The thing with the dice roll is that you have a game that has the look and feel of a first-person action game, and therefore a player will expect the game to play like an action game. That, combined with the lack of feedback, can be confusing to players who aren't expecting this behavior.

If the game would have enemies show a blocking animation when the game rolls a miss, the situation would be a lot clearer, and easier for a new player to understand. (One game I've played, the Nintendo DS Fighting Fantasy game, does this.)

Another problem with Morrowind's approach is that, if your attack misses, you get no skill experience, which can make it rather frustrating to raise a low level weapon skill without paying a trainer. (Wizardry 8 handled this situation much better, but then again, Wizardry 8's turn-based combat with a combat log means players are expecting the dice roll behavior, whereas Morrowiind has the look and feel of a game that doesn't use dice rolls, yet it does.)

By the way, it is worth noting that Arena and Daggerfall also use dice rolls to determine if attacks hit or miss. It's only Oblivion and Skyrim which use a pure collision-based system, with weapon skill instead influencing the damage attacks that connect do.

One closing statement: The points you mention may be positive for many players, but said players should still know about those points so they know what to expect. If you go into a game expecting it to behave one way, but the game actually behaves very differently, it can be very confusing and frustrating for the new player. So yes, feel free to enjoy the game's dice roll combat and exploitability (but watch out for crashes and softlocks), now that you know about it.

I think the blocking animation is the best solution here.

Of course, one could take the Secret of Evermore approach, where, when your attack collides but your attack roll indicates a miss, the word "Miss!" pops up over the enemy (instead of a damage number). (Just make sure that the German translation uses the correct word, rather than the word that means "young lady"; yes, there's one game where this actually happened.)