First of all, yes, I know there is a slider that adjusts difficulty, so I guess I'm asking about default difficulty....

Is Morrowind hard? Or do I suck even worse at gaming than I thought because I played this years ago and don;t remember this, but I'm dying a LOT. I mean OFTEN.

Are you skilled in the weapons & armor (or lack thereof) you are using? if you're maximum health is low you may consider focusing on getting strength & endurance up & Agility may be able to help you "dodge" some of those hits

Plus: it's not always a good Idea to fight strong enemies or a pack of enemies (all at once) if it can be avoided.

More than that I don't know how to help without knowing your Char specs & specifically how you're dying

Lastly it might be pertinent to mention your Morrowind setup like are you using OpenMW, Vanilla or just straight up modded out.

There could be a few reasons:

1. You're trying to take on areas that are too hard for your character's abilities. For example, if you start the game and head straight for Red Mountain, chances are you are going to die pretty quickly. Following the main quest for a while or joining one of the guilds and doing that quest line is usually a good way to start. If one quest line gets too difficult, do something else for a while then come back to it once you have raised your skills.

2. Your character could have skills that don't suit your playing style (i.e. your character build) or you've prioritised some particularly difficult skills to train (like athletics or enchant?). Every skill has it's place, but it's usually a good idea to focus on some combat or magic skills if you find yourself dying a lot. Long Blade, Heavy/Light Armor, Destruction and Restoration are usually a good bet.

3. Some random monsters can be very difficult depending on your skills. Sometimes you'll need to run or teleport away - the scrolls or amulets of Divine/Almsivi Intervention can be life savers.

4. How often are you saving? RPGs usually need you to save every 10 minutes or so, in case you make a big mistake or randomly get annihilated by a powerful enemy. It can be part of the fun - come back later and turn the tables on that guy.

5. There are usually ways to avoid encounters too. Teleporting between towns (using Silt Striders or Mage Guild Guides) means you don't have to worry about random encounters and Speechcraft can sometimes help you complete quests without fighting.

I don't find MW that hard (though I tend to have a companion) so that most likely affects my experience.

I have heard of people having a hard time when the char is still fresh off the boat & stats are not great.

It may or not be that you're getting worse , but my bet is that if you haven't played MW in a while you may just be a tad "rusty" & may need to re-acclimate to it (that has happened to me for games that I've stopped playing for a while).

I find Morrowind hard in the beginning, almost too easy (subjective perception) later. "Almost too easy" applies to the base game only, not to the expansions and not to the Total Conversions or other mods, which tend to be quite tough. And you can avoid or delay the game getting "almost too easy" by not or rarely levelling up, not using trainers and not buffing stats by spells, potions, gear, tools, etc. To attempt to defeat Dagon Ur with a, say, average level 10 character without using special tricks is certainly a challenge, to say the least (I haven't tried it below level 20-25).
That said, it can be quite nice to be able to travel across Morrowind without being afraid of encounters with tough enemies.

What "hard in the beginning" means exactly depends on your character and your play style, obviously. Even the mudcrabs near Seyda Neen can be a major challenge, and to survive the dungeons near Seyda Neen could be almost impossible initially. If you love fighting and experimenting with different strategies and tactics, this can be the most interesting part of the game.
The toughest start I ever had was with a mage who never wore any weapons or armour, or used any spells except restoration (and no trainers, no potions, etc., just fighting without weapons, using restore spells and sleeping) - just out of curiosity. It took a while (I'm sure to defeat a mudcrab took more than an hour initially), but once my weaponless fighting and restoration skills were at 100, most fights had become very easy - 2 or 3 hits at most were enough for most guys.

By the way: Have you ever considered playing a Morrowind game without fighting at all? Trying to get to target points without being seen or by "persuading" your enemies to leave you alone? You may not be able to complete all quests in the game (some quest require killing someone or something), but it can be fun nonetheless.

I think I figured out the "problem". IIRC when I played a few years ago I beat one of the assassins very early and equipped said armor very early. I'm not sure it would make that much difference, but I think maybe it does. I checked in this game and when I go from my "regular" light armor (which is my best skill atm) I have a 13 armor rating. I killed one, stored the gear, and went back to try it on and it jumped it all the way up to 46. I'm thinking this is why I didn't die this much last time.

I'm thinking it's a fairly difficult game (early on anyway) and this probably explains my confusion between last time's experience and this times.

I'm playing the first time and that happed to me with the assassin. I'm told this is because of the Tribunal add on? I guess you are not supposed to meet them that early and get the armor. I was getting my butt kicked too. It's old style in that way like the old RPG's you start out super weak. I enjoy it that way. Getting the Redguard armor sure helped though. He handed me my behind many times before I barely beat him.

Level 10 and now I'm torn about going to my storage.

Part of me feels like even at level 10, the armor is too much of a boost, as my best armor rating available without it is 17 and wearing that armor makes me a 46.

Part of me feels like because I've beaten four of the assholes and didn't die a single time I "earned" it.

Funny, I kept up sleep only at the safe Seyda Neen location all through level 6 or 7, but then yes it was a PITA and so I slept wherever (Caldara and Balmora mostly) and man they attacked almost every time I slept.

If anyone cares I'll post later what I decide. Still just not sure. Man it seems I've earned it but man what a jump in armor rating.

ADDED: Not to mention the monetary effects. I've got 4 full sets, so three could be sold and boy what a windfall in funds that would be. I think Bethesda should have "turned off" the attacks after the first one officially starts the quest. Or made them much more rare after the first one. Or something.

I like the Dark Brotherhood attacks. I purposefully don't talk to guards, so that the attacks continue.
It is difficult to make money in elder scrolls games and surving the attacks I figure the money is well earned.
I used the money to buy a decent poisoned blade and worked up my shortblade skill and boosted the fatigue bar.
Wearing the better armor I assasinated Yngling Half-troll and took his glass jinkblade and Went to the fighter's guild in Ald' Ruhn and stole some better glass armor.

The attacks stop once you visit Mournhold and speak with a guard there. To get to Mournhold, travel to Ebonheart and speak with the people indicated in the journal/quest text.

Actually, my favorite way to make money actually involves starting the Tribunal quest. You see, in the Tribunal area, in a spot very close to the start (easily reachable without combat since there are no enemies, and one of the Intervention spells can be used if you're *really* lazy (forgot which one)), is a temple where you can buy Fortify Skill, which is probably the most broken spell effect in the game.

Now, to get money, I create a spell that has the effect "Fortify Mercantile 100 points for 1 second on self" on it 3 times (yes, the game lets you put multiples of the same Fortify Attribute or Skill effect on the same spell). Now, I go to a NPC merchant (a creature merchant won't work here), cast my Fortify Mercantile 300 points spell, then talk to the merchant before the spell wears off.

Now that I have 300+ Mercantile, all I need to do is sell some cheap item to the merchant and click "Max Sale"; this lets me sell the item for *all* of the merchant's gold, and because my Mercantile is so high, she will accept. Yes, I can sell something common (like a Racer Plume; I heard those are pretty common, right?) and get 4,000 gold (or more, if I buy stuff first) out of the deal. (I can also buy things for 1 gold, but that takes too long because there's no quick button for it, so I need to hold down the minus button.) (One other note; if Mercantile is a class skill, this is a fast way to gain levels, to the point where I've seen it done in a speedrun (albeit with Luck instead of Mercantile).)

Another thing I can do with Fortify Skill: Fortify Alchemy 800 points for 1 second on self. Now I can make a few strong Fortify Luck potions (and can use those potions along with the spell to make even stronger such potions; basically the Super Potion trick with a nice head start that saves a lot of time). Many players may ignore the Luck stat, but high Luck is ridiculous; combat becomes really easy when the enemies can't hit you and your attacks never miss, the effect that high Mercantile gives you can be obtained with high luck, I get the benefits of high Speechcraft (takes just a little persuasion to make somebody love you), and this also opens the door to powerful potions and enchantments.

Restoration too low to cast these spells? Well, you can use a more reasonable Fortify Restoration spell to fix that. (Fortify Restoration isn't the gamebreaker it is on Skyrim (on potions, that is), but it is a nice gateway to tricks that *are* broken.) Also, Fortify Enchantment up to 110 for a reasonable duration allows you to use any magic item's spell for only one charge. (Some items have thousands of charges, but take thousands of charges per use; imagine using them for just *1* charge per use.)

Edit: I should point out that doing some of what I mentioned in this post *will* make the game too easy (especially the use of powerful Fortify Luck potions).

I like them too. I had taken a slave to someone in Balmora. and soon As I had unlocked his door and entered he attacked and killed her for the moonsuger inside her. After he gave me the Medusa ring and some gold for a reward I promptly killed him and now his house is mine. I stash all my goodies from battles there till I am ready to use or sell. I was sleeping on the bed when the game told me I heard a noise, two assassins were coming from upstairs to kill me. I barely beat them thanks to my ancestors ghost and skeletons .