Magic mechanics improvements were good. for the most part. Magic regen was very good. Didn't like the removal of failure and setting "tiers" of spells.

Red hand ownership tags were nice.

Scheduled NPCs.

Not gonna include technical possiblities, it's not fair with games with a 4 year difference.

I loved stealth. The one thing that bugged me most about Morrowind was how shadows didn't help nearly as much.

I liked the reappeaance of mounts (although not well done)

I liked the higher amount of modability. While it could still do with tons more, it was better than that with Morrowind (not including the statics in the game, I really didn't like 'em)

I liked the stealing system. Items where marked as stolen, and placing an item in an owned container didn't make it stolen.

As for actual "improvements", I can agree with the addition of poisons, a few improvements to the stealth system, and archery (at least at low levels). The overall graphical quality was better, even if what it showed wasn't as interesting. Recoverable arrows were a nice change from "all misses disappear".

There were a LOT more lateral moves, where something in MW was "fixed", but the change had problems of its own:

Regenerating Magicka on the fly was a positive step between MW and OB, but the RATE at which it regenerated in OB was ridiculous, and the "pool" was made extremely shallow in compensation. That took a lot of the "tactical" aspects of conserving magicka in MW out of the game. Any fighter or thief in OB could toss low-level spells every so many seconds, but even pure Mage characters rarely had enough magicka in reserve to acutally "end" a fight without resorting to backup weapons to buy time for their magicka to regenerate. In MW, you could get spells "tailored" to suit your abilities, so failure was controllable and not necessarily a "bad" thing, although it needed a better introduction for the new players who most needed the advice and easier spells.

Alchemy went from one extreme to the other. In MW, the failure rate was extremely high at low level, and not "controllable" by limiting the grade of potions which you attempted to make. In OB, failure didn't exist, period. The ability to choose from a list of items with matching effects in OB was really helpful, but the better grade apparatus didn't exist anywhere in the world until you reached the "appropriate" level. Each of the systems had good and bad points.

Combat went from "character based" to "player based", not so much a matter of "better" versus "worse". OB's combat LOOKED more realistic, but the EFFECT of MW's combat actually made more sense, where you did full damage IF you hit something, versus always hitting but barely scratching them if your character's skills were low.

The "once and done" approach to dungeon diving in MW was replaced by a "go back and milk it every three days" automatic and guaranteed respawn, with the same old random levelled "BS" as everywhere else. The former rewarded exploration, with combat as just one aspect of it, but eventually you ran out of nearby places and had to travel insane distances to find anything to do; the latter game rewarded combat, with exploration totally optional, since there was no advantage to going elsewhere.

Buyable housing in OB versus a buildable personal Stronghold in MW was a matter of taste, and going from "stay anywhere for as long as you like, but you don't actually own the place" in MW to "your stuff will always vanish in exactly 3 days" in OB was just swapping one unrealistic situation for the opposite extreme.

The tall, wavy grass in OB looked beautiful, but I can't even begin to guess how many hours of gametime I spent walking back and forth over the same tiny patch of weeds to find a body and any dropped equipment, with no success. I currently use animated grass in MW, but had to d/l a "shorter grass" option to avoid the same issue.

In other words, OB took most of MW's biggest problems and replaced them with......fresh problems. What's REALLY needed, in MOST of the cases, is something about half-way between the two.

I agree but there is one problem you have forgotton about; level scaling. In MW, you were essentially a god at lvl30 which got a lot of complaints and was 'fixed' in OB by making everything scale to your level which is even worse. At least it is getting fixed as shown in FO3 but still has quite a bit to go before it is acceptable. For instance, make daedric equipment possible to appear at lvl1, sure make it very hard to obtain but make it still exist. Even at lvl30, make the good equipment hard to get still, making it actually valuble and not just another piece of common junk.
Back on topic, stealth is a lot better in OB but still has a lot to be improved, again FO3 is getting there and hopefully ES5 will have it spot on and perfect.

I always thought it made a lot of sense. You lift some diamonds from an Alchemist, so from then on she's suspicious of any diamonds that pass her way. I can imagine her calling in guards to arrest every poor soul who happens to try to sell her one. I actually hated the stolen item system in Oblivion, where every shop keeper had this mysterious sixth sense that told them when an item was stolen. Made it impossible to be a freelance thief, and limiting options in a TES game = not good.

Anyway, in Oblivion I loved:

The poison system. All those useless negative-effect potions from Morrowind have suddenly become an excellent addition. Putting the right poison on your blade to turn the tide of battle was always envigorating. It's a shame, though: I've always thought that the best applications for the Oblivion-exclusive poisons would have been the Morrowind-exclusive thrown weapons. Hurling a throwing knife coated in a Weakness to Fire poison before slamming the victim with your Dagger of Fire would have made assassinations a lot more fun. I mean you can still do it with bows, but they're too slow and cumbersome for that kind of work.

Warriors. I'm actually not convinced that Oblivion's combat system was better, but it certainly was more interesting, and to me this made it a lot more fun to do the pure-combat character types. In Morrowind I was always disappointed, because with a stealthy character combat was always a thrilling struggle to outwit and outmaneuver your opponent. Mages had the option to come up with all sorts of new and inventive spells and spell combos to win the battle. Warriors, on the other hand, just stood there and clicked. Never did it for me. When I'm not a pure combat class I prefer Morrowind's combat system, but when I am, I have to say that Oblivion's is the more fun, at least. On the flipside, the highly limited enchanting and spellmaking system makes mages a lot less interesting, IMHO, but that's another discussion...

The skill perks. Some of them were stupid, I'll admit. It's been well-documented about how at Mastery levels, light and heavy armour are virtually identical, not to mention the horrendously limiting "perks" for the magic skills (one of the best parts of a Morrowind mage was trying to cast some doomsday spell that was far beyond your ability, and watching it fizzle again and again until you finally got it, or turned to other means to augment your ability. It just felt so real, for some reason). Some of them, however, were great. I liked how your backstab damage improved as your Stealth went up. I really liked the perks for Blade and Blunt, as they made combat more interesting. Same goes for Marksman. Mercantile was another good one. And Acrobatics. Others were unremarkable (Security, Speechcraft), but others like Armorer, Athletics, and Hand to Hand, while never being terribly useful, IMHO, added nicely to the feel of the game.

And, of course, the stealth system is vastly improved.

Oblivion is a remarkable game, with many improvements over Morrowind, but with some criticisms. Such as:

The magic system-you did good Bethesda, by adding regenerating magicka-but if you want the real feel of magic, you better go ask Xilverbullet to install Midas Magic into your next game. That is, by far, the best magic system I've ever seen. People do criticize it, sure, but I love using Destruction's End to literally bring melting to his knees. And are certain spells to strong? Then you don't have to add them. It's entirely up to the player what powers to choose. The variety is fantastic, and Bethesda would be fools to not implement something similar in Skyrim.

Horses-a worthy addition, but useless when you have fast travel. If you add it, make it necessary.

Fast Travel-a time saver yes, but all in all, I would take the long, frightening journies of Morrowind and limited fast travel over the new system. This should be dumped.

Archery-Virtually perfect with two exceptions: Crossbows-Cyrodiil is the cosmopolitan province yes? Then the most modern weapons should be there and be used widely. There was no excuse or explanation given for why crossbows were left out of the game, but they should be returned. The other? Killshots-if I nail a stupid Orc in his head, he should die. Period. Mastery gives you the paralyze effect sure, but wouldn't a paralyzed victim be even more vulnerable to attack and take more damage? Is that the case in Oblivion? Nope.

Leveling the World-I kid, I kid. This is and was a horrible idea. I love finding "generic magic weapon x" and selling it as fast as I can for the money. Remember the artifacts in Morrowind? Why is the Tamrielic Lore book even in Oblivion? To remind us of the BETTER treasures from that game? Once you've seen one dungeon in Oblivion, you've seen ALL of them, with few exceptions (Sundercliff Watch, uhhh....that one hidden behind the waterfall with the trap doors). Respawning is silly also. Why not, after all the dungeon is clear and any one-time artifacts recovered, you add an option that when the player returns after (x) days, he has the option of respawning the dungeon himself (with his choice of enemies inside, implying that something new can move in), or turning it into a home (in which case he can buy cave home supplies from a merchant).

Traps-ok, this one you did good on. Traps usually scare the frak out of me, and Shivering Isles made them better. Keep it, install it in Skyrim, move on.

Poisons-same thing here, now you can make them. Good.

Combat-the blocking system is great, but I agree with above posters when they said it should be more skill-based. Perhaps the shield can shatter if you don't have enough skill? That would be a cool effect, and make some sense.

Graphics-a cop out, as you expect a game 4 years newer to have better graphics. But I would take Morrowind's gameplay and lack of voice acting over pretty pictures any day.

Welkynd and Varla stones-a nice idea, but useful? I have so many of these things stored up in my mod house that I don't know what to do with them. They would be more useful if they were LESS common.

Buying a house is nice, but frankly it isn't like Morrowind lacked that option really. I suppose it's an improvement, however there's hardly ever enough storage, and working armor mannequins would've been nice (like the one in Knights of the Nine!)

Stealth-also nice, as invisibility has saved me many times. Sneaking around is possible and made even better by the NPC's having schedules. Almost a near 100% improvement.

Skill perks-great idea, and encourages constant practice. The magic ones, however, could've used some work. Instead of unlocking new tiers of spells, why not add better effects to the ones you already have? For example: A fireball spell at Novice fires a line-of-sight fireball at the enemy. Ok, cool. Now, upgrade to Apprentice, and you get a second, controllable fireball that either hits a second enemy (if one is present) or hits your single enemy with another fireball. Perhaps at Mastery, it lets out say, a whirlwind of fireballs, that impact every enemy in the room. Is this Mastery or isn't it? In Morrowind, a fire/frost/shock spell combination would yield the sound effects of all 3, and usually the graphic effect also. Or, you can just scrap your magic system and use the one I suggested above (cause it's better).

Training-I liked being able to train to my heart's content in Morrowind because I was filthy rich. You limited us to 5 times per level because of....what reason again? Or more to the point, my character has over 2 million gold. My more advanced one more than 4 million. What exactly am I supposed to spend it on? Add more expensive items into shops (like how glass was at Ghostgate and a couple other places), and price it out the window. That way, us rich folk can still go shopping and not BUY the entire store.

The Oblivion Crisis-a nice quest, nice loot inside the gates, and some variety. It's no Dagoth Ur or political faction issue, but it was servicable and had a great ending. The gates should have been waaaaay more than paper tigers though (like making them spawn at random near the player or even in the cities, instead of at fixed locations that you can avoid easily. What are they threatening anyway? The woodland creatures?) The gate doesn't even BURN the forest. Really Bethesda....you could've come up with something better than this. Your idea was great, it just needed more refinement.

The Mods: I love how the best storylines (The Lost Spires, Heart of the Dead) that I've played are both mod-added. This either means that those people are more creative than Bethesda, or Bethesda released Oblivion missing a lot of features, knowing the unpaid and unsalaried public would fill those gaps in for them. For shame.
Additionally, mods such as Midas Magic, Myths and Legends, Deadly Reflex, etc...(you all know the big, useful ones), should have been in the game from the start. Honestly, in terms of creativity and forward thinking if it was Bethesda vs. the field, I'd take the field.

Other than that, I agree with many others regarding soliders patrolling the roads, the Black Horse Courier, the stolen items system, the NPC schedules, and the nice variety of miscellaneous quests (although there needs to be a LOT more).

What Oblivion mainly lacks, however, is the FEEL of Morrowind. In that game, you felt lost, you felt scared, and approaching Red Mountain because you had to WALK it was halfway terrifying because you didn't know if you were going to die via creatures at Daedric ruins, cliff racers, or something inside the Ghostfence. Ghostgate was quite literally your last haven. Is there even a bit of an equivalent feeling for that in Oblivion? Can you wander somewhere and get your a** kicked like in Morrowind if you aren't ready? Didn't Dagon Fel FEEL tremendously far from Vivec, whereas in Oblivion you aren't "far" from anything? Anvil to Leyawiin is 4 seconds away. Sure, time passes, but to what consequence? I loved walking near Dwarven ruins, knowing they were all uniquely different and could hide wonderful treasures (Dragonbone Cuirass, various Temple artifacts, Sunder, Keening, Masque of Clavicus Vile to name a few) or going near an unpronouncable Daedric ruin, knowing some horror lurked inside if you touched a cursed gemstone. But you still never knew what you might find....Daedric weapons? Super rare (or they should be), and yet they are a dime a dozen in Oblivion.

Anywho, I've said my piece, being a long-time player of both games. As for Skyrim..well...this post will probably get moved for this...

Zenimax owns Bethesda, and they currently have 3 trademarks on the name SKYRIM. One for clothing, one for gaming strategy guides, and the last for computer gaming in general. Of the 3, the first expiration date that will arrive is July 28, 2010. They have already filed all 5 extensions for each patent that they can; you are limited by law to 5 and that's it. So by July 28, you will hear something, or they will lose their hold on the name. Want proof? Simply visit the US trademark website, a Google search will get you there. The name SKYRIM yields 4 results, the other of which is a Florida-based communications company.
So that's that. July 28 at the latest.

EDIT: Actually I'll make this easy: http://tess2.uspto.gov/, select "New User Form Search, then type in SKYRIM in the search box, and simply hit "Submit Query." Trademarks 1, 2, and 4 are Zenimax. Read through it, and you will come to the same conclusion.

The quest journal.
Morrowind's was always interesting to read through, because it was literally a journal of of your adventures listed in chronological order from page to page.
Oblivion's was much more organized, but somewhat displeasing.

So that's a 50/50.

Umm, I like that you had to rest in an actual bed to allow your character to level. That's a plus, I guess.

The combat attack system was an upgrade, but the affect on weapon skills was not.

Magic fast casting was an upgrade, the rest of the magic system was a sad sad shadow of its former self with as many spell effects and cast types they removed.

Graphics were an update (that's a given), but style was not.

As for everything else, I did not like it.

Great, list. This sums up how I feel, minus a few of the points. Fully voiced dialog is another great thing to me.

The overall creativity of Morrowind is on a whole different level compared to Oblivion. This is why I (slightly) prefer Morrowind still. Shivering Isles was a step in the right direction, but sadly it was only an expansion, and came to end a lot quicker than i'd hoped.

I liked the magic system in OB better than in MW. Also the sneaking system.
Other than that, even including graphics, I like MW over OB.

I just want to clarify that when I said I liked Oblivion's magic system better, I wasn't referring to the selection of spells but to the way that magic is handled during combat. I also think that Oblivion's Alchemy is way more balanced than Morrowind.

My physical self would be better at killing half the monsters in Morrowind than my character.

Me: Stab it. Dodge, if it's movement is broad and ungainly. It dies.

Okan, lv.7 Argonian Nightblade: Miss, miss, miss, hit, miss, hit, hit, hit, hit, miss, miss, miss, miss, hit. It dies.

...having the success of your actions depend upon your statistics makes Morrowind the more accurate RPG, but not the better game. I enjoy all TES games equally, but Oblivion is the only one where I feel like I'm playing as a mighty warrior or stealthy assassin.

Infinite view distance what?

The world is 16 sq miles not 8...big difference

I don't know, maybe suspicious for a day or two or maybe a couple of weeks, but I just don't think it's realistic to never be able to sell an item you stole again especially if it's something cheap like a spoon or what have you. The stolen item sense shopkeeper had in Oblivion didn't make sense either but a least they still had fences to sell your stolen goods to and there really wasn't any reason not to join the Thieves Guild if you wanted to play a thief. Neither one was a good choice, and Oblivion didn't necessarily improve on it, but I don't think it made it any worse.

This...

I don't know. Perhaps they created the item system in a certain way that didn't allow it to work in any other way.

If it was a simple bug I assume the Morrowind Code Patch would've fixed it.

The world is 16 sq miles not 8...big difference.

I am probably in the minority here, but the fully voiced dialog really grinds me. Mostly, the voice acting is awful, but also it makes NPCs so shallow in that a lot of them all you can about is "Rumors." You can't ask for local lore, or some advice, or directions or their background, or occupation etc. But beyond making most NPCs worthless, nothing bothered me more than the male elf voice. Great voice for a wood elf, but come on, dunmer with that voice?! Are you kidding me?! Who signed off on that garbage? Coming from playing Morrowind where the dunmer were rough and gravelly and unpleasant until they got to know you (which was terrific) to having some chittering monkey voice...

So awful. How can I play a dunmer in Oblivion? It's ... ugghh... nightmares. Bring back the text. I much prefer reading and allowing for more in depth conversations with NPCs than fully voiced, but shallow.

I gotta agree with you on this. While I think that voice acting has a place in ES games, I think it works best when used in (extreme) moderation. It is difficult for an actor to capture the right mood for any given situation or 'scene', but it is especially difficult if the actor doesn't have a visual cue to go by (such as the tone/atmosphere of the setting, body language, facial expressions, context, etc.). I could be mistaken, but I don't believe that actors have much in the way of visual cues when doing voice work for video games. Mostly, from what I've seen, they just read lines from a 'script' in a sound booth. With a game such as TES, if voice acting is not done just right, then it actually works to undermine the message or mood that is trying to be conveyed by making the NPCs seem more shallow, scripted, one-dimensional, cheesy, or any mixture thereof. Which, to me, seems to do more to detract from an NPC's personality than add to it.

You're definitely not in the minority, at least not around these boards, or if you are, there's a lot of us there with you. Many people agree with you, myself included. I'd much rather have dialog be text save for important and/or the more unique characters.

After Oblivion, though, and more so, in this day and age, a major game (such as TES V will surely be) just isn't going to get by very well without fully voiced dialog. It's expected.

This has been talked about before. The Dunmer had rough voices because of the near-constant ashstorms on Vvardenfell (essentially giving them a smoker's voice). Out in Cyrodiil, they sound like Altmer because they ARE Altmer, essentially, just with grey skin and eyes.

And I like voice acting. I just want it to be better implemented, and on that note, Fallout 3 has me feeling pretty comfortable. Different voices on an individual basis are a big step forward.

Just because someone isn't from thier homeland, does that mean they should be stripped of all culture and uniqueness? EVERY race should act as steriotypically of thier race as possible. I can forgive different behaviors in Imperial controlled areas, but they need to at least retain thier dignity and talk right.

Also, compare an American and an Englishman. We both have a similar history and ancestors, but years of seperation has changed each of us a lot. Different accents, different way of life, different ways of spelling. It's the same with the Altmer and Dunmer.

-Better magic system.
-Buyable houses.
-Horses (even if controlling them is a nightmare)

As for the graphics I can take them or leave them. Yes Oblivion looks great but I've never had a problem with Morrowind's graphics, "dated" though they may be. The only part of Morrowind's graphics I really don't like are the segmented bodies, and Better Bodies takes care of that. So as nice as Oblivion's graphics are they aren't a huge selling point for me.

And I don't care why the Dunmer sound the way they do in Morrowind, they're Morrowind voices are far more fitting then they're Oblivion voices, at least in my humble opinion.

The changed coloration of eyes and skin is no more or less drastic than the changed voices. I LIKED the differences. That doesn't mean that all members of a race should be "identical" in mannerism and speech, but "similar".

As for American and UK "English", those have been described as "two cultures, divided by a common language". There are more radical examples of "related" languages which shared a common ancestry at one time, and which still use similar sentence structure as well as similar conventions for plurals and posessives, but don't have a single word in common anymore.