I'll agree with Farrell too though. I played it hundreds of hours unmodded because modding Skyrim is a bit of a pain. Mods definitely make it better, but it was still a fun game before that. I can play it today with only graphical mods; keeping the gameplay vanilla, though not without SkyUI.
I remember Skyrim being quite easy to mod just like any other Bethesda game. Not sure if that's changed. It's been years since I played it.
Personally, I don't know how anyone could play their games without mods, but that's just me.