There's also just SO MANY random and interesting encounters that you could entirely miss. There's the person who lost a ring in a pond, but when you jump down to get it, they assault you. There's the Nord that has been stripped naked and frozen in place by a witch. There's the boots of blinding speed (I loved throwing these on and using the mini-map to navigate the roads).

I also loved the way you had to utilize multiple forms of fast travel to get around. "Okay, if I take the silt strider to Balmora, there's a Mage's Guild that will take me to-". It was a fun world to live in.

And the factions forced you to choose between them. You couldn't do it all with one character, because that wouldn't make sense!

Maybe I'll go get OpenMW and play for a bit again...