as she got out of the sewers, but at some point she went to the waterfront. There she was forced to slay a pirate who attacked her- her very first human kill. I remember buzzing with excitement at this point. Then she stole the paint horse that waits by the door to the Imperial City, and rode him at full pace all the way to Chorrol, feeling terrified that the guards would be after her. There she spoke to Jauffre, and the rest is history.

Well done to mirocu on his fourth star!

My first significant memory of Oblivion is when I got out of the imperial sewer for the first time. I had to turn the view distance down very far due to my pathetic computer hardware, but I was still dumbstruck by the fact that I could suddenly go anywhere I wanted in the world.

I actually always thought that quest had a dumb premise. If somebody's mysteriously and massively undercutting your store's prices, for the sake of your own business that's certainly worth looking into, but the kind of private business regulation they have going on in the market district is just dumb from an economic perspective. FYI, this kind of collaborative price fixing isn't even legal in the US of A, and for good reason.

Thank you! But I didn′t have problems because I didn′t have the GotY, it was only because I had a slooow computa

Much obliged

I think you′re digging a bit too deep here In any case I liked it because it made me feel like a detective, spying on suspicious people to solve the case

I'm sorry, but every single thing you have written is wrong.

Cyrodiil's Society of Concerned Merchants is what we in the United States call a Retailer's Co-operative. This is not only not illegal in the United States, it is encouraged (as are consumer cooperatives). Here in Oregon we have two thriving organizations of businesses known as Unified Grocers and Western Family Foods. Their goal is to a) provide businesses with the lowest cost wholesale goods and b ) to create a business environment within which a retailer can sell at the highest price. Among the other notable cooperative business organizations in the US are the National Automotive Parts Association, Associated Wholesalers, the Associated Grocers of Florida, the Associated Grocers of New England, the Associated Grocers of the South, et cetera. In addition the US is home to the National Cooperative Business Association, an organization which coordinates the activities of local and regional business cooperatives.

If you have ever purchased an automoblie in the United States you have seen what is called a Monroney sticker. Among the things you will find on a Monroney sticker is the automobile manufacturer's suggested retail price. This number represents an industry aggreement to sell equivalent products at an equivalent price. We see this in video games also: nearly every video game released at the same time is released at the same price. Skyrim, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning (to name three recent titles) all carry a price tag of exactly $59.99. Is it an accident that three different companies sell their products at the same price? No, it is not. The industry co-operates on pricing.

One last point: the exact term Jensine uses is fair prices. Fair prices is not the same thing as price fixing.

Oh, I stand corrected then. Thank you for enlightening me.