Oblivion without FCOM was entirely boring for me. I was shocked at how disappointed I was after loving Morrowind so much, but OOO and MMM, and then later FCOM and 100+ other mods brought it back up to par. That said, if you're not using OBSE, you're limiting yourself greatly. There are tons of amazing mods that do require it, and they aren't your everyday mods.

I'm not meaning to say that you can't enjoy Oblivion without it, as I've heard people rave about vanilla Oblivion, but to me it's an unintelligent decision to limit yourself. Impulse is offering an inferior product in this case, so why buy it if there is a better version available?

I'm surprised they bothered putting DRM (in the form of GOO) on games this old.

You know I was thinking the same thing. The pirates got ahold of this game awhile ago. Then again, i think DRM after the first year or two of a game is pretty much pointless or an attempt by the publisher to get people to buy games twice or push them into sequels.

I totally agree.  Very odd to worry about DRM at this stage on games this old.

HOWEVER I do see a bright side to it.  Perhaps Bethesda is "testing the waters" of GOO to perhaps use it in future games like TES V instead of Steamworks.  If that's the case then I'm all for the gimped version of Oblivion being on Impulse.

I mostly agree with you, but just pointing it out that it may not be bad for everyone.

FYI I'm having a blast on my 4th playthru and over 100 hours right now and I haven't even touched the main quest or Shivering Isles yet.  SE and using FCOM is by no means required to enjoy the game immensely. 

Heh, no publisher would want to use GOO for their AAA title. Everyone is moving away from used game sales and wants each customer to buy a new copy. They're even trying to lessen the value of resales on the consoles (day 1 free dlc for new purchases, one time use cd keys that allow you to access online features, etc.)

Valve specifically wrote a patch to their stub version of Oblivion's .exe when Oblivion came to Steam to help their .exe be compatible with the OBSE .exe.  Valve simultaneously submitted the necessary info to the OBSE developer and the OBSE dev added in the support for the steam version of the Oblivion .exe in subsequent versions of OBSE so that a separate Valve provided .exe was no longer needed.

I imagine the same process and communication (though the implementation will be different) needs to happen between Stardock and OBSE's developer in order for this issue to be resolved.

You can read the history of this in a sticky on the Steam forum for Oblivion, though the information in that top post is no longer relevant now that the current versions of OBSE incorporate that support.

That means OBSE could add support for GOO's release of Oblivion like they did for the Steam's release.

Oblivion without OBSE definitely limits you - you can still get alot of good mods, but there are other also very good ones you'll be missing out on. Unless stardock plan to update it so OBSE will work I'd have to recommend people get it from steam instead, which is fully compatible with OBSE+other mods (at least all the ones I've tried). I'd also say Oblivion is a game where you really need mods to get the most out of it (unlike other games, such as morrowind, where although there are lots of good mods they aren't so essential), so you really don't want to limit your options for mods. I think the majority of the ones I use don't need OBSE, but some of them do and I really wouldn't want to have to do without them.

I am doing a digital refresh of my game library amd just bought Morrowind and Oblivion GotY editions. After finally making these games ready to play (with bunch of mods of course) I found out that OBSE won't work with the game I bought. That's a real pitty especially because of fact that major performance mods for Oblivion require it to run. I am wondering if Stardock is going to do anything with it. There is a working OBSE for Steam version so I guess this is doable or maybe I am totally wrong and there is nothing anyone can co about it? This is not a critical issue for me but I don't feel good knowing that the game I bought by Impulse is flawed in some way. 

AFAIK it was Bethesda who decided to put up a DRM'd version on Impulse rather then a retail version, which is why OBSE doesn't work with it. Specific effort went into making a version of OBSE that could work with steam, but I highly doubt that sales on Impulse (after coming to the party late) are high enough for Bethesda to care.