Morrowind is just as big as the newer games. I dont personally like the quest mechanics on it as stuff isnt marked on the map, combat doesnt block blows like the newer games either, however there is an awesome mod available for it called Moroblivion which makes it run in the Oblivion engine. Vanilla version or Morrowind looks really dated now so would definately recommend at least a few texture mods for it.

I really need to get into it as its supposed to be an awesome game, probably just me not paying enough attention. One aspect I do hate regardless and so do a lot of other people on the net is the darned skyracers, they are pterodactyl type creatures and they just follow you non stop. Make sure you have plenty arrows and magic when venturing out.

Morroblivion :

http://morroblivion.com/

As a negative, most side quests are just fetch/kill quests. There are no random encounters, though you may find quests anywhere.

The guildsare there, and they're mostly just quest lines (and have merchants on them, of course), I don't know if there's anything more to them in Skyrim.

About the combat, here's the point: this is not an action game. People don't like it because it's first person and real-time, but swinging your sword is just the same as clicking an enemy in Diablo: your character might miss - and *will* miss a *lot* before you get your weapons stats high enough.

Which leads to another point to consider: there are no minigames. Everything is based solely on your stats. I haven't played Skyrim, but in Oblivion you had that stupid wheel minigame to make people like you. Don't count on anything like that. If you want someone to like you enough to help on a quest, or something, boost yours stats, maybe use potions, or spells, etc.

As for storyline, I personally didn't like it very much. The background and lore, however, is wonderful - it's an Elder Scrolls, after all. And the scenery is so cool. With all the criticism above, I put 110 hours into it.

I think the question is - can you play old-school RPGs, or are you used to more recent, all action-based RPGs? If it's the latter, you will probably find it just boring. Else, you might enjoy it a lot.

Morrowind has more quests, more factions, more skills, _much_ more dialogue, more types of items, more diverse places than Oblivion or Skyrim, and the best UI I have ever seen in a game of this type. It has, however, worse graphics, very little voice acting, worse enemy AI, and even less balanced gameplay. Like Oblivion and (hopefully) Skyrim, there are thousands of mods available to expand or modify your playing experience in almost every way.

It's hard to describe though. Get the GotY Edition and have a look. If you enjoy the openness and sense of exploration in Oblivion and Skyrim, appreciate a grim atmosphere and an epic backstory about war, betrayal, and humans trying to become gods, and can live with the less slick presentation and "action" parts then you'll enjoy Morrowind.

I might add one more important thing. The encounters do not level with you they have fixed levels (like in D&D games). So you can easily get into trouble if you venture into the wrong place. It also means you can always find challenge somewhere.

Oblivion and Skyrim have less factions, and offer one questline per faction. You have to go through these quests successively.

Morrowind has several quest-givers per faction, each with his own personality and line of quests. This gives the player much more choice. For example, as a member of the fighters guild, you can do the quests offered by that orc in Vivec (basically assassination quests), or you can do the more noble quests offered by the stewart in Ald'Ruhn. You can work against the Thieves guild or together with it. As a member of th mages guild, you can do the questline of that mage in Balmora (who is interested in Dwemer archaeology, so you'll do a lot of dungeoneering in old ruins, trying to find old books or items), or you can do quests for the Argonian in Wolverine Hall (who is an alchemist, so you'll mainly hunt for ingredients or deliver potions), or you can do quests for the guild leader, who will often send you against the Telvanni, the competing "native" house of mages, that the player can join as well.

In general, Morrowind offers you much more choice with regard to quests, while Oblivion and Skyrim focus on better presentation and more involved storytelling.

A word of warning about Morrowind: Alchemy can very easily be exploited to completely negate any kind of difficulty the game can offer. Due to the way potion effectiveness is calculated when you make your own it is possible to make potions that grant +1 million or more to a stat for several years.

You do need to actively exploit it to make stuff like that, but Alchemy should be treated carefully (even if you use a mod to fix the issue).

Morrowind has more spell effects than Oblivion (including Mark/Recall for teleportation and Levitation for flight) and some of the effects were moved between Magic schools between the two games.

I haven't played any other TES games (besides a few hours of Daggerfall), so I can't compare Morrowind to Oblivion or Skyrim. But I can tell you that Morrowind is a strange beast. Just about every core mechanic is either bland or broken, and the quests range from acceptably average to "why bother?" But its virtues lie in its amazing atmosphere and world, deep lore, and incredibly open-ended play. It's less an RPG and more a huge world to play around in and explore. A true sandbox.

There's a lot to see and do. A LOT to see and do. There are hundreds upon hundreds of spells, potions, and scrolls for magic. Alternatively, you can craft your own spells, or brew your own potions with ingredients found growing throughout the world. There are nearly a hundred base item types, most of which have enchanted/special variants and all of which have the ability to be enchanted by the player in innumerable ways. The world is about 3 miles across, and is packed with atmospheric details like rain, day/night cycles, duststorms, snow, and various degrees of foggy/clear weather. The landscape is dotted with tombs, grottos, mysterious industrial ruins, imposing strongholds, shipwrecks, caves, and demonic temples. There are perhaps 50 different creatures, ranging from adorably weak larva and mudcrabs to undead warlocks and dinosaur-like predators. Dozens of diseases can be caught, with cures that range from despicably easy to downright impossible. You can become a vampire and, if you get the GOTY edition, a Werewolf. Add in over 400 unique quests, numerous factions and guilds with agendas to pursue, and innumerable character variations(hmm… I wonder what would happen if I played a Khajit who always fought completely naked?) and you have a game that offers potentially unlimited possibilities and replayability. And although the quests themselves don't measure up to what you'd get in a game like Baldur's Gate, they serve as a nice blank canvas for all this emergent fun. It's not an RPG that's concerned with being immersive or "living." So no, nobody is going to walk up to you and ask you to do something, because everyone is too busy standing around.

And EVERYTHING is stat-based in some way, which makes character building extremely important. Luckily, the game also makes character-building fun in itself...and this is coming from someone who usually hates that part of CRPGs. There's also the infamous "level up by doing" mechanic that most TES games do... which you either love or hate. I personally love it.

There are guilds, yes. Joining them doesn't hold much weight, and you don't end up really feeling like you're part of a special group or anything, but it's kinda fun to advance within the ranks to open up more quests. There are also other groups you can join, as well as temples and "houses."

As a previous poster said, it's mostly a question of whether or not you can put up with the oldschool RPG mentality (stats stats STATS!), or if you prefer the more cinematic action-y feel of modern RPGs.


EDIT: oh yeah... and I should also mention that the game just BEGS to be exploited. That's all part of the fun.

Most of the people in this thread already said what had to be said

you can pretty much forget about the main quest and just go in random directions in the world and it's always rewarding one way or another

Morrowind may not be as big as daggerfall but it's still a massive game and has much more content than Oblivion of Skyrim

Truth. Morrowind's UI is surprisingly slick and easy to use, but without sacrificing versatility. I really love how at the very beginning the game basically tells you "What, are you trying to follow the main quest? Well screw you! Go dick around in the world for a little while first."

In my opinion, Morrowind is one of the greatest games of all time.

It has depth of lore, it has vastly better dialog (mostly unvoiced) and more interesting quests, and a fascinating setting. And there are no "bandits," every single humanoid has a name. There are a few things that are a bit of a step backwards if you've only ever played later games, like the blocky body graphics, but there are mods for that. It's also still a beautiful game, but you'll want something like MGE to increase the view distance. There's also much more diversity with equipment. There are spears and crossbows, you can wear a shirt and pants and belt underneath your armor, you can wear separate right and left gloves and pauldrons, items can cast spells manually instead of just having constant effects, and so on. The only truly major drawback that I can think of is that for the most part, the dungeons are very small. This is because the dungeons in Daggerfall were HUMONGOUS to the point of insanity, and were the biggest drawback to that game, so they naturally scaled them back... a bit to far for me. There are still a few huge ones, though, but not as many as in Oblivion or Skyrim.

It also has one of the better stories as RPGs go, but to get the whole picture you'll need to read a lot of ingame books and talk to a lot of people. You'll probably also want to break into a secret library or two. That's what I meant about "depth of lore," the story and setting are so thoroughly integrated; it's wonderful. The sense of accomplishment I get from completing Morrowind+Tribunal is practically unparalleled for any other RPG, and it's my favorite genre.

There's a bit of a learning curve especially at the beginning, but it's a game I would recommend to absolutely everyone. Make sure to get MGE (Morrowind Graphics Extender) for various graphics upgrades that make the game even more gorgeous now than it was on release, and also get MCP (Morrowind Code Patch) which fixes some game bugs and adds some features that aren't fixable with mods. It also allows you to cast spells the same way you do in Oblivion, which is massively helpful.

See, this has always confused me. Compared to Fallout 1/2 and Baldur's Gate II, I found Morrowind to be incredibly accessible.

I'm just stating the obvious here, but I sure hope you will get this on the PC?

Anyway, Morrowind is somewhat the total opposite of Oblivion, at least for me.

Oblivion had a great start, looked fantastic and I easily had 30h+ in it before actually nothing the flaws. But once they hit me, I couldn't continue playing. Moste severe hit me the levelling of the whole gameworld (encountering a run-of-the-mill bandit with deadric weapons and armor was the straw that broke my gaming back).

Morrowind it quite the opposite. When you start, your thinking "what the fuck", really "what the fuck". You get pretty much thrown in there and then left alone. It took me serveral tries (and years) to actually give that game a proper go. But once your really inside this beast of a game, it really strikes you. The atmoshere, the lore, the story etc. While the main story is nothing to really write home about it is the connection with tribunal that really makes this a great piece of storytelling.

I wouldn't mod Morrowind "to death" if you know what I mean. Some graphic enhancers (view distance) and a home (brilliant home with a library that you could fill!) were the only things I really added. Don't be afraid to "misbuild" your char, nothing a good editor can't fix.

yeah, that's what me and many other people loved about the game: The sense of mystery and adventure - even what you are supposed to do next connected to the main quest is usually shrouded in mystery

Oblivion and Skyrim are really bad in this regard because they hold your hand all the way through and it takes away a lot of great things from the game

Actually, I found the main quest very well designed. Especially the "middle" parts were the you start "exploring". Better than the one of Oblivion. But Oblivion had better "side quests" (Dark Brotherhood) than Morrowind, imo.

Edit: oh, now I see what you mean. Yeah, I liked your contact for many reasons. Especially his "habbits".