I usually went Arena first in the OG oblivion, leveled up my character as much as possible (as perfect as possible) and then started doing quests. It was a nice controlled environment to level combat skills in. I was high level but never encountered any major problems at that point. I mean sure.. if i only focused on blade (and maxed it to 100) and suddenly started using bow and arrow (which is at 15 or 20) then i'd have a bad time but thats how Morrowind did it too. Arguably even worse in Morrowind lol, god i hated that you could miss swings (but at the time i guess a lot of RPG's worked that way). But if i went into the world immediately and just started doing quests i was screwed since its almost impossible to level perfectly in an uncontrolled environment.
What i really like about the remaster is that i can just start doing quests immediately without having to worry about ruining my character. I feel I have much more control of how I want to build my character now, in the original i felt i had to play by a playbook for leveling and when i was high lvl enough i could finally start enjoying the game.
Are you sure it wasn't the Romans in 27BC who were to blame?