Kind of my experience playing Morrowind years ago on Xbox and today with the gog version. I thought maybe jacking up the difficulty setting all the way to max would make it more fun this time, but instead I had the same problem with the game being too easy and way too big and long to keep things interesting imo.

That's kind of the problem I have with most Bethesda games really. Bethesda knows how to build immersive worlds, but they have no clue on difficulty curve and general balance.

Interestingly enough, I liked what I played of Arena so far with it being the first time i've played it, though I still don't like how magic spells cost so much MP to cast and how little max MP you can possibly get in comparison, which was one of my big complaints in Morrowind. I think Skyrim came as close as possible to addressing some of my complaints with Morrowind imo.

So I got to this conclusion.
There are two kinds of people one who like Morrowind and another who like Skyrim.

And again there are two kind of people one who make conclusion and other who don't give a damn. :P

Thus I deem NWN 1 a Modder's game.

Its a game soley mod for getting mods on it.

Sort of like Skyrim ;)

If you're playing a stealthy character, keep in mind to use Morrowind Code Patch (you should use it anyway ;)) and enable the fix for the pickpocketing skill. :)

You don't like having a static world? If it were a static world because your choices didn't have any influence on it, then I would agree that that's a bad thing but that's doesn't seem to be what you are implying.
If it's challenging combat you are looking for then Elder Scrolls games don't seem to be a good choice anyway. :)

Gotta pop my 2cents in here. Have played all the ES games, several times. Vanilla Oblivion is probably the plainest of the set, needs a lot of mods to make it playable. Skyrim is a close second, really does need a ton of mods to make it playable, from the console interface (eeerk!) to average graphics, through empty world and virtually zero storyline. However both improve drastically with mods (Oscuro's for instance). Morrowind has more depth than either of these, and a more quirky landscape (Shivering excluding). I agree that it does lack some balance, and level advancement also lacks. There are however mods out there which will change the game to your preference, as with all ES games, they provide the engine, you then need to massively tweak the game with mods to make it playable.

NWN 1+2 also have this, base campaign is a bit naff, but the community sorts this. The only big one which has the story line and the community is the Infinity Engine games (Baldurs Gate, IWD etc. not "Enhanced").

In my opinion, Oblivion is far from perfect but needs only a few mods to be "playable". Like one to reduce/remove level scaling for example. The rest is a bonus for me.

Skyrim, on the other hand, is so extremely broken imo that it is beyond fixing. And I've tried!
There are no mods for better voice acting. There are no mods that completely replace all quest lines to set them apart from one another and allow for some choices to happen.
I can only play Skyrim to run around for some time but doing any quest is so painful. :)

Yes, necessary mods include Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul. That is just plain necessary. Would love the same thing for Morrowind/Skyrim. Skyrim, I agree somewhat. Its one of those console ports, so graphics are average, interface is poor - example is the map which is unuseable. The dragons are also lame as anything, only just being less lame than the ones in GOThrones!

To note, there are also total conversions for each Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim by the same people. The Oblivion one is Nehrim which is apparently far better than the main game - haven't tried it yet myself.

Would also be great to have some total conversion package, there was a mass of mods put together some time back, but the modders didn't agree with it and it got taken down. Pity as it was looking good. Would be nice to have a BigWorld type thing for each of the ES games.

I wonder if the GOG version runs better than the Steam version.

Well, Oscuro's Overhaul mainly improves the level scaling of the random encounters which isn't that bad in Skyrim in the first place, the loot part of Oscuro's Overhaul in Skyrim would be an improvement though. -Have you heard of Morrowloot? That mod seemed to have a great concept but it probably is incompatible with most other mods. :)
I don't think Oscuro's Overhaul is perfect btw.
It would be great if Morrowind had a similar mod as well but since in Morrowind the hand placed NPCs and the hand placed loot are static and only chests and random encounters are scaled to your level I can live with the way Morrowind handles it.

It's not only unusable but also immersion breaking and an in-game spoiler! Why would I want to know how a mountain looks like before I have been there?
A lot of Skyrim's flaws can be fixed by using many mods but some of the most horrible flaws can't be fixed.

I've played Arktwend and Nehrim. Arktwend has a great atmosphere but is unbalanced.
The world seemed awesome to me and another great aspect about Arktwend is the crafting system that is integrated into the game really well (Skyrim's is just a gimmick imo) - You could fell trees for example and use the wood for your crafting.
Arktwend isn't perfect but you should try it. (I have never finished it)

Now, Nehrim you should definitely try! If only to see the first dungeon. Oblivion's dungeons are rather bland but Nehrim's first cave is better than Skyrim's best most detailed caves and strangely, looks very similar in some areas.
In my opinion, Nehrim is not as good as Oblivion but it definitely has its strengths.
There are some incredibly detailed areas but you'll see that the modders' ambitions were too great. There are many aspects of this game that are bland as well.
The reasons why I didn't complete Nehrim were that the story got really boring and unbelievable when I got to a desert area and that the game was unbalanced as well. - The EXP I got was not enough to make my character as strong as he should have been at that point of the story.

What do you mean by that?

I am playing Morrowind for the first time and am enjoying it so far, although there are issues like lack of money to get all the spells I need (I have fixed that for now with an exploit) and slow movement.

Righteousness is a good spell at the start. It's cheap (half the cost it should be) and heals you while damaging a nearby enemy.

I have finally, after all these years, been able to use the Super Potion trick myself. It is fun making potions that improve my Intelligence, allowing me to make better potions. Of course, I have decided not to run around with overpowered potions, so I sold some to raise money and am keeping the rest in case I want to do the trick again. It is fun being able to get over 2,000 Intelligence (and I could probably pass 2 billion with some patience), though I can see how that could create issues with game balance and game stability.

Edit: Also, if cliff racers are bugging you, make a few spells to destroy them. Regular Cliff Racers have only 45 HP, so a spell like Fire Damage 15 for 3 seconds on a large area should kill them. Also, I have heard that Levitate 1 point (on a big area) can force them to fall and take falling damage.

Oscuro's also adds in monsters. I remember the first encounter with a white minotaur who chewed my character up in two swipes, and the gargoyles I couldn't beat even with a high level character - scary!

Will try Nehrim at some point, have a backlog of about 3 lifetimes currently :o)

There was something called the FCOM Superpack, which was a pre-built install of the monster mods, Oscuro's, and a fair few other mods. Wasn't particularly stable, but did have a lot. Would like to see a big collection, maybe with the option to switch things off, like the BigWorld mod for BG.

There's already minotaurs in vanilla Oblivion but you'll only see them if you're level 40 or something. :)

This is my take on it as well. Bethesda does have a lot of good ideas but they don't seem to make good use of them. Mods can only fix so much of these problems though.

That's the thing, the choices you make in Morrowind don't shape the world in any way. Also, Morrowind revolves entirely around the PC and the PC can do nothing to change this.

The NPCs are the biggest offenders for making this game lifeless as their only purpose is to give quests and sell crap. After the quest givers give the PC their quest, that NPC has no other role in the game to play, they are done. Essentially, NPC's in Morrowind have the same function as an envelope. Open it up and get the quest, once it's done, discard the envelope. The NPCs that don't give quests just say the same things any other NPC says. Shop inventory never changes unless the PC does something there, surely I can't be the only one who has ever been in your shop. In Daggerfall, shop inventory was random. While this did have a few quirks, it at least gave the impression others where using them. Do I also need to mention how the NPCs just stand around too? Do I also need to mention the huge space with nothing in it? Why oh why didn't the dev's use that space to create bigger and vibrant cities? Because placing a tree, rock and flower was much simpler I guess. Do I really need to go on?

You don't need exploits to make the game easy. Just play normally and you'll become rich and powerful after just a few hours anyways. Seriously, getting money isn't a problem, using it is

You've missed the point about the cliff racers, it isn't because they're hard to kill, quite the opposite actually. The problem with cliff racers is encountering them at all. Getting from A-B is already tedious and adding an easily killable monster en route only makes getting to B take more time with more tedium. Also, if there's one cliff racer, there is definitely more. Just let me get to B without adding more tedium to an already tedious journey, thank you.

He loves t3h sploits. You should see his posts in the Baldur's Gate subforum XD

There's a mod to reduce the number of cliff racers in the world, and you can scale it to take them all out, leave half in, or maybe even get finer detail than that. It's on my "must-have" list of Morrowind mods for personal use, even though it's mad fun to enchant up a bunch of jump and go leaping across the island, punching cliff racers to death in midair ^_^