Here are some bugs I have encountered in the freeware versions from the Bethesda website.

Arena:

On my first playthrough, I was somehow poisoned (or maybe it was diseases, it's been a while) without the game indicating me as poisoned. When I tried to fast travel, the game didn't give me the warning it normally does when poisoned and killed me after traveling. A cure poison spell or potion will fix this.

If you have a Fortify effect active and gain a level (or find the item that permanently raises stats), you will lose the Fortify stat bonus and will not be able to cast it until after it would normally wear off. In addition, once the effect finally does wear off, your stats will go to below their normal values until you rest to heal your stats. This bug is consistently reproduceable.

If you make a spell that costs over 65535, the cost overflows and becomes small. (This *is* exploitable for obvious reasons.) If you make a spell that costs enough to overflow again, the game will crash.

Daggerfall:

The tutorial stops when you leave the dungeon, even though it is supposed to continue afterwords. (This bug happens in every playthrough where the tutorial is enabled.)

There is an artifact weapon that will temporarily boost your strength (sometimes past the normal limit). After boosting my strength up high, I noticed that guards were doing a lot more damage than normal (as in, enough that my 25-HP-max-per-level character lost like more than half her health when hit. I think it may have been enough to kill her *with* an uber regen spell (which costs a lot less than it should) active.

If the player's wielded weapon casts a spell when it hits, so will enemy arrows. I have been instantly killed by this glitch.

The developers implemented a system where height varies a lot more in the wilderness (making the wilderness more interesting) but disabled it in the released version. However, if you change your transportation mode to Ship and then back, this system will be enabled. (This is actually a fun glitch to play around with.) However, if you would be inside the ground after returning, the game crashes.

Bashing the door of your own property will cause the guards to come after you, even if you are on your ship. Also, in the Coast of High Rock region, surrendering to the guards will cause your HP to drop to 1 but will not take you to court. (Does reputation matter in this region?)

Sometimes, after playing for a while, the game just crashes.

Edit: Another one for Daggerfall: It is possible to enter the final dungeon from the wilderness (just board your ship and head to the northwest corner of the map) but if you do so, it is now impossible to escape without a portal. Also, I believe that if you enter the dungeon normally and then portal out, the game may again become unwinnable.

I see. Understandable that you find these issues annoying when you come across them. I myself would call them design flaws or exploits, but it's up to you. The main reason for my reaction was that most people are likely to interpret the term "buggy" differently. A newcomer or an average player will probably not even notice this kind of problem.

Me either. Neither Arena (which I bought in disk form and beat unpatched back when it first came out from Egghead Software) nor Morrowind which I've banked well over 100 hours in and never had a game-breaking bug. Daggerfall I can't speak for, but even with documented bugs both Arena and Morrowind are well beyond playable. Stop fear-mongering dtgreene! They're a bit clunky after playing Morrowind, but if you liked Ultima Underworld which they were heavily inspired from, you'd probably enjoy them. They ooze the charm of the beginning of an enterprise and have loads of personality. But also plenty of rough edges that are still redeemable. It really hinges on your threshold to deal with less refined game mechanics and graphics of 20 years ago. If those don't represent an issue for you, you'd probably like them.

I am just giving examples of some of the bugs I experienced, which range from annoying (Fortify + level in Arena) to game-breaking (poison (or was it disease?) bug in Arena) to fun to play around with (Daggerfall wilderness height variation).

Some bugs, as I said, are actually fun to play around with. For instance, in Arena it might be fun to make powerful low cost spells by overflowing the spell's cost. (Just be careful not to overflow it twice.) Daggerfall's wilderness height bug can also be fun, especially since it demonstrates how the overworld *could* have looked.

As a side note, I should point out that Fast Travel is necessary in Arena and almost necessary in Daggerfall. In Daggerfall, getting from one town to another without fast travel takes an unreasonable amount of time. (I have read that it takes something like multiple days of real time to cross the world map.) Also, Daggerfall's wilderness is extremely boring.

Arena has more interesting wilderness areas, with the occasional random house or dungeon. However, Fast Travel is *mandatory* if you want to go to any other location on the map, as the wilderness is procedurally generated (basically random with a seed determined by the map location) and goes on forever. In other words, it is *impossible* to travel to another city without using Fast Travel.

It's also worth noting that I am the sort of gamer who loves to experiment. The games seem designed to encourage such experimentation, but of course, such experimentation tends to uncover bugs when they are present in the game's programming. These bugs can vary from being annoying, game-breaking, game-crashing, minor curiosities, quirks of the game that work against you, strange behavior, minor exploits, major exploits, bugs that are quite silly, bugs that are fun to play with, and sometimes even bugs that fit multiple categories.

By the way, if you fall into the void, Alt-F11 will put you back, but you will suffer fall damage, and Levitate will not prevent it. This fall damage can easily be an instant kill. (It is a good idea to have a slow fall spell handy to avoid falling damage here.)

By the way, one other case of unexpected behavior that works against you: Suppose you just killed an innocent person and the guards are after you, and you are trying to escape. (Or maybe you just accidentally selected the option to "rest", at which point you've committed a crime, even though you would have normally been able to cancel at the "how many hours?" question.) So, you run to the edge of town, climb up the wall, fall down the other side, and take falling damage. At this point, you are asked if you want to surrender to the guards (who are nowhere near you), and your reputation has decreased.

To my understanding, Daggerfall has more of everything than Morrowind, except for Cliff Racers. (This, of course, includes bugs.)

(As a side note, I actually enjoy talking about bugs in computer games, if you couldn't tell from reading my posts where I give details on them.)

Ok, so we've established dtgreene is obsessed with game testing. Proceed without caution OP.

I'm actually a bit backwards from that. I started with Oblivion, than played a bit of Morrowind, hated it for it's horrible mechanics (My opinion so don't hate me), than played Skyrim, than played Arena (got out of the first dungeon!) than played DaggerFall than that computer crashed and died...

I enjoyed Arena and Daggerfall but hated Morrowind even though I started with Oblivion... but I get what people say about the framerate, it can be pretty bad at times.

dtgreene:
Interesting observations. Same game, different people who all played the game extensively, different experiences, different perceptions. Will have a look at the "height" thing over the weekend :-).
I don't know how often I suffered from the void bug, but I never noticed a loss of health points when using Alt-F11.
I don't question your statement, because it may really have escaped my attention all the time. Probably because losing health points is quite a common thing in Daggerfall's dungeons, mostly due to being hit by monsters.

the_atm:
It makes me a bit sorry that you don't get along well with Morrowind, especially when you like Oblivion and Skyrim. Of course, not everyone does, and Morrowind simply isn't a game that must appeal to everyone. On the other hand, there are quite different reasons for not liking Morrowind, and some of them based on misperceptions or issues which can be remedied.
For example, I remember a discussion from the early days of Morrowind when it was critizised for bad performance even on high-end PCs, because the players couldn't move fast whatever they tried. It turned out to be an intended effect of the speed attribute. Most players didn't bother to increase this attribute when they gained levels, and so never experienced normal move speed.
If you don't like the alien fantasy world and the strange and complex human and elf society of Morrowind, or if you simply are disappointed by the graphics compared to Oblivion and Skyrim, then Morrowind is probably really not your game. If you find the initial difficulty of Morrowind too high (killing your first mudcrab can be quite challenging, and surviving the first bandit cave near Seyda Neen is also not easy) or miss the quest markers of Oblivion and Skyrim, then again Morrowind may not be for you.
But you mention frame rates, and this sounds like an issue which can be resolved - or are you using graphics-hungry add-ons on a low-end PC?
Perhaps you want to explain what your issues are?

Daggerfall was an ugly, clunky, buggy mess when it came out, and it remains so today.

It was also the largest, most ridiculously ambitious single player RPG ever made when it came out, and it also remains so today.

I played Daggerfall when it came out because the shiny box captured my interest, and I plowed through the tedious opening dungeon dozens of times and suffered the barely-held-together engine because at its best, Daggerfall felt more like another world than any other RPG I had ever played, and it still holds that magic to me to this day. Morrowind came close but was just too small, Skyrim was charming as hell but polished to such a fine sheen that it could never feel like anything other than a game, and Oblivion... was garbage, but Daggerfall remains singular in what it evokes.

Arena is nice enough, but in many ways it just feels like a dry run for Daggerfall.

Do you know when I liked Daggerfall for the very first time? It was when I arrived in Daggerfall for the first time, night fell, and there was that hollow voice from the off: "Revenge!" Spooky and haunting!

I believe that Arena was a proof of concept indeed. I remember the initial announcements of a new game world with its own lore, etc. I didn't believe it at the time, thought it was a marketing statement intended to stimulate sales. When Arena was well received in many magazines, I decided to give it a try - and was overwhelmed when I entered the first town after I had completed the starter dungoen (which i found nice for learning the basic game mechanics, but not very exciting otherwise).
When I remember Arena today, I see 8 fixed story dungeons (which are average, in my mind), plus a huge world of guilds, temples and interest groups with many surprises - and a lot to do. Not very different from the later TES games, conceptwise.
Daggerfall was similar, but bigger and more complex. I couldn't run it very well on my not so powerful PC when it came out, and this influenced my gaming experience negatively more than every occasional bug. On my next PC, Daggerfall ran smoothly and was patched to 213, and again, I didn't notice a severe bug (except the void bug, but there was Alt-F11).
So my experiences with Daggerfall are not those of an "ugly, clunky, buggy mess", but of disappointment about my weak PC, followed by pleasure and excitement when I could play it on a real PC, with the most serious bugs removed.

I still play Daggerfall to this day and find myself playing it for hours when I start it up, it's very atmospheric and I found myself having a blast playing when I first started playing it last year, never found it clunky or buggy, the only problem was that I was on a laptop, but a cheap $5 mouse made attacking easier.

I had more issues playing Arena, but it's nice to see where one of my favorite series started up.

Both Arena and Daggerfall have the problem of being way too hard early in the game.
Daggerfall is also notoriously buggy,and they never did get all the bug squashed,which is why Daggerfall is often considerd a glorious failure;a potentially wonderful game flawed by being too buggy.
Common consensus si that the Elder Scrolls were a magnificne idea which had flawed execution until "Morrowwind".

I think I'm the only person who prefers Arena. I liked the more actionized combat, and the less complicated leveling system.

- "... too hard early in the game ..."? I respect your personal opinion and experience, but I don't accept your statement as a general truth.
My personal opinion is that the starter dungeon of Arena is very easy - there is no opponent which you can't kill with one or two hits - while that of Daggerfall is very appropriate: There are opponents which are easy to kill, opponents which are hard or impossible to kill, and opponents which require special tactics or techniques to kill, a great preparation for what is to come - including the lesson that to run away from enemies is sometimes the best or even only way to survive. In fact, you can get through the starter dungeon of Daggerfall within two or three minutes and without a single fight (once you know your way :-)).

- "... notoriously buggy ..., ... is considered a glorious failure ..."? Ok, if that's how you feel, and there are certainly people who consider it a failure.
I'd say that Daggerfall doesn't have more bugs than other game of that size and complexity on average. I went through the bug documentation for Daggerfall on the internet, and didn't find a really game-breaking bug listed which is reproduceable and has been proven to be caused by the game software (except the void bug, but you can get out by pressing Alt-F11). There is a good number of annoying issues, but many of these can be spotted by experienced players only. I myself (an average to casual player) have never encountered a single bug in Daggerfall which caused my annoyance (again except the void bug).

- "Common consensus ..."? What a great statement - how do you know? It's the opinion of many people, I guess, but there are also many people who feel otherwise. My personal view is that Arena and Daggerfall lack graphical perfection, but are superior in many other respects. I do think, however, that Morrowind provides, everything considered and taken into account (including the Construction Set), the most complete and immersive role-playing experience of all TES games (which isn't common consensus either). It is also my personal opinion that Oblivion and Skyrim, while graphically superior, have an overly simplified role-playing system (which isn't saying I don't like these games). Worst of all, the quest marker system has been made more or less mandatory for finding something - just try to play without!

That said, I do find certain aspects of Arena and Daggerfall (and of the other TES games) very weak, irritating, or annoying, but bugginess is not among them. And I don't expect others to share my opinion, nor do I think that my personal opinion is "common consensus" (even when I know that others share it).
An example is the way the random dungeons are created in Daggerfall: as chaotic 3-dimensional things all created from the same set of standard building blocks, together with an automapping system which doesn't deserve that name. Almost as bad as the quest marker system (or even worse, I'm not sure).
BUT: I've read an interesting article about how to explore and orientate yourself in these dungeons. The author feels that Daggerfall's dungeon creation system is the best available in any dungeon crawler. I don't share this opinion, but I understand why the guy thinks so - he simply thinks and plays differently, which isn't a matter of good or bad.

I had a look at this glitch (there is actually a Youtube video showing it, although it's described slightly differently), but I'm afraid I don't quite understand it.
I never played with ships in Daggerfall, and it looks like you need a ship if you want to produce that effect. Is this correct? And you probably need a lot of money to buy a ship? Then you walk around, change your movement method to "ship" (not "Fast Travel"), and back again to something else?
The Youtube video seems to indicate that the effect disappears again when you do certain things, and it looks like it isn't persistent (i.e. it's not included in save games). Right?