Ah, this site almost needs to be renamed GothicWatch. All Gothic posts get mucho attention. Add me to the list of folks who prefer TES over Gothic. I haven't played G3yet so I won't get involved in Ob vs G3, but Oblivion is much, much better than either of the previous games in the series. The single thing that Gothic offers over Oblivion is combat difficulty. If hard combat=best crpg in your mind, Gothic wins. In any other comparison it fails dismally. Graphics, number of locales, exploration, spells, choice of skills, customization of character, loot, NPC interaction, etc. One other area that might be a watch favorite, is that the handful of NPCs that actually exist in the G-series are more fully realized than the multitudes that exist in TES. This makes for a better main storyline, but give me the multiple quests of TES over the linear main quest with very few sidequests of Gothics.
It almost seems like some folks want to say, "Hey I'm geeky enough to beat G3, even with its bugs and harsh combat. Aint I the greatest?" The answer, of course, is no. Most people wonder why you bothered. Oblivion has modability going for it as well. Ob has its faults but with 1000s of programmers vs. a handful, Ob gets to flower into the perfect game for almost any taste. Just pick mods that will make Ob into what you want.
If Gothic was a candy store, all it would sell would be black licorice. Now its black licorice would be much better than the Oblivion candy store's, but the Oblivion candy store carries all forms of licorice and many other forms of candy as well. For the 4% of folks who love black licorice the Gothic store is supreme. The rest of us will just have to "settle" for Oblivion candy.