Morrowind Appreciation Thread

[anaxie]

I love the old pre console era before TES went mainstream. Morrowind has aged oh so beautifully over the years though.
You can update this as easily as you update any modern game. Just click and install!

Morrowind Overhaul 3.0

seyda neen


Solsthiem

[Henako]

I enjoyed Morrowind a lot more than Oblivion or Skyrim. The latter games were improved mechanically, but the world itself and the adventure just wasn't as good. Normalized levels and gear really detracted from the experience, in my opinion, and unlike in Skyrim, exploring in Morrowind actually meant something.

[Venziir]

A lot more atmosphere than in Skyrim, that's for damn sure....

Ahhh good ol' Morrowind, where a wrong turn would lead you up a mountain only to be zerged by a bazillion flying monsters....

[Stir]

Just loved everything about Morrowind.
Never liked any Elder Scrolls game after it.

[Deleted]

Yep. Morrowind is pretty much my favourite game of all time. The amount of hours I spent on the xbox and PC versions combined I daren't think about.

[anaxie]

If you enjoyed the Great house redoran try replacing it with the overhaul and LGNPC Redoran it fleshes out the great house and all it's holdings for a longer lasting experience.

http://lgnpc.org/downloads

I personally always enjoyed the questing experience with Redoran vs the fetch/talk quests most Telvanni/Haalu have you perform. Redoran in Vanilla has far more quests and hubs within the world anyhow. Now, even more!

[Potente]

Oh boots of blinding speed how I miss you.

[anaxie]

Oh boots of blinding speed how I miss you.

Magic res to see + constant levitation robe + boots = ZOOM

Fast Travel is a console crutch real men use Levitate, Zoom, Jump, or Mark/Recall across the island

[bals]

I really enjoyed it. Looking back though there's no way I can really say it was better than Skyrim (didn't play Oblivion), but my nostalgia goggles say morrowind > Skyrim. The world was pretty empty (besides god damn cliff racers) and bland for the most part, although there were lots of caves and dwemer ruins and such they didn't have much.

[barackopala]

I must admit i never cared about the elder scrolls, I even have oblivion on a CD (came with follout 3 as a bundle) but i've never installed it, just played skyrim and it felt a bit lackluster (somehow I had the same feeling as TB had, it's a huge lake of content but it feels a bit shallow on the impact you have on it), may i ask what made morrowind that great of a game?

[anaxie]

The game was immersive and fleshed out and rewarded exploring. Nothing was leveled and most loot was fairly static. Morrowind IS larger then Oblivion, it MIGHT be larger then skyrim.

Lots of Guild Factions and some were hidden and not in your face. The stories intertwined with eachother and could have consequences for other factions. Not disjoined stories.

You actually had to be very skilled at thief skills, magic, fighting skills to be promoted within the guilds needing larger and larger skill pools to advance further in the ranks. Instead of these largely blown up iny our face quests players get nowadays things were more surreal. They weren't shoved in your face I AM EMPEROR and you must save this world or being told OMG you are total a dragon-human-hybrid and the only one who can slay them. That type of shit won't happen here.

THE GUILDS actually had you do what they were intended to do, I don't even see this anymore in the TES series nevermind how lacking guilds were in Skyrim.

Your dropped off a prison ship, your given release papers and pocket change and a suggestion to go meet someone in a city and then you are let free within the world. The plot is far more sinister dark and enjoyable then OMG hellfire and demons, no no imagine a cult that indoctrinates followers through their dreams or turns them into deformed monsters who have a disease similar in severity of a leper. You even contract this disease at one point.

Politics are a big thing within the game and so is backstabbing. Almost all quests have alternative ways to complete them. Even the main questline.

You can do and kill anyone you choose to, none of this "knocked unconcious and immune to death" nonsense shit.

The plot was subtle but rewarding anyone who actually played the game can tell you this. No fast travel/ No magic compass. You were given directions to where to go and people to talk to for further assistance and off you go. If you found your way was only part of the game, if you got lost on another adventure so be it.

It was a TRUE RPG. Skyrim plays more like an action hack n slash. And oblivion... well lets pretend Oblivion never happened.


Here is a real quick example of the quest system in both games

Each faction had ALOT more quests then obv/skyrim misc quests were nearly 5X the amount too

Morrowind: Fighters Guilds, Thieves Guild, Mages Guild, Morang Tong <assassins Guild>, Great House Redoran, Great House Telvanni, Great House Haalu, East Empire Company, Tribunal Temple, Imperial Cult, Imperial Legion, The Blades, Vamppire Clans if you are infected

Oblivion : Fighter Guild, Thieves Guild, Mages Guild, Dark Brotherhood <assassins Guild>, Arena

Skyrim : Fighters Guild, Thieves Guild, Mages Guild, Dark Brotherhood, Imperial Legion/Rebels.

Oblivion and skyrim have the same how did the games quality shoot down? While Oblivion keeps the multiple guild hub locations to keep presence within cities, Skyrim is limited to a single hub PER faction.


Pretty graphics and game mechanics are one thing of course AI, Graphics, Combat develops better over 10 years. However the story, Immersion, world, life, and many of the RPG elements have been sucked dry from the game.

Lets not even talk about inventory removal of spears and polearms, Throwing stars, Darts, and until recently Crossbows pissed alot of players off. You also lost the ability to equip a robe over your armor to be have that battlemage look, now to wear robes since oblivion you must be entirely naked. What?


Your armor equips at one time could include:

Morrowind
Head, Left Shoulder, Right Shoulder, Chest, Legs, boots, Left Hand, Right Hand, Neck, 2X rings, Shirt, pants, Belt, Skirt, Robe

Now you are limited to

Obliv/Sky
Head, Legs, Boots, Hands, X2 Rings, Neck

Talk about backwards and diluted!

Worst of all Skyrim removes your ability to create your OWN magic spells? WHAT? Not only do they remove magic classes and spells NOW you can't even MAKE you own. Nevermind how limited enchanting has become

If you want to compare the games to WoW imagine if 6.0 comes and their like WHELP we are going to be removing transmogrification, Oh and we are also removing 1 spec from each class, And your armor slots are cut down from 16 to 8. We will also make no vanity items to discover within the game anymore. But as a trade for all this you get updated player models!

[Yalingo]

Morrowind WAS a great game at the time and for many years after. It was a lot more hardcore than subsequent TES games and a hell of a lot more immersive.

The problem with it now if you haven't played it, you'll just think to yourself "What's so great about this, it's just like skyrim only with worse graphics, combat and AI."

If you were going to check it out, there's plenty of mods available to bring the graphics and mechanics more up to date and some people have even remade the the entire game on the Oblivion engine.

[Flaks]

Skyrim: Companions/Werewolves, Thieve's Guild, Mage's Guild, Dark Brotherhood, Empire, Stormcloaks, Dawnguard, Vampires, Blades, Parthunaax

I'll admit certainly though that the games have been decreasing in depth A LOT on the questing end of things. But the world is just flat out better in every way in Skyrim no contest if you're avoiding nostalgia. None of the random spawn areas that make Morrowind artificially larger than it ever should have been.

[Tierbook]

hearing this i figured i would look and i found that they have it on Steam for 12$ says its the game of the year eddition so im assuming it comes with both DLCs

just looked and yes it does

[Wilian]

Something that is rarely brought up is the inventory/character sheet UI.

It's one of the best ones ever made in RPGs. With one click you see everything you would ever need to, in customizable "boxes". Inventory is grid and image based, intuitively showing the things with a simple overlook as almoust every item has unique image, with enchantment icon showing it's magical qualities and all the subinfo is a simple mouseover away. None of this consolized bullshit with HUGE fonted lists of text that you have to keep scrolling back and forth, forth and back and then go into ten different submenus to just find a simple thing.

[anaxie]

^ this too huge gripe. LUCKILY most issues with Oblivion / SKyrim can be fixed IF you know how to use mods and use a PC. The UI is one of the first things to mod out on the platform. Sadly you can't fix the diluted item slots and alot of the skill trades removal and the default factions are still extremely lacking.

[Lazy Gecko]

Only problem was the melee combat really. Having it first person and real-time, yet still largely dice based with a big chance to miss at early levels causes quite a bit of dissonance for the player. Well, I suppose old school dungeon crawlers were also like that, but I think it's moreso due to you clearly seeing your weapon on the screen FPS style.

The heightened production values, especially the need to voice everything has been a tremendous blow for quest depth and quality in the later Elder Scrolls games. Creating characters and implementing their dialog took a lot less work in Morrowind hence there was much more of it.

Morrowind still has the best travel system out of all the past 3 games as well. There was no fast travel from anywhere like in Oblivion or Skyrim, but this was balanced out by plenty of paid transportation alternatives. Silt Striders, boats, Mage Guild teleports, Almsivi Intervention, etc. Some places were only accessed via either of these fast travel methods so if you didn't feel like traveling by foot you'd at least have to do some "commute" planning.

The interface was also the best one, although it was still far from good. GUI has never been Bethesda's strong point, and it seems to have only gotten worse with each game. The Morrowind UI's strongest point was that for the most part you could access all information you needed quickly at the press of a button. Compare this to Skyrim where you first need to access the menu overlay, and then switch to the amazingly sluggish perk interface just to see your magicka or health stats.

[anaxie]

Morrowind WAS a great game at the time and for many years after. It was a lot more hardcore than subsequent TES games and a hell of a lot more immersive.

The problem with it now if you haven't played it, you'll just think to yourself "What's so great about this, it's just like skyrim only with worse graphics, combat and AI."

If you were going to check it out, there's plenty of mods available to bring the graphics and mechanics more up to date and some people have even remade the the entire game on the Oblivion engine.

You don't even need a bunch. The morrowind overhaul 3.0 is literally self automated. Download - Hit install and it automates just like blizzard launcher downloads. Sure you can customize settings for your pc specs for lite overhaul versions but it's not as difficult as pure modding for the inexperienced modder. The GRAPHICS arguably are pretty close to skyrim considering the game is over a decade old and way above oblivion graphics with the overhaul.

- - - Updated - - -

Only problem was the melee combat really. Having it first person and real-time, yet still largely dice based with a big chance to miss at early levels causes quite a bit of dissonance for the player. Well, I suppose old school dungeon crawlers were also like that, but I think it's moreso due to you clearly seeing your weapon on the screen FPS style.

The heightened production values, especially the need to voice everything has been a tremendous blow for quest depth and quality in the later Elder Scrolls games. Creating characters and implementing their dialog took a lot less work in Morrowind hence there was much more of it.

Morrowind still has the best travel system out of all the past 3 games as well. There was no fast travel from anywhere like in Oblivion or Skyrim, but this was balanced out by plenty of paid transportation alternatives. Silt Striders, boats, Mage Guild teleports, Almsivi Intervention, etc. Some places were only accessed via either of these fast travel methods so if you didn't feel like traveling by foot you'd at least have to do some "commute" planning.

The interface was also the best one, although it was still far from good. GUI has never been Bethesda's strong point, and it seems to have only gotten worse with each game. The Morrowind UI's strongest point was that for the most part you could access all information you needed quickly at the press of a button. Compare this to Skyrim where you first need to access the menu overlay, and then switch to the amazingly sluggish perk interface just to see your magicka or health stats.

You can mod this out or console command your skill to 100 max as a workaround to this issue. If you build your character correctly it shouldn't even be an issue. But it's an RPG you can't expect to cast HELLFIRE when you have no concept of the magic hence the fail part. If you are inept with a weapon you will be reflected in the characters hit chance. It mean it's just like WoW basically, you can beat the shit out of something but if you have no hit rating <or prior to cata weapon skill> you aren't gonna hit anything.

It's a player skill VS RPG skill concern. Skyrim and Oblivion are on rails hack and slash action RPGS. Kotor and DA had hit chance and skills I don't see those games getting flak for the dice system.

But overall very valid points and I can see how it's frustrating for players who never played a real RPG to pickup morrowind nowadays.

[Arrashi]

If you recognize more than half of things on that pic - you are awesome !!!

[Deleted]

I started playing Morrowind on steam with an Xbox360 controller with the overhaul. Any tips for a new player to Morrowind, due the Xbox360 controller me and my friend decided we should go melee. (not even sure if you need to make that choice but eh...)