Than should not have been mods that is...
From the start i will tell you that i am pro original user content for my games BUT certainly NOT to the point that i'm going to install the"rocket_launcher_2.1_beta" mod for my favorite RPG with elves and orcs.
Talking about The Elder Scrolls : Oblivion, and in fact the ES series in general, these are games that go way back to the 486 days when Arena was released, and since then the story and the lore developed into a quite complex and atmospheric affair.
The effort that Bethesda put over the years into creating this world is truly remarkable and anyone who has played any of the games can agree with me that Bethesda is sort of like the Tolkien of classic RPG gaming at least as far as lore and complexity goes.
But still, after more than 3 years in development and all the effort that was put into it, Oblivion still gets you wondering what the hell (oblivion) happened with some stuff. Stuff like the missing jump animations or why can't you get drunk or stoned :) or why is the water more like mercury than water or - leaving the hardcore no-life rpg'er aside - plain design slips like the console oriented user interface that leaves the PC player scrolling through the menus for 25 % of the game.
Well thank Akatosh, they released a Construction Set (crippled but still) and being that the ES series always had a big and loyal fan community, things are getting fixed or added even now.

We will present you with a list of user created mods that we think are THAT good that should have been in the game from the beginning and are more the where_the_heck_are_those_goddamn_birds_i_keep_hearing type than the add_rocket_jumping_abillity type.
We like these mods because they manage to get a lot of stuff back into the game but without messing up the atmosphere and vision of Bethesda (in fact adding to it).

So these are our picks...

1. Natural Environments - by Max Tael (m_tael@yahoo.com)

This mod is just too awsome and was probably the biggest display of modding excelency that the community has seen so far.
It is a successful effort to make the game look more realistic and beautiful (yes it can be done!) and it comes in 4 parts.
Natural Weather - changes the lighting in the game, the wheather system, the sky and the clouds.
Subtle hue and color changes of the lighting will make a sunset look breathtaking and will make the whole game scenery look more vivid and colorful.
Changes to the weather system add seasons and weather types to the game, so winter is cold and snowy, summer is hot and sunny, and you get all the nice weather effects that you wanted like deep misty fog, rainbows, real looking rain, thunderstorms and more. In fact 44 new weather types have been added.
It also changes the default sky and clouds, with much improved versions. The new clouds look amazing !
Natural Vegetation - changes the size of all the plants and trees in the game.
It's subtle, yet very effective and adds greatly to the immersivness of the game. Finaly a big tree looks like a BIG_FREAKING_TREE... plus that now you can really get lost in the woods (you wanted that right ?:)
Natural Habitat - adds birds and insects.
If you ever wondered why the birds and insects that you keep hearing in the woods are nowhere to be found, this is for you. 20 types of birds and insects added.
Natural Water - modifies the water to look like water. Actually we also have on the list another water mod that we think is even better than this one, but it's a matter of taste.
It should be noted that we included in the download package a patch for the Natural Weather module that fixes some bugs in Maxs' version. Credits go to Morbus, and we highly recommend using the patched version.

DOWNLOAD IT

2. Better Imperfect Water - by Kitna

After going into paranoid mode about the dozen water modifications that try to make the water more realistic, we tried them all, and this was the very best.