I keep hearing praise about Oblivion and how it really is immersive, but when I tried it felt really dead and uninteresting world. I am considering after Skyrim to try it again, any tips to get me more involved, note I can play dead rpgs, like Might and Magic: Mandate of Heaven, but for Obilvion just couldn't get into it, I would love to try again, as I love lore of Skyrim.

The world is nothing like Skyrim, nor is the MQ. The guilds are really what made the game for me. Play the guilds and MQ while roleplaying and you'll find it very fun. If you enjoy mages you can craft some cool spells. Also, there are more spell effects (conjuration is very varied) and much more powerful spells that are sold/made.

Again, the world is NO Skyrim so you'll probably FT more, but the scenery is very fantastical; like what you'd see in a movie (you know, castles, shiny armor, theatrical voices, etc.). IMO, there are more memorable characters in OB, but this is completely my opinion. With SK, the Guild leaders I couldn't really care less about. I'm not going to ruin any guilds for you, but I just seemed to CARE more about some characters.

Lastly, the combat in SK is better and depending on your point of view, you may like classes, but I don't. I do, however, miss attributes like Speed.

Pros (OB):
Pretty world
Memorable Characters
Longer Guilds
Better Spells/Effects (SK's spells look better)

Only going to list the pros since I'm lazy.

I meant comparing it Lore-Wise see i did begin trying Oblivion for a while, but certain things annoyed me, like being very slow at moving and how a lot of didn't feel alive. I did like idea of star sign and think it a shame Skyrim removed it. Politics is a big selling point for me, so what's that like and are the side quests interesting?

Install FCOM mod-pack if you are on PC. FCOM totaly changes Oblivion making it better then Skyrim tho

It's difficult to advise someone how to make something more immersive, as it's such a subjective thing. All you can really do is give generalised ideas but ultimately you are either going to get into it or you're not, regardless of what anyone else says.
That said, here's my 2 pence worth, in no particular order...
1. Don't compare it to other games. It's not Skyrim and it's not Morrowind. It is what it is.
2. You've played Sandbox games, so you know the MO - your experience of it will be very different to mine, which is part of the reason why it's so difficult to give you advice.
3. If you're on PC you can mod the nuts off it and make it into what you want, but that said there are plenty of console players who do just fine with nothing more than their imagination - but you know this, you've played Skyrim.
4. Ultimately? Play it, give it a chance. In the end it will either work for you or it won't...

PhonAntiPhon said it rather well and kindly too. If you don't find Oblivion 'immersive' there really isn't much to say. That's actually a problem I never had with the game.

Perhaps the PC mods will make the surroundings more believable for you. The graphics on Morrowind are much more elementary yet I never found that a hurdle of much effort.

Give it time- play for a while and see if it doesn't grab hold.

truz already seen it, but I've begun a new game, with Red Guard female called Tiaan, I'm going to give ya a sorta blog on my progress, as this is such a new experience for me.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1352605-oblivion-playthrough-xbox-360/

I think the graphics make oblivion look dull. I came of skyrim too, only played oblivion once before skyrim came out and quite in a few minutes.
Now I'm replaying oblivion with http://tes.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=26291 ENB shaders and http://tes.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=38204 Realy textured normal maps.

Like almost 75% as good as skyrim looks. Characters can stil look goofy, realistic face textures can fix that.
Also, n "My Documents / My Games / Oblivion"? you'll find the "oblivion.ini"? file. Do a search for "fDlgFocus=2.1000"?. Raise this value to pull the camera back during conversations. I set it to 5 and it's a LOT better.

Just some of the changes you can make to improve immersion.

I left Skyrim to play Oblivion as I was missing it so much. Oblivion is my world. I was just returning home. Now I can do what I want... Cooool

What I find most immersive about any game is not the game itself, but rather the relationship I have with the character I am playing. When I am playing a character I feel a very deep connection to - someone who speaks to me on a powerful, emotional level - then the rest of the world comes alive to me. When I do not have that connection, it is just a video game.

Nobody can tell you how to enjoy it. Everyone praises morrowind, but I cant enjoy it... Oblivion is where its at for me. Idk its hard to explain.

I started playing Oblivion after Skyrim so I had the same trouble of getting used to it. After a bland battle of Kvatch, I decided to create a new character after I grasped a few basic of the world. On my second character, I barely touched the MQ. I only touched MQ after some big event on my guild has been resolved. That makes the whole game seems better. Especially the great gate on Bruma. My Khajiit employs his full potential as Lava-Jumping-Ninja-Sorcerer. So my suggestion is to leave the MQ till you've become a part of some guild

To quote Rindir, "take your time" with the game. Never rush anything. Think that Cyrodiil is the only world that exists and that our world doesn′t so what happens on the screen is what really matters.
Of course creating an interesting character with a specific purpose helps. It doesn′t have to be finishing quests or saving the world. It can be as simple as collecting things or gain access to the University and get creative with spells and enchantments.

Where does your character want to live and why? Who does she like? What are her intentions in life? What skills suit her and which don′t?

Forget our world and sit down and take it all in. Maybe she will speak to you if you listen carefully

I find that immersion often comes from just being alert to how the character feels right now. I was surprised to find that one of my newest characters is afraid of the dark, and claustrophobic. She has to use a torch or her Starlight spell all the time when she's in caves and dungeons. This means that sneaking is almost impossible, and it takes me out of my comfort zone, which is a good thing, as it forces me to attend to what's going on.

Imagine you've been entered to do a 25 mile marathon. You've had no training, you've never run further than the end of your street and you don't really exercise much (including walking). You cannot expect to run that marathon and get to the end victorious and happy like you've just run down your hallway. It's going to take time, you need to practice and train your body's fitness. You need to improve your cardiovascular and respiratory systems as well as your muscular system so you don't end up collapsing during the marathon because your body's too exhausted or because you've screwed your muscles.

Same principle for oblivion. Improve your athletics by running, training, putting effort into it and you start to get faster. When you level up your speed attribute (along with the rest) also increases, and you get the option to add bonus points (depending on your class this can differ). You get faster as you play because you are constantly running and moving, as well as leveling your major skills to level up.

As for immersing yourself...it depends on what you want from a game like this. I love adventure games, I'm an adventurer at heart, so i immersed myself by all the adventuring opportunities there actually are in this game...caves, forts, ruins...and the lack of having to do the main quest. If you're someone who seeks the same thing then just venture into the various forts, dungeons, caves, ruins etc across the game. If you prefer questing then just ask around the cities and villages...there's tons of quests for each city, not to mention there are 5 factions. 6 if you include the Knights of the Nine and an entire new area with it's own main quest line and side quests and places to explore with the shivering isles.

I found out how to speed up Oblivion to super speed. Enable Vsynch and in the .ini file put "iFPSClamp=" to "40". Everything will be super fast. A friend said,"its a whole new game". All my settings are on max. I also posted my fix to stuttering and general performance tweaks such as muti-threading and RAM; http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1364063-ended-stutter-in-oblivion/

Setting iFPSClamp to a fixed number is likely to throw off the game's physics timing, so you'll worsen matters as your actual frame rate deviates from the monitor's frequency. You're basically "skipping frames" with the above setting. If there were a one-size-fits-all Magic Pill for all of Oblivion's stutter/lag woes, it would have been dispensed a long time ago.

I prefer Oblivion to Skyrim. There, I've gone and said it. The games themselves are about equal in terms of enjoyment for me; each has things I love and things I hate. What tips the scale in Oblivion's favor is that it's been out so much longer and the mods available for it are simply astounding.

I've put literally thousands of hours into Oblivion over the past few years and I have yet to complete the main quest. I haven't ever gone further than escorting Martin safely to the Blades' fortress. For that matter I haven't finished any of the guild questlines either. There's just too much else to do and see because of the hundreds of mods out there adding content on top of content on top of yet more content. Not to mention the Shivering Isles expansion and plenty of DLC.

I don't rush through every quest I'm given, trying to complete the game's objectives. I'm not playing with an eye towards finishing, or leveling, or anything really. I roll up a character, decide on a background, and set off into the world taking things as they come. I never fast travel and I've gotten rid of the quest arrows and the HUD's compass. I do keep a compass in my inventory because there's no reason a traveler wouldn't, but I have to take it out and look at it to orient myself, rather than having it staring me in the face all the time guiding my every (mis)step.

Keeping in mind all the incredible quest mods and new places, and Bethesda's DLC, I estimate I've wandered into about a third of what Oblivion has to offer. Maybe a bit more than that, but certainly less than half. Bit hard to put a finger on since, well, I haven't played through the stuff that I haven't seen yet, so I could be off in my estimation of how much there is.

Now that I'm thinking about things it does seem a bit daft that I've been playing Oblivion for three years without ever doing the main quest or stepping into the Shivering Isles. But I swear that I've thoroughly enjoyed each and every hour I've spent in the game, and if more of my time's been occupied hunting out Ayleid steps and advancing within the Archaelogy Guild than in babysitting Martin, that's simply a credit to the talent and imagination of Oblivion modders.

In the coming years, Skyrim will be able to boast the same hundreds of hours worth of mod-added content. It's already off to a fantastic start, particularly given how aggravating the current bug-ridden modding tools can be. Then again, although I wasn't around for the release of Oblivion I have it on good authority that the same situation existed at the time, and it took a good interval before myriad bugs were stomped and meta-modding utilities released.

Do the DBH questline until you unlocked that one house in Skingrad then use a Command Humanoid spell to get a lot of Essential NPCs into that House (They will get stuck in there...FOREVER!) Then use some sort of Rage spell on them all and watch the fun that will never end (As long you keep casting that Rage Spell). Note: You need some pretty high level spells to do this and don't wear armor!

Im trying the full on role playing experence this time around. And my char is a follow fighters guild member and sometimes fights in the arena to train before going into an alyaid ruin to look for artifacts

I recommend not really touching the main quest until you've gotten bored with other things. The beginning of the MQ is so dull, that it can really put you off of the game if you go in thinking that the MQ is the best that the game has to offer. The MQ starts to get pretty interesting about half way through, so if you plow through the first part, it's alright. The side quests are really what makes Oblivion. They kept me playing for quite some time.. especially the Shivering Isles DLC.

SI Questline is by far the best that Oblivion has to offer, my opinion.

The farthest that i ever got in the SI is getting past the gate keeper. After that i stoped playing and never even explored the land

Oh yes. It was the memory of lots and lots of interesting quests that made me return to playing Oblivion after many years (I'd completed it once before).
Considering it's spoilers section, I could have supplied you with all the links from UESPWiki, but I'd rather not. The way you obtain information in the game is made to create a feeling as though you happen to overhear a talk by accident and that's the beauty of it. Let it stay an accident as you might end up exploring Oblivion through internet rather than game client and that is, indeed, boring:) But the chance to stumble upon an interesting quest is great. Wilderness and long travelling can be easily avoided by FT so you don't have to worry about moving slow - you don't really get to move much unless you choose to. Join Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood if you're not keen on running about towns talking to strange NPCs (although doing so is very well worth it) I personally think that membership in these guilds grants most interesting quests. Travel to Shivering Isles if you're bored of vanilla atmosphere - environment is very different in comparison and you can't really resist the charisma of either Sheogorath or his (and your) servant Haskill. Experiment with alchemy potions. Yes, you could just fight. But you could also fight with style, applying all sorts of poisons to your weapons!

Introduce yourself to modding, if it gets totally boring but yet not enough to make you quit:) For little things like changing your house interior you hardly need any knowledge - CS has a very easy interface even for dummies like myself:)