I can't say whether the game particularly divided the community; I fell away from the fanbase after being disappointed with Morrowind. The game itself... well, it looked pretty, except for the human(oid) characters, who all looked like partially melted wax sculptures; the voice acting is so hideously limited (each combination of race and gender has only a single assigned voice actor, so you often hear people conversing with themselves, and it has neither the polish of a Grim Fandango nor the heartbeat-level desperation of a System Shock 2) to the point where I can't help but wonder why on Earth Zenimax thought it was a good idea to stick with the system for Skyrim; the combat and skills are dumbed down from Morrowind; the ramped-up level scaling means that no matter where you go, you're fighting pretty much the same stuff; the much-vaunted Radiant AI is as dumb as toast, and only slightly more interesting; while the dungeons are larger than those in Morrowind (not that that's hard), they're still quite small, and refused to return to Daggerfall's 3D maps; the limited overworld map size (based on the bizarre idea that White Gold Tower should be visible from anywhere in the province) means that notable locations pop up every few dozen feet; and if you're wondering how a tower, no matter how tall, would be visible through thick jungle, the game does things with and to the lore and history that would be considered world abuse under any other circumstances.
However... there's still much of the fun of exploring around the map, though the exploratory urge of "what's over the next hill?" is undercut by the aforementioned overworld map design; while the game does terrible things to the established background lore, it's still mostly spelled out in the scores of books scattered throughout the world, carrying on the series' world-building; it is pretty cool to watch a group of city guard try to take down a monster you lured into their range (at least at first), and they're actually armed to take down terrestrial threats (no more rampaging through a city as a wereboar, perfectly safe from the guards who were only packing steel weapons); the music is some of the best in the series (no small claim, that); the expansions are fun (if a bit wince-inducing lore-wise); and the modding scene was (possibly still is) enormous, with a huge quantity of well-made stuff that'll let you change up the game pretty much however you want to- as an added bonus, coming in at this late date means it's all going to be (at least mostly) finished and stable.
Those are my thoughts, at any rate. But don't let community responses determine your opinion, especially since you already own a copy. Give it a whirl and see for yourself. Oh, and the dialogue wheel is just the persuasion minigame; it's pretty stupid, but pretty simple, and largely optional.
