I love Morrowind - it was my starting point in the world of the Elder Scrolls, and I didn't get to play Arena and Daggerfall until much later. Kitted out with all the graphics mods (Graphics Extender, godrays, ENBSeries etc.) the game looks just as good as Oblivion and Skyrim, even if the textures look considerably more washed out. It's also a little disturbing that people rarely speak in the game (I have the German version, not sure if the English version is different). But apart from that, it's every bit as strong as Skyrim and I find it is actually better than Oblivion, which tends to drag on.

It's not bad IF you remember 2 simple rules:

1- Keep your fatigue bar high. When you run, you drain your fatigue. If your fatigue is empty in combat, you'll fail a lot at everything you do.

2- If you wanna be good at something, you gotta invest in it first. This includes both the character generation and paid training afterwards. Imo, a skill of 40+ is a good start, 25 is not.

As for the game itself, if you enjoyed the exploration aspect and learning about the worlds of Oblivion and Skyrim, Morrowind will surely appeal to you.

I think it has more to do with what SimonG said, about it sometimes being difficult to really "get into" the game at first. It just dumps you in Seyda Neen, and you have no idea what you're doing or where you're going. If you breeze through the census office, you can even miss important tutorial hints. (e.g. Don't pick up the crab cakes? You miss the infobox about food.) I thought Oblivion's tutorial dungeon/sewer to be an excellent way of introducing the game. With Morrowind, there's almost no hand-holding... which is awesome once you get into it, but it can turn people off in the beginning. I actually vastly prefer this to what the other games do, so I always make sure to tell people to stick with it.

That's the impression I get, and it's why I'm probably not going to try them any time soon (although I'd be lying if I said that Skyrim didn't look cool).

I have a love-hate relationship with that part of the game. On the one hand, I like that it doesn't just put a big glowing X on your map--you have to follow the directions you're given. It helps you pay attention to the world rather than just holding down the walk button while watching the minimap. On the other hand, the game isn't always consistent about what information it does and doesn't record in your journal. So sometimes I'd find myself with no clue about, say, how to find a certain person, because the game didn't record that particular bit of information, and it's impossible to get the questgiver to repeat his dialogue.

I know what you mean, but luckily we the internet now has the answers. Sites like uesp give very "spoiler free" directions when you are lost. I wish I knew this site on my first attempts. I actually always "activate" the quest arrow in Skyrim once I'm done with the major part of a quest and just have to return to the questgiver. No more searching through several rooms (and load screens) for that elusive mage. I really like that!

Anybody remember the time before the first expansion, before the quest log?

Pen and paper my friends, that's how the pros roll ;)!

I loved that stuff so much. It really made me forget that I was just playing a game. Just finding the dungeons was as much of an adventure as fighting through them. I had a blast trying to find a place called 'Milk". Took me a few hours to track it down. I think the directions were just plain wrong.

As for multiple complains about graphics... Basically, this. It comes with an installer.

Mother. of . GOD!

I considering playing Morrowind again...

Version 2 is out now, you can get it here :

http://morrowindoverhaul.rpgitalia.net/news/its-release-time-morrowind-overhaul-sounds-graphics-2-0

Your journal actually records every piece of dialog, not just quests. Just click "Topics" on the journal screen and select your dialog option, and it'll list all of the NPC responses for those word(s). You have to know what the topic word was, though. So if somebody said it to you outside of a greeting, you can still find it.