You guy's are looking through rose tinted glasses! If anything Oblivion was the game that brought the series down! Hell I just tried Morrowind for the first time not to long ago and It reminded me of Skyrim right from the get go! The unique handcrafted environments and dungeons, to the way NPC's look and react to you were all very similar! Oblivion on the other hand, had very identical dungeons verging on the point of Copy and pasting. The NPC's were flat and lifeless(And had really weird looking faces as well)! The enemy's leveled with you to the point that leveling was almost useless because you never felt truly powerful! Skyrim Is 200% better than Oblivion in the areas that matter most "To me". However, Oblivion does have more memorable quests than Skyrim does. Which is unfortunate, because if Bethesda put as much effort into the rest of the game it would have been a masterpiece.