So I'm just curious to know what others did when they decided they wanted to explore the world of Cyrodiil. I personally waited until the main quest had me go to the other cities for the Bruma invasion reinforcements. Figured that would've been a great time to explore and still left the gate open for me to explore if I ever wanted to vanquish the denizens of Oblivion. I didn't want them closed just yet and be unable to go there again.

Edit: I put this in Mods section because I wanted Mods to be a factor as well for a reason you may have started exploring.

I really never liked the main quest and I had to make a concerted effort to finally finish it after having played Oblivion for nearly 2 years.

Now each install I do my best to suppress the MQ or avoid it as best I can.

I'm more into mod stories now and actually had 250 mods when I finished the MQ.

My first time, I left Martin and Jauffre at the cloister and worked on more important things, like the dark brotherhood and exploring ruins at the edge of the map. I generally do the main quest in dribs and drabs. I haven't even spoken with Baurus in the current playthough.

Wow, the main quest occurred so long ago for my avatar... it becomes hard to recall the details of his post Imperial Prison beginnings. He treated the Crisis with the urgency we both felt it deserved, yet still found time for those side-quests that made sense to tackle under the circumstances. For a more in-depth account of my current play-through's beginnings I refer you to my old and long neglected thread in our General Discussion section: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1114736-thoughts-on-my-second-play-through/.

That play-through now stands at over 1.9k hours. As you might imagine, I don't spend as many hours per session as I did back when my avatar had a wealth of tasks and commissions to choose from. Nowadays his activities are largely confined to mundane repeatable assignments such as road patrols, tax gathering and supply deliveries. Still, I feel the play-through has a good bit of life left in it and am not seriously considering a fresh start any time soon.

-Decrepit-

Six years of playing Oblivion, and I have not yet progressed in the MQ beyond . Then there was some unexplainable crashing, and I abandoned that game.

I haven't since tried the MQ again. I just roam and side-quest. Maybe, some day, the MQ will be done, though I hate the gates as they are boring and repetitive.

My story: in my 3o year of Oblivion gaming, after some mid done runs (always abandoned because of multiple crashes pointing to overmodding) I have done a char just to follow the MQ... at an easy FCOM setup (not much besides it, so "easy in this way). Managed to finish it, but lost my progress (and my char, that I was deeply attached to already) about a week or two after the Gran finalle - one of the discs of my raid stopped running. My PC almost didnt survived Oblivion Main Quest
SInce then I only do mod and side quests ... but need to finish it again for Verona, Reclaiming and maybe other mods that need it finished...

Spoiler Alert: (Forgot how to put spoiler tag lol)
The farthest main quest part I got to before got side tracked with side quests and mods is getting a daedric artifact for Martin for his ritual.