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At a guess he's probably talking about BTmod or maybe WZ Inventory which both make the UI much better, links to them are below:

http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=9937
http://btmod.beider.org/

Actually, the daily schedule idea for NPCs goes back to the old Ultima series. I think it was Ultima V that did it first, although I could be wrong.

On Oblivion, though, you make it sound more simplistic than it is, there is some level of AI/scripting intelligence to enemies, but still, lower-level and weakened enemies still keep coming for the most part. Occasionaly they do other things. There's a mod that makes animals behave more real world-like, over at http://www.tessource.net/files/cache/index.html, lots of other good stuff there too.

On the other hand, most online multiplayer games I've played aren't much better. In Shooters, for instance, when you die you almost always respawn instantly afterwards, and it's a simple matter of finding a better gun than the default and you're back to where you were before. So most players don't use any strategy and aren't too concerned if they die on a straight ahead attack at you; they'll just respawn and give you payback.

As for your request about sneaking, this should do the trick... it had some bugs last I checked, but it looks like they've updated to version 2.0 now. But it sounds like what you're looking for...

Attack and Hide v2.0
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=2294

Tom Servo's equipment rarity mod
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1968

Tired of seeing supposedly rare daedric and glass armor drop off common bandits at high levels? Ever wonder why these guys are harassing you for 100 gold when they're wearing tens of thousands of gold worth of armor? Download this... now rare armor stays rare, only dropping from high level creatures, and bandits have more appropriate gear. (I know this is the same as #9 on the list, but this is the one I use personally).

No psychic guards
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=2299

It's hard to be a master of crime when the guards are psychic... ever try killing someone and having a guard port up to get you? This mod greatly reduces the guard alert radius when you attempt a crime against someone. No guards hear, no bounty. Yay.

Arrow velocity
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1793

Now a bow actually shoots harder than a plastic Wal-Mart bow... even the lowest quality of arrows will fire harder, and the better ones work much better.

Longer summons
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1898

The summon length in the game is really low... some only last as long as 20 seconds. This mod can double or triple that value... especially useful for pure mage characters who depend on summons to 'tank' for them.

Tom Servo's equipment rarity mod
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1968

Tired of seeing supposedly rare daedric and glass armor drop off common bandits at high levels? Ever wonder why these guys are harassing you for 100 gold when they're wearing tens of thousands of gold worth of armor? Download this... now rare armor stays rare, only dropping from high level creatures, and bandits have more appropriate gear. (I know this is the same as #9 on the list, but this is the one I use personally).

No psychic guards
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=2299

It's hard to be a master of crime when the guards are psychic... ever try killing someone and having a guard port up to get you? This mod greatly reduces the guard alert radius when you attempt a crime against someone. No guards hear, no bounty. Yay.

Arrow velocity
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1793

Now a bow actually shoots harder than a plastic Wal-Mart bow... even the lowest quality of arrows will fire harder, and the better ones work much better.

Longer summons
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1898

The summon length in the game is really low... some only last as long as 20 seconds. This mod can double or triple that value... especially useful for pure mage characters who depend on summons to 'tank' for them.

Tom Servo's equipment rarity mod
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1968

Tired of seeing supposedly rare daedric and glass armor drop off common bandits at high levels? Ever wonder why these guys are harassing you for 100 gold when they're wearing tens of thousands of gold worth of armor? Download this... now rare armor stays rare, only dropping from high level creatures, and bandits have more appropriate gear. (I know this is the same as #9 on the list, but this is the one I use personally).

No psychic guards
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=2299

It's hard to be a master of crime when the guards are psychic... ever try killing someone and having a guard port up to get you? This mod greatly reduces the guard alert radius when you attempt a crime against someone. No guards hear, no bounty. Yay.

Arrow velocity
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1793

Now a bow actually shoots harder than a plastic Wal-Mart bow... even the lowest quality of arrows will fire harder, and the better ones work much better.

Longer summons
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1898

The summon length in the game is really low... some only last as long as 20 seconds. This mod can double or triple that value... especially useful for pure mage characters who depend on summons to 'tank' for them.

Tom Servo's equipment rarity mod
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1968

Tired of seeing supposedly rare daedric and glass armor drop off common bandits at high levels? Ever wonder why these guys are harassing you for 100 gold when they're wearing tens of thousands of gold worth of armor? Download this... now rare armor stays rare, only dropping from high level creatures, and bandits have more appropriate gear. (I know this is the same as #9 on the list, but this is the one I use personally).

No psychic guards
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=2299

It's hard to be a master of crime when the guards are psychic... ever try killing someone and having a guard port up to get you? This mod greatly reduces the guard alert radius when you attempt a crime against someone. No guards hear, no bounty. Yay.

Arrow velocity
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1793

Now a bow actually shoots harder than a plastic Wal-Mart bow... even the lowest quality of arrows will fire harder, and the better ones work much better.

Longer summons
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1898

The summon length in the game is really low... some only last as long as 20 seconds. This mod can double or triple that value... especially useful for pure mage characters who depend on summons to 'tank' for them.

Is this a legitimate /. article or a shill? Gamespy comes up with a list of ten of the "most influential and eye-catching" Oblivion mods, despite the fact that there are hundreds (513, in fact) of mods listed here, not all of which are hosted on Planet Elder Scrolls.

Note that Gamespy only included mods hosted on their website, and that Gamespy is notorious for running interstitial ads that require a Greasemonkey script to bypass. Besides, this wasn't submitted by a Slashdot reader - Zonk posted it himself. The linked article had nothing more than some guy's opinion on what mods were good, so if Zonk is such an Oblivion fan, why not just link us to his favorite mods right there in the Slashdot article, rather than shilling for the ad-ridden IGN network?

I bought this the day it arrived in stores without hesitation, being a major fan of Morrowind and its expansions and have not stopped playing it since. There is one, MAJOR thing the author forgot in his piece: mods. While the Xbox360 version will ensure that you can play the game smoothly at high graphical settings, the PC version will ensure that you can play the game the way you prefer through mods, which is something pretty major. A couple things I do not like about Oblivion:

1. Interface is gigantic (as it was made for both console & PC but no effort was made to make a smaller interface for PC) and the world map forces you to view it through a keyhole.
2. Magic users imo get too little mana to work with, this is especially fustrating in combat situations
3. Wild life attacks you for no reason; when you (IRL) walk through the forest, rats do not attack you unless theyre rabid or some shit. Same for crabs and such. In Oblivion, all animals harbor an extreme hatred towards people apparently and attack on sight regardless of their place on the food chain. Kinda dumb.

You know whats great about these annoyances? The game has been out for almost 2 weeks and mods have fixed each of these annoyances; theres a mod that makes the interface a nice size for PCs as well as making the map fullscreen, makes wild life act like real animals, and I personally made a mod that gives characters more mana per levels of intelligence (the games mana equation works as such: mana = Intelligence x 2, my mod just changes that multiplier; its a simple fix until I can make a script that involves the actual character level). And these are mostly just tweaks, give it another six months to a year and we'll have some original user content as well; quests, new lands, you name it. This is what made Morrowind go from a game I played for a month to a game I played for atleast 6 months, since I could go online and find new ways to enhance the game when I got bored.

This is a great game and it will only get better with time.

For those looking for mods, the two main sites I know of right now are:
Tes Source
PlanetElderscrolls