Lets stay on the ground here .... Morrowind is outclassed by MMOs in every possible way imaginable, short of character balance. Its nice to play a game, where not every char absolutely must have, or has equal chances to defeat any other class.

Two points:

1) "...MMOs..." Which MMOs? Morrowind is "outclassed" by each and every MMO in existence? That's laughable. There are hundreds of MMos in existence, all of them different. MMOs vary in both quality and in quantity of features. Attempting to generalize by comparing one single-player game to all MMOs tells us nothing at all. Be more specific. Which MMOs do you feel "outclass" Morrowind and why? Give us reasons.

A tip: if you want to make a compelling point the best comparisons are between specific things.

2) "...in every possible way imaginable..." Such a broad overstatement undercuts whatever point you were attempting to make. This sentence cannot be taken seriously.

Pseron Wyrd
Is that normal you speak about yourself in third person? And seem to be a bit aggressive. Forgot chillpills today? Try again.

be nice to each other

@topic
i think they're not easily comparable because the game experience is so different, at least this is my opinion.
multiplayer gaming has always been a "work together, make friends, join a nice guild, chat with your guild members half of the time, defeat the polygon evil together" kind of thing.
morrowind (or any other single player rpg) is about exploring, taking your time to get to know the gameworld, and finally mod it beyond recognition *erm*

both can be cool. the main difference is already pointed to in the genre types: SINGLE- vs. MULTIplayer.

i also think the amount of content doesn't matter too much, as long as it's atmospheric and presented in an attractive manner (which may or may not be so with mmo games, but is definitely the case with morrowind)

I don't think you've been here long enough to have witnessed a genuine debate. My good friend here was simply challenging your sweeping statements with the proposition that you present your case with specifics. You in turn resorted to an ad hominem attack.

Present your case or sit down.

TrueRevan
Mmos worlds are huge, and if not doing the guilds, raids, pvp itemhunt stuff, its essentially all about exploring too. The multi part is not enforced. Thats what all the "noobs" are doing, they are just playing a game without caring about ranks or clans. And id say its a majority of MMO population.

Aqua

Im well aware of the fact that there are members who think regdates or post count make them more intelligent. Thanks for confirming that hehe.

ad hominem attacks fall under the definition of flaming. Flaming is against the rules of this forum. I'm intelligent enough to know that. The moderators will agree.

What makes Morrowind FUN for me is discovering things I've never found before even though the game has been out so long. And I like to fight monsters and stuff. I like to keep it simple.

true, it's not enforced and you can explore, of course. people who are doing so aren't necessarily "noobs", sometimes they just prefer it that way (and the ones i got to know were in fact the nicest people i met in my online games).
however, a single player game just doesn't care about the other gameplay style (grouping, raids, etc.) and focuses on the single player experience. and that's why i feel the design is somewhat different in single vs. multi

edit: could you (plural) please just be nice again?

Aquan
I see. Well, ok. Here are some screenshots of an MMO game with similar release date which runs on similar hardware. Faster, larger, more content, more quests, more combat, more weapons, more exploring, more style variety etc etc. http://www.gamespot.com/pages/unions/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=24951909&union_id=9818. And here is for http://l2.naturalbornkillers.it/index.php?action=show;type=guide;id=254. Granted its not much, but im not here to defend mmos, thats pretty hilarious, if not scary, use google for more pics and enjoy the view.

huge and empty.

hardly any point to exploring when all you find are monsters and NPCs you can barely interact with.

morrowind even has more content than "content heavy" MMOs like ultima online. more quests, more items, more locations, more NPCs, perhaps not more monsters - but definatly more ways to interact with all of these things than you can find in any MMO. past or present.

even oblivion, which i personally feel has far less content than morrowind, has more content than any MMO you care to name. this is very disappointing when you look at the dollar amount attached to number of players online x monthly subscription cost. in addition to the cost of the base game and any expansions.

sure, what you like is personal preference, but when it comes to concrete things like amount of content - this can be measured.

Im uncertain how to effectively measure content, or its definition anyway.

in games, content usually refers to "things to do, places to go, things to interact with" compare super mario world with the original super mario bros. for example. SMW has much more content. i would not include interactions with other human players as content, though multiplayer modes surely do count.

to measure content in two games that have a reasonable level of similarity, simply tally objects, NPCs, monsters, quests, and locations for both games and compare numbers.

dont get me wrong, if you enjoy MMOs, play them. nothing wrong at all with having your own personal preference for what you play. as you mentioned, a big part of any MMO is interaction with other players. this feature is good to worldbuilders, because they dont have to work as hard to hold a player's interest, other players are doing that for them. MMOs dont NEED all the interactive things that a single player game does.

RAKninja
In terms of "things to do, places to go, things to interact with", any regular MMOs has the upperhand over Morrowind simply due to size. Still, huge and empty fits Morrowind perfectly. In fact it was its most criticized point, and was addressed in Oblivion. This genre has moved entirely online. You just confirmed that notion by stating the dislike of huge and empty, also known as "go out and explore things" or real life similarity, which frankly makes the most of Morrowind's atmosphere. Unlike other games which are crossable in 10 minutes and busy throwing "content" at player like every 5 seconds so he is not bored with exploring.

What else is there. Dungeons. Morrowind has generic caves of 4 types(bandits, tombs, daedra, dwemer). Which is nothing MMOs dont already have. You have seen one bandit cave and you have seen them all. Including loot. And may i say there is a lot more variety in MMOs here, i linked above to one. Cities. Same. Quests, fedex. Grind factor. Morrowind has more grinding than MMOs! Thats amazing. Casting 1pt mana spells in an offline game. No thanks Bethesda. Crafting system, rudimentary. Combat system... Im not draging the game down here, but this isnt a "vs" thing, like some people are trying to turn it into. Im showing that Morrowind is generally comparable to an MMO, with all the online stuff cut. Certainly there are worse games, lol. But why bother, play a better one, which is just about every major MMO. WoW, Aeon, Lineage II etc.

So please show me something which cant be found in an MMO. Content quantity does not count. Im not sure you realize just how much content MMOs have. Morrowind on the other hand, can be easily summarized by gamefaqs guides. Just looked, a complete solution is only about 1 MB in size.


P.S. Modding on my Xboxz?
Pps. Holy cow Chrome ate my post, im going back to Opera >:( , ffs hasnt have to rewrite a post in like 5 years.

i disagree that "exploration" equates to "huge and empty". quite often in morrowind, what looks empty at first glance is far from it, from interactive clutter to collectible ingredients to little dungeons or caves to poke around in. in morrowind i'm rarely without something interesting to do, even if im just traveling from point a to point b, i'll usually find something to divert my attention most times. and even after all these years, i still find things i have never encountered before.

morrowind CAN HAVE more grinding than MMOS.... if that's how you play it. casting 1pt spells is unnecessary. the land abounds with skill trainers. its completely possible, and somewhat practical i mght add, to level up without a single second of combat. rare is the MMO where you dont have to do some sort of fighting, so rare that i can only think of one, and i've been playing them since 98. it's more than possible to "complete" morrowind without getting into a single fight. how many MMOs can you name that allow something similar?

as i said before, MMOs are light on content, players provide most of it for them. they dont need cities full of NPCs with fleshed out dialog. they dont need clutter for you to play around with. they dont even need that many quests. i speak from experience. only one mmo has kept me somewhat interested for more than six months or so, though it's current form is repugnant to me.

but seriously, count up the different items attainable in a MMO of your choice. add this to the number of quests, the number of locations (zones, instances, etc), number of NPCs, and dialog topics of the NPCs. then boot up the morrowind construction set and look at the same numbers. i seriously doubt you can find an MMO that comes close to morrowind, especially considering your list of "better games".... i mean c'mon man, liniage 2?

filesize of a walkthrough of the main quest has no bearing on how much content morrowind has. i can write a detailed walkthrough of how to get to the "endgame" of 2-3 MMOs that would be even smaller. also remember that FAQs posted on gamefaqs rarely approach 1MB, most are only 100-200k. i could even write a general walkthrough for morrowind's main quest in less than 100k... prolly closer to 10-20k.

oh, also, please dont think i'm being antagonistic or doing the "versus thing", i simply disagree with your assertion that morrowind has less content than any MMO.

I actually think that MMO's -do- have more content... in terms of per-item lists, monsters and things to kill, and places to explore... than Morrowind does.


The problem with MMO - Morrowind comparison is that... beyond the letters RPG being the same, they're incomparable. A single-player game like Morrowind has no business being measured up against a game in which tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands to... in some cases -millions-... of people are playing. The content being thrown at people in these games has to keep amused a collective of consumers who are, essentially, throwing anywhere between 25 - 70 bucks a year in order to play a game they ALREADY had to pay some fifty dollars for.

MMO's are bigger. They're bigger in the numbers game... and they're bigger in scale... but they lack depth.


What are the quests? They're the same jobs you would call a SIDE-QUEST in Morrowind. Dungeons? They're all the same thing... essentially. They're bandits. Or monsters. Or creatures. Or demons. Or some astral-projection beast surrounded by a boss. They're all about the grind. They're all about the ceaseless march towards max level, so that you can start all over again once you finally gather up one of the Legendary "Unique" sets of gear which make you the most powerful force in the game.

Sure, you can stop and explore. Sure, some MMORPGs even have servers dedicated for roleplayers!

But at the end of the day... it's not the AMOUNT of stuff that matters, because it's all just stuff. It's all randomized. The NPCs don't matter. You could take the entire game mechanic, strip it out of MMORPG "A" and stick it into MMORPG "B" and it wouldn't suffer for it in the least. Unless your idea svcked. Or you had to compete with WoW.


You can't do that with a single-player game like Morrowind... because without the setting and the environment and the meaningfulness of the characters and how you interact with them all, there's nothing there but shallow hack 'n slash mechanics stuffed into an outdated game engine.


Still. This isn't about MMORPG's compared to Single-Player RPG's.

They're radically different things. They may seem like they have the same mechanics... but a Single-Player game is MORE than the sum of its PARTS.

an MMORPG is more that the sum of it's PLAYERS.

Apples. Meet Oranges.

thanks, that was basically my point, you just expressed it better

Exactly. Thats why i found it rather amusing, being asked to prove my statement of MMOs being quantitatively advanced. Or stand down.

Player's involvement.. Lets add, say 100 players to Morrowind. It is not possible, but lore friendly, since there were multiple reincarnations, and "the Temple hunted them down" etc etc. And nothing says there couldnt be 2 at the same time. Then we would have Casius, the quest giver, and every one else would think he is the chosen one, or whatever. Doing Quests for guilds, rescuing damsels in distress and giving wood elves their rings back. Finally finding the end boss and defeating him and then life goes on. What is that thing preventing each of the player experience Morrowind for themselves.

Theoretically, and here i tend to agree, due to players actions the world could change, which impossible online. Say helping Telvanni conquering the rest of the island(i think its done in some mod or something). But vanilla Morrowind is very static, the only changes happening, are some bosses disappearing. Respawn them every 3 days and we have an mmo.

well, i can't imagine dagoth ur or almalexia actually respawning. that would be just... ridiculous.
and to beat them multiple times would also be pretty useless (no loot, apart from hopesfire and the mazed band, which are fixed) and worse, deplete the achievement.

i agree with you on the static side. e.g. the last quest of the mages guild (if you don't decide to get rid of trebonius before), where you kill all telvanni mage lords. the gameworld could react in some way to that, yes...
but then again, that's the reason why we're modding the game, right?

@Dvsdv

First of all I would like to say that I am enjoying the debate. Secondly, I would like to say that if there is any one person here who absolutely does not require that any one come to his defense; he goes by the name of Pseron Wyrd.
And I admit, I was playing the "I've been here a long time, and I've seen your kind before 'game'." But I was a little irritated, maybe too much caffeine I don't know.

Now to where I'm actually coming from in all candor:
First of all, I'm not a gamer. The only games I play are Bethesda games, so I do not have a lot of experience with all or any of the others. In fact, the games that I can honestly say that I have logged more time into than any others are 8 bit Nintendo Castlevania, Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3. I have no interest in MMO's, somewhat due to the fact that I will not even allow my primary gaming system to be connected to the internet. The fact that I really don't like gaming in general speaks volumes to Bethesda's ability to even attract a consumer such as myself. I would like to say that I know their games inside and out, but I haven't really come to that point. I have enjoyed modding over the years but have forgotten much of what I have learned....practice you know.

In short, I love the open ended sandbox, 1st person experience that Bethesda provides in their 3 most popular titles, and am really looking forward to Skyrim (even though I know I'm going to have to get online to activate it...grrr. I just have to run a cable down stairs and I'm lazy like that.)

So, I have no personal qualms with your point of view, In fact, I think I may have learned something. But I'm not going to necessarily run out and be amazed by the MMO world. There is plenty to do, and plenty to look forward to with this company exclusively...is my point of view. It's kind of like the alcoholic who is aware of the variety of possibilities out there, "But by golly, I like Budweiser", or the motorcycle enthusiast who is aware of all the choices..."....but I would never ride anything but a Harley Davidson."
So I guess, willful ignorance is my point and my source of bliss. I must say that you have effectively made your case, and I cannot objectively agree or disagree with what you have said based on my previous explanation....and Thank you.

It's all good for the modders, and I love Morrowind and am not a fan of MMOs (because I tend to get hooked... for real). But this world freezing is by far the worst side of Morrowind in my opinion. You work your rear end off to get to the position where you lead a faction. You do all the quests for that position. Then what? That should be just the first half of it! You should be able to delegate quests on your own, once you are in the lead! You should decide what actions the faction is going to take, and who you place to what missions and what you do yourself decide the outcome. But you can't rule AT ALL once the ship is finally yours... All the politics just stop.

Don't get me wrong. I'd defend Morrowind to the very end. This particular side in it though makes me feel that my characters live in a very static world. No matter who you support and who you kill - in the end, it seems to have effect on absolutely nothing.

:spotted owl:
Oblivion is even worse in this aspect.

I agree, I would love to regulate what the guild has to do. You should be more politcial. If you don't do anything, or you do poorly then you can be super ceded and loose your potions as head of the guild. Would really make it hard to be the head of every guild. Thing is, does any game out there do this? I don't know of any once you become a guild master or what not.

The world 'freezing' effect is something of a common "problem" among RPG's as a whole these days.


What I would really like, more than anything, is a game where I could LOSE by attrition. I would -love- to play a game where the world just kept on going, with or without me... and if I wanted to be the hero... I would have to actually catch -up- to the plot, rather than have it patiently waiting there for me whenever I'm done piddling around with side quests and building myself a mansion.

Imagine that. Imagine a sandbox RPG where, if you didn't do something to save the world and become the hero... then fate just decided you weren't the hero after all, and would move on to find the NEXT Nerevarine/Dovakiin/Champion of Cyrodiil. Imagine what that would FEEL like. Because the game doesn't end! It just keeps going... only now you're not the savior of the damned planet. You're an armorer. Or a thief. Or a pirate. And then your fame is based on your actions as a NORMAL PERSON, rather than a hero.

That would be assuming that your successor didn't screw up, and get himself killed, and plunge the world into darkness.

That would be the game -I- voted for as Game of the Year.

That's the main feature I like about Depths of Peril. You're the leader of a guild in a small village and if you get a quest from a villager like "Please, go exterminate the demon WhatsIsFace before it's too late!", you better go take care of it or a rival guild will. Even "worse", if neither you nor your rivals kills it the demon will eventually attack the village possibly with minions/allies too, injuring several NPCs in the process. (Please note that the game is a Diablo-like and a little rough around the edges, but the guilds/consequences concept makes it quite an unique experience imo.)

I started playing as a new character the other day - a dunmer who uses Short Blade and Destruction magic. Its great fun, I've never played mage before! Usually I just screw around with Warrior, and I have completed the games before.