What was it about Morrowind (TES III) that drew you in?

Alucardo

I know this sounds like an off-topic discussion, but I have my motives. I only ask because, as I thought might happen, the Morrowind expansion didn't live up to my expectations. Vvardenfell was a nice enough zone, and you can tell they certainly put a lot of effort into it, but it only made me log off and load up the real Morrowind.
So from one Elder Scroll nerd to another, what made Morrowind so magical to you? I'm hoping to spark up some discussion here so that maybe ZOS can use it when designing new chapters.

It's not something I've really though about before. I just knew that I loved it, but I couldn't describe why. But I think it may have been:

- The oddly shaped architecture
- The characters you met were extremely weird in a lot of cases. You never knew who you'd run into. A naked nord spelled by a Witch perhaps? A fair lady in love with the man who robbed her. A Bosmer falling from the sky because of a failed spell.
- The soundtrack. Need I say more? Jeremy Soule is a genius. 'Call of Magic' playing in the background while you explore the vast lands of Morrowind was an absolute pleasure, and it's a tune you never forgot. Ever.
- As with most Bethesda games, exploring was a blast. You had no idea what you'd find. And I don't know about you, but the ancestral tombs used to scare the crap out of me as a boy. I'd see something screeching and coming at me, my heart would beat like a drum and I'd run to the nearest exit. It just shows how immersive Morrowind truly was. You didn't play the game - you lived it.
- It was hard as balls. ESO is so easy now you can just about 1-2 tap enemies and they drop like a fly. It's just not fun. I remember Imperial City enemies being extremely tough. You had to carefully approach even a group of 3 mobs. In Morrowind I could get killed by the first mudcrab just outside of Seyda Neen. So I equipped the health ring I found in the barrel, braced myself, and I took on that mudcrab again. Victory! I felt accomplished. Yeah, accomplishment is not something you feel in ESO. Not anymore.
- Lycanthropy and Vampirism felt like actual curses. In Morrowind you had to travel by night as a Vampire, and most people would not talk to you or try to kill you, except the Mages Guild. But the game didn't end there. There were Vampire-specific quests you could do and advance the ranks in your clan. As for Werewolves, you would be forced to change every night after a vision of Hircine. If you were seen transforming guards would try to kill you from that point on. You also had to kill at least one NPC per transformation, or you'd wake up in a weakened state. Though with all these downsides, Werewolves were fierce, and extremely agile. You could literally jump onto houses.
- The DLCs. Bloodmoon (Solsthiem), and Tribunal (Mournhold) were simply amazing. I loved them both.. probably Solstheim the most just because Werewolves. I loved helping out at Raven Rock and watching it grow over time. I really hope ZOS look at doing a Solstheim chapter or DLC one of these days.

What about you?

Rex-Umbra

Open world could do what ever i imagined

fgoron2000

oblivion led me to morrowind, and despite the story and gameplay, it disappointed me primarily because of the graphics, but even then i still played it multiple times

ArchMikem

It's just the allure of the Singleplayer games. ESO is constricting in your control of your character and the world itself, having to span the entirety of the continent, makes individual zones much more scaled down than their singleplayer counterparts.

I mean I love ESO, it's one of my favorite games that I've been continuously playing for more than three years. But I keep launching Skyrim (that buggy crashy mess) because the world is relatively huge and I can use mods and console commands to make myself a half nude unstoppable khajiit trailblazer...with jiggle physics!

Alucardo

ArchMikem wrote: »

It's just the allure of the Singleplayer games. ESO is constricting in your control of your character and the world itself, having to span the entirety of the continent, makes individual zones much more scaled down than their singleplayer counterparts.

I mean I love ESO, it's one of my favorite games that I've been continuously playing for more than three years. But I keep launching Skyrim (that buggy crashy mess) because the world is relatively huge and I can use mods and console commands to make myself a half nude unstoppable khajiit trailblazer...with jiggle physics!

Yeah, I think many people enjoy Skyrim because it's essentially a massive sandbox. Personally I didn't like it. Oblivion was pretty good though.
The only single player game I find myself going back time and time again to is Morrowind. Even without mods it's truly amazing

keevil111

The difficulty was real, especially at the beginning. I remember spending hours trying to kill these orcs at an orc base (can't remember the name).

I always ended up completely off track because of the random encounters. I would be going to do a quest and end up doing tons of other stuff instead.

And lastly, the first few mudcrabs I killed, one of them had a spoon! A SPOON! I thought "what the hell?" That's when I knew this was the game for me.

The pure randomness and depth really captivated me for a long time. I play other games just to past the time between TES games.

Alucardo

keevil111 wrote: »

The difficulty was real, especially at the beginning. I remember spending hours trying to kill these orcs at an orc base (can't remember the name).

I always ended up completely off track because of the random encounters. I would be going to do a quest and end up doing tons of other stuff instead.

And lastly, the first few mudcrabs I killed, one of them had a spoon! A SPOON! I thought "what the hell?" That's when I knew this was the game for me.

The pure randomness and depth really captivated me for a long time. I play other games just to past the time between TES games.

lmao I remember finding the spoon on a mudcrab too. Thinking to myself, why does this mudcrab have a freaking spoon. I pictured this, but replace the knife with a spoon.



Getting off-track was so easy to do. You'd be following a quest line, but without the use of an internal GPS and fast travel you'd often get lost and come across quests or places interesting to visit. ESO does have this, where it's possible to pick up other quests while following your current one, but they just don't have the same feel to them as Morrowind. They often lack character.

Danikat

Morrowind was my first TES game, but I wasn't new to fantasy or RPGs so for me it was more about the TES lore as a whole and how that and the game design contrasted with other things I'd played.

In terms of the lore I think what drew me in was the complexity and ambiguousness from using almost entirely in-universe sources and a lot of 'unreliable narrators', which is quite different to things like DnD where you've got books telling you exactly how everything is...of course the DM or writer has the option to change that or have characters misinterpret it but it's not quite the same as no one knowing for sure. The various religions for example. People kept asking if my character followed the Temple or the Nine or what they thought about Aedra, the Tribunal, good and bad Daedra, the Divines and all these different names and it took a while to understand it, and then it came as a surprise that there were entirely different pantheons and not just different names for the same gods.

(BTW I really like the inclusion of lore books. Not a new idea for me, other games I'd played did it too, but I wish more did. It's a great way to include lore that doesn't fit directly into the stories you're telling or which no one would bother to explain to your character because they should already know.)

In terms of gameplay I really liked how much freedom you had - especially being able to ignore the main quest completely without hitting a point where you couldn't progress anything else until you did at least some of it. And it's one of the few games I'd found where you could make a genuinely evil character (not that I wanted to be evil, but I like having options). I'd always been disappointed that my chaotic evil DnD characters still had to save the world, they just got to demand more money afterwards.

Similarly I love that the character creator gave you total freedom - you could choose a class or you could choose individual skills and attributes so you could pick literally any combination and try to make it work. I spent a lot of time trying to balance what I enjoyed with what worked well and I learned a lot about the game mechanics and what I liked playing in the process.

Having said all that however I didn't really like Morrowind itself and much preferred Oblivion when it came out. Unmodded Morrowind is too brown for me and while it is very alien at first the terrain and creatures quickly get to seem very similar. I also got tired of everyone talking down to you and insulting you. It didn't help that I mainly played khajiit, but even when I played a human or elf it got tiring after a while.

Also it seems like a small thing but it was really annoying that merchants reset to their base Disposition as soon as you closed the menu. I took to carrying around lots of tiny worthless objects so I could sell them without bartering to quickly boost their disposition back up, but it made buying and selling anything annoying. (I know there's mods to fix that too, but IMO the fact that a fan spent their time fixing a problem doesn't excuse the developers from causing it in the first place.)

Overall I did really enjoy it and it's the reason I'm here now, but having played the other games in the TES series I wouldn't say it's my favourite.

Silver_Strider

The brothels.

Gythral

That is was another entry into Tamriel...

Strider__Roshin

Free roaming, and character creation. Man I loved that game! 2 seconds of acrobatics increased by 1000 was the original fast travel; just saying

Alucardo

Daus wrote: »

Free roaming, and character creation. Man I loved that game! 2 seconds of acrobatics increased by 1000 was the original fast travel; just saying

Hah for real. Not to mention you could just levitate when things got real hairy. Unfortunately sometimes I forgot to keep an eye on the duration and fell to my death

MythicEmperor

Ultimate freedom. Not just choice-wise, but in every regard. Levitation and jump spells are sorely missed.

VaranisArano

It sure wasn't the complexity of the leveling system, the slow walking pace, or the lack of quest markers. Seriously, the amount of time I spent wandering around lost (even with the help of the UESP maps!) probably added a third to my playing time.

It was two things:

1. Spears. No, not kidding. I broke down and finally played Morrowind because I really wanted to play with a Spear. I knew from the beginning my Nerevarine was going to use spear and it totally lived up to expectations. I loved it. I really hope we get spears in a future TES game.

2. The complexity of the the interactions between all the factions. So, I was thoroughly spoiled on the Main Quest, having been reading fanfiction on it more or less since I started playing Skyrim. But the different factions, the choices you make as you rise in the ranks, and pursue the main quest was still really, really engaging!

ESO's Morrowind failed in two major ways for me.
1. Depth of Storytelling - this didn't surprise me. Nothing could match TES III's depth, and Oblivion and Skyrim wisely didn't try. I didn't expect ESO's Morrowind to manage, so I wasn't too disappointed.

2. Exploration - this shocked me. So many of the daedric ruins and dwemer ruins were window dressing only! In TES III, I could explore those. In ESO, the doors were blocked, and wandering around Vvardenfell was an exercise in "Oh, look! That place looks cool! ...Oh. The door is blocked off. Again.

Alucardo

VaranisArano wrote: »

2. Exploration - this shocked me. So many of the daedric ruins and dwemer ruins were window dressing only! In TES III, I could explore those. In ESO, the doors were blocked, and wandering around Vvardenfell was an exercise in "Oh, look! That place looks cool! ...Oh. The door is blocked off. Again.

Totally agree with this. It felt like nothing in the real Morrowind was truly blocked off. If you could see it, you could go there. I'm neutral in regards to spears, but it does make me wonder why they were removed after TES III. Was it just too much itemization to deal with?

Knootewoot

I was a huge Daggerfall fan, and Morrowind in the beginning was a bit disappointing.

no mount, no wall climbing no some other things.

But after playing a while the game quickly grew on me. The combat was far better then Daggerfalls and i liked the new race Imperial (which i was at first but later went back to Breton).

I loved the quests and the impact it had on the world and other guilds. The strange alien world i really loved.

I never had the same feeling again with Oblivion or Skyrim which really felt way to far thumbed down version of the real TES games Daggerfall and Morrowind. I mean, just talk to a NPC in Morrowind. You get so much text with hyperlinks leading to more information. Also the consequences of your actions really had impact, whether you could ruin the main questline or joining a guild could ruin your progression in another guild.
Also the longer you played the darker it became. Dunmer changed into dreamers, more daedra roamed the lands. In Oblivion it only starts betting worse if you actually start the main quest (after Kvatch if im correct) and Skyrim was a save place until i finally after 3 months talked to the Jarl in whiterun.

I find Morrowind the best in the series. I really loved the expansion in ESO aswell which was a bit down nostalgia lane. But the original of course is way way better. But that said, the expansion Vvardenfell was in no way bad. Just smaller with lessen caves (I think TES III had well over 370 caves and dungeons if im correct but it has been a while)

Also i really loved the expansion. Both of them, but Solstheim the most.

AcadianPaladin

I started playing TES in 2007 with Oblivion and absolutely loved the game. I was informed by loads of TES III Morrowind players at the time that TES III was wonderful and TES IV was terrible. Well, I watched some TES III vids of static NPCs, stick figure characters with stiff animations, poor graphics and missing targets at point blank range and disagreed. Basically, I was so put off of TES III by what I call Morrowind Elitists, that I have never and will never touch TES III. Some of that visceral dislike of Morrowind carried over into the MW expansion to ESO so I failed to really enjoy it. That said, objectively speaking, it was not a bad ESO expansion, though navigation (as with Wrothgar and Summerset) can get very irritating at times due to cliff blocking.

mairwen85

I was sold at arena.

Tabbycat

When my character traveled to Ald'ruhn and put her hand in front of her face to cover her eyes during an ash storm.

BGS does a great job at world building.

Danikat

Alucardo wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

2. Exploration - this shocked me. So many of the daedric ruins and dwemer ruins were window dressing only! In TES III, I could explore those. In ESO, the doors were blocked, and wandering around Vvardenfell was an exercise in "Oh, look! That place looks cool! ...Oh. The door is blocked off. Again.

Totally agree with this. It felt like nothing in the real Morrowind was truly blocked off. If you could see it, you could go there. I'm neutral in regards to spears, but it does make me wonder why they were removed after TES III. Was it just too much itemization to deal with?

That seems likely. The skills and item systems were simplified a lot between Morrowind and Oblivion - for example short blade and long blade skills were merged into one and things like gloves and pauldrons came in pairs instead of individually. Skyrim took this even further, but by then there was a general trend of companies trying to simplify their RPGs to attract new players so it's not surprising Bethesda did it too.

Personally I think Morrowind was a bit overly complicated, Oblivion was about right for me and Skyrim was too simple. I was genuinely disappointed when my crazy character concept went from requiring me to carefully juggle skills and abilities to get something usable but still challenging to play to being a perfectly reasonable choice in Skyrim.

(In ESO it varies, the skill lines are easy - playing a templar gives me destruction and restoration magic, and then I can just pick weapons and armour and of course things like athletics and agility are gone - but it does involve playing a hybrid which is never popular and the practicality of a templar in medium armour dual wielding varies.)

Digiman

I loved morrowind and its lore it was a very explorative game.... I think ESO's problem was it was a different new studio and they needed to keep things restrictive in a progressive sense.

Still love both games even though they both have there own faults. ESO has good combat... morrowind not so much, especially with cliff racers lol...

Androconium

The construction set. For the first time ever, I could create my own game.

Many thanks still to the MW modding community.

Oblivion Skyrim and ESO would never have happened without them

Elsonso

Alucardo wrote: »

So from one Elder Scroll nerd to another, what made Morrowind so magical to you? I'm hoping to spark up some discussion here.

- The oddly shaped architecture
- The characters you met were extremely weird in a lot of cases. You never knew who you'd run into. A naked nord spelled by a Witch perhaps? A fair lady in love with the man who robbed her. A Bosmer falling from the sky because of a failed spell.
- The soundtrack. Need I say more? Jeremy Soule is a genius. 'Call of Magic' playing in the background while you explore the vast lands of Morrowind was an absolute pleasure, and it's a tune you never forgot. Ever.
- As with most Bethesda games, exploring was a blast. You had no idea what you'd find. And I don't know about you, but the ancestral tombs used to scare the crap out of me as a boy. I'd see something screeching and coming at me, my heart would beat like a drum and I'd run to the nearest exit. It just shows how immersive Morrowind truly was. You didn't play the game - you lived it.
- It was hard as balls. ESO is so easy now you can just about 1-2 tap enemies and they drop like a fly. It's just not fun. I remember Imperial City enemies being extremely tough. You had to carefully approach even a group of 3 mobs. In Morrowind I could get killed by the first mudcrab just outside of Seyda Neen. So I equipped the health ring I found in the barrel, braced myself, and I took on that mudcrab again. Victory! I felt accomplished. Yeah, accomplishment is not something you feel in ESO. Not anymore.
- Lycanthropy and Vampirism felt like actual curses. In Morrowind you had to travel by night as a Vampire, and most people would not talk to you or try to kill you, except the Mages Guild. But the game didn't end there. There were Vampire-specific quests you could do and advance the ranks in your clan. As for Werewolves, you would be forced to change every night after a vision of Hircine. If you were seen transforming guards would try to kill you from that point on. You also had to kill at least one NPC per transformation, or you'd wake up in a weakened state. Though with all these downsides, Werewolves were fierce, and extremely agile. You could literally jump onto houses.
- The DLCs. Bloodmoon (Solsthiem), and Tribunal (Mournhold) were simply amazing. I loved them both.. probably Solstheim the most just because Werewolves. I loved helping out at Raven Rock and watching it grow over time. I really hope ZOS look at doing a Solstheim chapter or DLC one of these days.

What about you?

First, let me just say that I played TES 3, but would not enjoy playing it again. It is just too outdated.

This is a comparison between a full game and an expansion, but setting that aside, this is where I think the two are on par:

1) Architecture
2) Soundtrack
3) Open world (minus the locked doors and inaccessible mountain in ESO)

ZOS does better, mainly due to years of better tools and technology between the two of them:

1) Graphics
2) Overall zone construction
3) Character appearance and customization

What BGS does better, and why I liked Morrowind in the first place.

1) Unscaled zone was deadly in certain placed until the character was leveled up
2) Lore done right. It was presented to the player, not by book, but by talking to NPC characters in depth.
3) Travel done right. The travel fit the world.
4) Spell crafting. The gradient between different souls was very nice, and something ESO will never have.
5) Equipment enchants.
6) While the "swing and a miss" combat was annoying, it did feel very connected to the character.
7) Lots of places to stick my nose into. These often existed for no other reason than as a place to stick my nose into. I miss that in ESO, where most places have a quest reason for being there. Too many locked and blocked doors in ESO zones, and Vvardenfell is very notable in that respect.

Alucardo

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

I started playing TES in 2007 with Oblivion and absolutely loved the game. I was informed by loads of TES III Morrowind players at the time that TES III was wonderful and TES IV was terrible. Well, I watched some TES III vids of static NPCs, stick figure characters with stiff animations, poor graphics and missing targets at point blank range and disagreed. Basically, I was so put off of TES III by what I call Morrowind Elitists, that I have never and will never touch TES III. Some of that visceral dislike of Morrowind carried over into the MW expansion to ESO so I failed to really enjoy it. That said, objectively speaking, it was not a bad ESO expansion, though navigation (as with Wrothgar and Summerset) can get very irritating at times due to cliff blocking.

Yeah, I'm not sure why, but Oblivion had a lot of negative reviews. I actually really enjoyed it, and when Shivering Isles was released I had forgotten Morrowind existed for a while. SI was hands down the best DLC from any TES game (IMO).
The Morrowind chapter for ESO definitely wasn't bad. They did an amazing job recreating Vvardenfell. What really disappointed me was the interiors, like the ancestral tombs looked like bath houses and the caves made me feel like I was back in fungal grotto.

Alucardo

Digiman wrote: »

I loved morrowind and its lore it was a very explorative game.... I think ESO's problem was it was a different new studio and they needed to keep things restrictive in a progressive sense.

Still love both games even though they both have there own faults. ESO has good combat... morrowind not so much, especially with cliff racers lol...

When we had major evasion in ESO it felt like the Morrowind combat system.

Hit, miss, miss, miss, hit, hit, miss, miss

Cundu_Ertur

1. The lore. Seems to be increasingly irrelevant in ESO.
2. Developing your character in a sensible way: learn a skill by doing the skill instead of magically getting better at something you've never done just because you killed enough stuff.
3. Having to earn skills in order to advance in a faction. It's silly that my Oblivion and Skyrim characters were leading guilds despite barely having enough skill to qualify to be in them. Being the Arch-Mage when my highest magic skill is under 50 is silly.
4. The look. Most fantasy games back then were very western in how they looked. Morrowind had a totally different vibe, from the architecture to the armor and even just everyday stuff. It felt alien but real.
5. The music. Awesome soundtrack, though too brief. You'd almost get sick of hearing the same songs after 500 hours, but still it was great music. When I first played Dragonborn DLC for Skyrim I enjoyed hearing the music from the Bloodmoon expansion again, though. I thought that was an awesome touch.
6. There wasn't any player housing outside of Bloodmoon (iirc) but you could make some because there were places you could clear that would never reset. There was a room in Vivec you could just squat in, I eventually cleared one of the strongholds to use as a house. Building the Bloodmoon house was a nice quest.
7. First person view. This was the first RPG I played where it was like being the character instead of looking at everything from above.

Elsonso

Alucardo wrote: »

Yeah, I'm not sure why, but Oblivion had a lot of negative reviews. I actually really enjoyed it, and when Shivering Isles was released I had forgotten Morrowind existed for a while. SI was hands down the best DLC from any TES game (IMO).

I saw Oblivion as a step down from Morrowind. To me, this is where BGS decided they could make more money with an easier game. They were probably right, but it was still a step down. Shivering Isles was the best DLC of the series, that is true.

Skyrim was a step down from Oblivion, and also much more successful. I expect that TES 6 will practically play itself and be the most successful game of all time.

Alucardo

lordrichter wrote: »

Alucardo wrote: »

Yeah, I'm not sure why, but Oblivion had a lot of negative reviews. I actually really enjoyed it, and when Shivering Isles was released I had forgotten Morrowind existed for a while. SI was hands down the best DLC from any TES game (IMO).

I saw Oblivion as a step down from Morrowind. To me, this is where BGS decided they could make more money with an easier game. They were probably right, but it was still a step down. Shivering Isles was the best DLC of the series, that is true.

Skyrim was a step down from Oblivion, and also much more successful. I expect that TES 6 will practically play itself and be the most successful game of all time.

Hah, my thoughts exactly. I feel like they are getting more dumbed down with each new game. I'm guessing that a majority of the people who play Skyrim aren't really TES fans, but just enjoy the mods and playing around in this massive sandbox environment. I've got nothing against that of course, but for me TES V was a huge disappointment.
TES IV was definitely a step down from Morrowind, and I think we felt it, but overall it was still a decent game (if you can get past the character models). But then they started releasing these horrible DLCs like horse armor and KoTN which just felt like quick cash grabs. I expect that from MMOs, but not a well respected franchise like The Elder Scrolls.

This thread is really making me want ESO expansions for Solstheim and Shivering Isles.

Cundu_Ertur

The Mr. Potatohead faces were off-putting in Oblivion, but it was one of the first games where you could have that level of customization. The environments looked great. Some of the gameplay in Oblivion was better; some was more simplified in good ways, others in not good ways. By and large, I enjoyed Oblivion as much as Morrowind. I also enjoyed Skyrim, but agree that it was too simple in many ways. I liked the crafting system, mostly, and the Hearthfire add-on for housing. I just think the 3 stat model is too simplistic. ESO suffers from it, too.

mmcgibbo

The back of the CD case had a Dunmer duel-wielding daedric daggers and so I bought it not knowing a thing about TES because it looked so cool. Never beat the game, just tried to kill guards for 2 years (I was 13)

Minosla

Tabbycat wrote: »

When my character traveled to Ald'ruhn and put her hand in front of her face to cover her eyes during an ash storm.

BGS does a great job at world building.

This.

TES III really took immersion to a new level. The world was hostile. It was a gamble just walking in the world and not knowing if you would make it to where you were going or if you would be blindsided by cliff racers or golden saints charging at you. It was dark, it was scary. The further the story went the darker it became. The slopes of the Red Mountain was a terrifying place that felt like a literal prison after you passed the Ghost Fence.

In Morrowind you were an Outlander. NOBOBY liked you. You did not hear NPC's extolling your virtues as you passed ("Did you hear? Some stranger saved King Casimir's life! I'd like to buy that adventurer a drink"). What you heard instead was "We're watching you, scum" and "Make it quick or go away." In ESO no one really cares that you are the Vestige. In TES III EVERYONE cared that you were an Outlander, and made their feelings known.

Ordinator quotes to illustrate this point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIPAEoRr9JA

Granted that an MMO can't possibly re-create this level of depth, and shouldn't really be compared to TES III; still ESO still has great writing and accomplishes its mission of bringing Tamriel to life in a very enjoyable way.