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Obviously Horse Armor is a waste, but what about the others? I downloaded the free one over the holidays but haven't tried the others. Knights of the Nine looks like a pretty big expansion and is tempting. What about the rest?

Knights of the Nine has been getting good word of mouth but I haven't tried it myself yet.  for 10 bucks though it's probably worth it just for the new armor and such.

Are you asking about mods?  The only one that you absolutely have to have is the BTmod, but I find the No Psychic Guards mod eliminates a lot of frustration for the professional assassin.

No, I'm asking about the Bethesda released add-ons. I have it on the 360 ( a conscious choice of losing mods vs my 52" HDTV and no hardware incompatibility issues.)

Its basically a scavenger hunt over the overland map with a few dungeons afterwards. Not all too long, though. Items might be useless for casters or light armor wearers. Knightly types will feel quite at home with both the storyline and the items.

For 10 bucks it is worth it, especially with the various hideouts/strongholds that are bundled with it.

Heh.

Has anyone actually "finished" Oblivion to the point where they need an expansion? I've started it three times, and always run out of steam before I run out of content.

Well, once you finish the game, you might be craving a nice long epic story line.  Some folks do like that kind of stuff, even in a sandbox game and Oblivion's main quest was a bit more interesting (IMO) than Morrowinds (pain in the ass running all over the place).

Gah, this makes me want to go back and play Oblivion.  Which might not be a bad idea, since my WoW character move is estimated to take 4 days.

I haven't, but I bought it anyway and dig it. Small price for some more cool shit, provided you can find it all. (which I actually haven't.)

I remember shortly after release people said the leveling system was broken such that you could easily gimp yourself.  Supposedly there was a mod to fix this.  What do you guys think about it?  Is a mod needed now?  I'm planning to give it another go as I got distracted before after only a couple of weeks of play.

I did not get a leveling mod, but I read the manual and did not gimp myself.  I never bothered to look and see what the gimping was supposed to be.

I never gimped myself, but after playing Gothic 2 I am kinda bummed out about the level scaling stuff. No "Oh Fuck! Black Troll! RUUUUUUUU....damn."

Actually, the level gimpage is still a problem. My first time through, I went for a stealthy archer. I levelled a couple of times based on advances in stealth, athletics and whatever that negotiation skill is called, and then couldn't fight anything any more. You do have to be careful each level that you have gained enough genuine combat skills.

I haven't investigated any mods to help with this, but you should be ok if you pay a little attention when speccing your character.

Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul is your friend. Or Francesco's, or Mighty Monsters, etc, etc. Lots of mods out there that rebalance things, make it more than possible to run in to tough monsters, hordes of monsters, and even the occasional wimpy thing to enjoy kicking the shit out of.

They also tend to rebalance the loot tables, so that when you level up the grubby bandits don't suddenly get a new shipment of Glass and Obsidian armor to replace the hide they were wearing the night before.

If you do go OOO though, I recomend the addon to ease the leveling system. The default packaged with the mod slows things to the point that it can take five hours of steady play to level once.

My OMOD (oblivion Mod Launcher - it configures the acrhive invalidation tables for you automatically) currently show about 35 mods running for my current game, and that doesn't include about 350 MB worth of texture replacements, new armor models, body replacers, etc.

Oh - and no, I have not yet finished the game, and likely never will.

Oh, that.  Yes, well that's actually what I did and there are ways around it within game mehcanics; those might be tedious.  My choice was to supplement my attacks with poison, coupled with much fleeing and returning later with a better bow.  Consequently I now can one-shot pretty much everything if I use a poison and am undetected.  Summoning a scamp for ten seconds is a great distraction, as well, if you manage it right.

You do need to practice with your combat skills or you can be screwed, but I choose to lay blame on the enemy autoleveling garbage rather than the character advancement system for any overpowered enemies I meet.

My thoughts on the 360 expansions

Knights of the Nine - Have not downloaded yet.  Plan on getting soon.
Spell Tomes - More interesting than useful, I just like getting more varied treasure.
The Vile Lair - Unless you are playing a vampire, the tower is better as a base.
Maehunes Razor - Worth it, the place is huge.
Thieves Den - I wasn't much of a thief, so I didn't get full use out of it, but it is amusing to stop by and collect from your smugglers.
The Wizards Tower - Must have, it is the best house in the game, you can create items and spells without being in the mage guild.
The Orrery - The quest was fun, kinda short - the final reward was so so.
Horse Armor - Didn't get, don't use horses much anyway.

It says that, but it lies. I've moved 2 characters before and both took less than a day.

IMo for the price of the expansion u can get better bargain old games that's not so bad like Divine Divinity etc. They're worth more playtime, but hey it's your money. I prefer to wait for new continent expansion pack since the game is too dull already (I uninstalled n deleted my chars)

Someone's still playing Oblivion ?

O_o

Not exactly. I bought the expansion and started anew with a level 1 character. I was done with the expansion when I was Level 4. Then I quit again.

One of These Days (tm) I'm going to pop open the Oblivion editor and rewrite the entire monster tables to be a little more interesting.  I had actually partly done that already with fun results, such as introducing a random chance of spawning multiple smaller versions of the same monsters instead of one full size version.  I hear somebody wrote a mod where the bandits come at you en-masse in leather armor instead of the mysterious bandit in full Daedric.  Oblivion's spawn system is pretty cool that way.

Except the fact that Bethesda didn't do that kind of stuff with it.

Yeah, it's weird.  The spawn system does have support for randomness, but the default Bethsoft Oblivion spawn tables are, the vast majority of not all the time, geared in such a way that if you are level x you will spawn y, and its included loot tables will have it wearing equipment z, every time.

Horse armor would be fine if only you could put it on your Unicorn.

Also, Kobu's Level Mod (http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=199) is mandatory IMO.