Agreed, it was great at the time because of the graphics and atmosphere, but gameplay wasnt much different than Skyrim. Although I'll say one thing for Morrowind...beautiful interface and menus, Skyrims are just atrocious.

Really...you are going with "Well that's just like uhh your opinion..man." ?

And its not necromancy if the patient is still alive, and RPGs are still alive, barely, although more and more level scaled action adventure crap marketed as RPG comes out. That why the same arguments need to made again and again, even for the 580. time.

If you consider Phantasy Star Online or Diablo better (action-)RPGs then Morrowind, then we have a fundamentally different definition of "role playing".

That last part was aimed at Crosmando, but if you feel addressed, suit yourself.
And yes, it is your opinion. I don't want to start all over again, as we had this discussion before. But just because some game elements / designs don't work for you or you prefer it otherwise, doesn't mean that this is universal law for everyone else.

Crosmando, my objection wasn't that Oblivion had a better system, my objection was that Oblivion was also using rules to check the results of your actions. Yes, the rules it used checked player skill, not character skill, but I did encounter quite a bit of that on tabletop RPGs as well. Do allow me to apologize for not making my posts a bit clearer.

As I said before though, both systems do have merit, either the "Character skills are what matters" or "Player skill is what matters". Think of the riddle chests in Betrayal at Krondor, those were player skill checks, as were most riddles in RPGs (exception in PS:T, and possibly a few more).

Bethesda milking the franchise as if cash cows are going to be extinct tomorrow. Makes me sick.

RPGs are not barely alive. RPGs have been alive and kicking for more than 40 years (or 39, if you only count D&D as RPGs) and the vast majority use level scaling. There are quite a few that make a mess of level scaling, but since you did go from "That game has an excellent system" to "That game has a shitty system" after a "But it uses level scaling", I will continue to think that your hatred for level scaling blinds you towards any possible merits it has.

What me, Siannah and quite a few more were trying to tell you is that level scaling by itself isn't evil. It's the implementation that may make it suck, same as any system. If you can't accept that, and continue to chant "Level scaling is evil", then I will continue to sigh and try to explain it again.

Perhaps I am being a bit extremist in the divide between "player skill" and "character skill", all games have a bit of both, even non-RPGs like shooters have hitpoints, armor, movement speed, and the weapons do have stats, it's just that all of those are generally fixed and/or hidden from the player, and what matters most if how quick you are in moving and aiming.

And even in turn-based RPGs there's a great deal of "player skill" in the type of skills you give your characters, and even in combat the "player skill" in choosing the right spell or action to take at the right time.

I guess my point is, in an RPG the "player skill" is indirect, it's behind the scenes if how you the player think about what you do with your characters. In a non-RPG where "player skill" is direct. In your example of riddles and puzzles, yes there's player skill in figuring out and solving them, but it's no different than the player skill in tactical turn-based battles. The difference is that the player is never rushed or penalized because they aren't quick enough on the mouse/keyboard. I think it's the difference between thinking skills and twitch skills.

My thoughts excactly.

No, there's no levitate spell in Skyrim. Though you could do it just with the ingame console.

I won't count the quests, factions or features for each TES game. But I'd guess a good indication might be the official game guides - Daggerfall 270 pages, Morrowind 410 pages, Oblivion 540 pages, Skyrim 1100 pages (each goty version where available, means including DLCs / expansions).

It's confirmed on the Bethsda blog post that Skyrim will require Steam.

It's a Steamworks game, isn't it? They would have to rewrite to take Steam out I think.

I don't judge the quality of games based on how many RPG elements they have. Otherwise, there would be a huge amount of games that are automatically better than Morrowind.

I guess that's why Morrowind frustrated me so early and Oblivion took more time. Not knowing if you miss because you're aiming wrong or your character missed a roll is terribly frustrating.

Oblivion frustrated me because my intentions didn't matter. If I hit someone I was helping by mistake suddenly they were my enemy and the quest shot to hell. What about "sorry, I didn't mean that, it's just the stupid realtime combat"? Or if I just clicked on a door during the night "oh, you're trying to break in, off to prison with you". Stupid game kept overreacting.

The game I played most was Daggerfall, and I think I liked it because it was a very large world I could explore. Morrowind did give me some of that (though I haven't played enough to really get a feel of how big it was). Plus I was younger so didn't mind grinding as much. I could haggle for hours just to get that score up. When I got to Morrowind it was like "it'd take me hours to get that score up, it's just not worth it."

Can't be that difficult. After all there are AFAIK cracked versions of Skyrim that does not require Steam.
It should be about time to milk the anti-DRM crowd now.

You should give Morrowind another shot then, for the most part, you and your enemy stand next to each other and attack until one of you falls over. You don't have to of course and it'll probably help you due to the poor AI, but for the most part, that's how the fights work

Not really. There was a mistake and the first original retail version on disc (1.0) came WITHOUT steamworks included. In other word: you could start TESV.exe and Steam didn't started up.
This was corrected with later versions.