The big difference for me is that Bethesda did a great job with Morrowind of using game assets to create a dark foreboding world full of mystery and intrigue and is the most atmospheric and immersive game i have ever played, not so much when interacting with npc's or beasties because the clunkiness of the game becomes apparent, but when exploring the land admiring the view then it is easy for the imagination to wander and fills in details that the game may lack. Whilst Morrowind feels as if you are playing in a different off-world environment , Oblivion is more akin to medieval earth. just completely different designs i guess, a bit like trying to explain how an apple is different to an orange.

Maybe this will answer your question:

An Oblivion player discovers Morrowind - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt5YKmP7ecY&feature=PlayList&p=C745B2E8DDC80D28&index=0

It's interesting because he compares Morrowind to Oblivion a lot. Got me started playing Morrowind again

I thought Oblivion was better but after a few months I realized that Oblivion had too few quests and there just wasn't enough nostalgia in it. Among many other things. Nonetheless they are both amazing. As far as how making the jump from OB to MW.... MW is MUCH harder.

one thing not mentioned are alchemy, in oblivion you are locked by your skills to see/use second,third and fourth effects(apprentice,journeyman,expert if I recall correctly), in morrowind if you know the effects you can in theory do all combinations from every skill level, the other thing is you probably fail making the potions when your alchemy skills are lower because you can fail in morrowind.

that goes for everything, always a possibility to fail everything you do,casting spells,making potions,repair your armor or use a weapon, you fail accordingly to your skill (luck can play a role too but keep it simple).

that is why new players are urged to pick one weapon skill as major,perhaps pick favored attribute to go with it,like longblade and strenght or shortblade and speed as one of two favored attributes are one possibility and thus getting an useful attacking skill from the start=successfully killing mudcrabs and rats

If the OP likes playing on consules let him without saying the PC version is better.

Er...Morrowind has only been out for 7 years...I thought I loved Morrowind having beaten the majority of quests with 6 different characters. ;-;

To address the TC...The best advice was short and has already been given: Play Morrowind without comparing it to Oblivion. I feel that the reason so many Oblivion players haven't given Morrowind much time is because they are constantly comparing it. The fighting system is different (in my opinion Morrowind's is superior), but is still good once you get used to it. I would also highly suggest the PC version. The Xbox version has a ton of bugs. I used to run Morrowind on my old PC which had only 256 MB of RAM...And I was able to run it with numerous mods including Texture Enhancers, MCA (Morrowind Comes Alive), and numerous others.

Agreed. When I first started playing Morrowind, some years ago, I was instantly and hopelessly hooked. I stayed up late, I called in to work "sick" ... Yeah, it was BAD. Played MW for years, hard. Then Oblivion came out and I played OB for a bit but I never quite got hooked on it like I did Morrowind. There's more to the story but I'm trying to keep this brief.

IMO, the main differences between Morrowind and Oblivion is in the very foundation of the games themselves.

Hold on for some seriously subjective stuff...

Oblivion, obviously, was designed from the ground up, to be played on a console. Morrowind was designed from the ground up to be played on the PC. In my opinion, that's a huge consideration, right there. Seriously, think about the implications of that simple fact. The real, core difference, however (in my opinion) is that Morrowind has a very specific "feel" to it.

To use an anology here, Morrowind, to me, feels like it was crafted by a group of Craftsmen, I mean real, "old timers" who came together, locked themselves in a room, hung a big "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door and then commenced to hand assemble this game like you would a fine Swiss watch or a piece of finely carved furniture. No management hovering over them, no committee to report to, no bean counters looking over their shoulder. And there they toiled away... I say this because there's a sense of attention to detail that simply permeates Morrowind, from the hand-placed loot to the uniqueness of the architecture to the depth and breadth of the political intrigue. Explore the most distant speck of an island in Morrowind and, a good percentage of the time, you'll discover something interesting. Not because some quest took you there, but simply because somebody, somewhere at Beth' decided to hide something there just for fun. The game almost encourages you to color outside the lines. I dunno, I play Morrowind and I feel like, when it was done... All the Morrowind Devs must have pushed back from their desks, gathered 'round a bottle of some truly fine Champagne, slapped themselves on the back and collectively said... "Yeah, it's done. And it's one H-LL of a game!"

Oblivion, to me, feels like it was just slapped together, reviewed by committee for cost-benefit anolysis, reassessed for appeal to the target demographic, mass produced on the Game Production assembly line, packed and shipped wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am-now-whats-for-lunch?

It's a hard thing to try and explain and I think it's something you pretty much immediately "get" or you don't as soon as you start to play Morrowind. Then, if you do get it, no explanation is necessary; if you don't, no explanation will suffice.

But it is better. Its not just opinion, the mods and patches make it a mathematical certainty.


The hand placed nature of Morrowind feels nice, hwever this can lead to a situation that never happened in Oblivion, that is, knowing wher eall the best stuff is, and powergaming your way to awesomeness at about level 3, with an inventory full of superspeed bootss, teleporting rings and strength enhancers. It requires more self restraint to enjoy. In many ways, I'd like to be able to wander into dungeons and hunt for treasure that I wouldn't know what it was, but Morrowind was never really a dungeon crawler like Oblivion allowed for. Just a shame Morrowind's topside is pig ugly, though in a rustic, cottagy kind of way.

Better is always a matter of opinion, isn't it? The only certainty here is that it's a matter of opinion that the PC version is better.
For one, a decent PC costs money. So that's always an issue if you already have a console, and limited funds.
Folks like me enjoy the couch and a wireless controller. If I can play through it without homemade mods or console commands, I can assure myself that I did it without cheating.

All has been said

Baphomet described it nicely, Oblivion has great graphics awesome scenery and some pretty sweet skill perks, I mean, who doesn't like watching the bandit charging at you fall to the ground paralyzed because you're a master marksman, it's just hilarious. Good story, but I never felt like I was my character. I think Oblivion is more for action whereas Morrowind is more for RP aspects as someone mentioned earlier.

I played morrowind, then went to oblivion.. and inevitably came back to morrowind. Oblivion is fun and I had a great time playing it, but when I feel like "getting lost" in the story I pop in my morrowind disc. I've played it since it's release, and I pride myself on being able to discover all there is to discover. I can say with 100% certainty that through all my time playing it, I have yet to discover everything, and that makes it even more fun.. I KNOW I'm missing stuff, I just haven't found it yet.

As was said, put Oblivion out of your mind, and seriously devote some time to Morrowind, it'll be tough at first, and you will get frustrated, but keep plugging away and you'll notice that you don't get fatigues as fast, you can carry more stuff, you can cast spells better. Read the little messages at level up, those sum up things quite nicely.

Have fun!

Baphomet, your anology is great. It explains exactly how I feel about each game.

Baphomet put the main differences in "charm" into words, and quite nicely I might add.

The other major difference is that Morrowind is based almost entirely on the skills of the character, while Oblivion has a much heavier emphasis on the skills of the player. Besides combat, this shows up in Oblvion's Lockpick and Speechcraft mini-games. In Morrowind, if your skills are low, you may (or will) fail. As a starting MW character, expect to fail a lot of times at even fairly simple tasks. This is part of the charm and frustration of the game: everything starts out difficult and gets easier, whereas in OB it starts out semi-easy to semi-hard and stays that way, no matter what you do or where you go. If your skills are so low as to make it hard to learn, because you can't even get the occasional success to improve, then you need to pay for training. Unlike OB, there are no limits on how many times you can train. Personally, I only train up skills to the point where I can practice them with a reasonable rate of success, rather than boosting Major skills.

Also unlike OB, dungeons will not respawn automatically every 3 days without fail. Some creatures will respawn, but others are once-and-done, as is loot. You are FORCED to explore, rather than just "milk" the same locations over and over for the same loot as anywhere else. Some loot is levelled, some is fixed, so you will inevitably stumble upon "interesting" items as well as the routine "junk".

Because of the different focus on player versus character skills, the two games play very differently in a number of respects, while sharing a common "background". It comes down to a matter of preference as to playing style, which is why some players love one game and hate the other, and why you see all the "flame wars" here.

That's not the only excellent point you make; it's just the one that really nails it for me: OB's infuriating leveling.



In MW, once you've played it a bit, you KNOW there are places that, as a Low Level Character, you avoid. You avoid them, or you get your a-- handed to you on a platter with Hollandaise on the side. It's just that simple. Need a little demonstration, perhaps? Pop on over to, say... Oh, I don't know... Berandas perhaps; and and say 'Hello!" to some serious a-- kicking undead. That's assuming, of course, you actually live long enough once inside the door to figure out what it was that just hit you like the proverbial freight-train.

None of this OB-type "hand-holding" in Morrowind. No sir. Morrownd starts off dangerous for the beginner and, with the addition of a worthy mod or three, can become truly scary until you earn your place. In OB there was never really any sense of... Trepidation. No matter where I went I knew that OB would dish out only "so much" challenge based on my character's level. On the flip side of that coin, there was never any sense of having arrived, or achieved, in Oblivion. Since every challenge ramped up in direct proportion to my character's ability, every battle felt roughly the same. Never epic. Never a slaughter (on either side). Everything always felt... Winnable. And that got boring. Fancier combat, blocking, combo's; none of that could make up for the fact that I was being set-up to win each and every "battle".

I'll never forget playing Morrowind those first few hundred hours when the decision to enter an Ancestral Tomb would actually make me pause and think (sometimes out loud), "What am I getting into? Have I checked my inventory? Weapons repaired? Do I have potions... Oh crap, here I go..." Morrowind could actually make me tremble because... You just. Didn't. Know.

With Morrowind, it's not so much about the game happening on your computer screen, it's about the game going on in your head.

^^

This man has a way with words, he describes far better in his posts about what's happening in your own mind than I ever could. In OB, you're watching a game unfold on the screen in front of you. In Morrowind, you're experiencing what it's like to be a hero or a zero in the span of a few seconds.

Great post.

Hehe, with a laptop, I can lie in bed and play! I concede that its a matter of opinion that the PC is better for playing, but technologically, its a lot more stable, even on a poor PC like mine.

I really dislike the insinuation from console players that if you're using mods you're cheating. Yeah, cheat mods exist, but not all mods are cheats. Some actually make the game harder and fix bugs. I'm even using a mod that slows leveling (GCD).

^^^^^^^
This.

Its a wierd change i would imagine (as i went from daggerfall to morrowind to oblivion) but you will notice the combat system first off, you dont make every hit you take. Also there is more skills to change from.

Down grading the graphics? Are you serious? Have you tried it?

I find the pc is worlds better than the graphics from a console.
Of coarse I play with a lot of graphical mods and MGE
@2560x1600 on one of the best GPU's on the market
but still...

Even when I played vanilla for the first time on a mediocre pc
it was still somewhat better than XBOX with monster cables.

I imagine Oblivion on 360 or PS3 looks very good but I'm still
willing to bet pc is better, and namely thanks to graphical mods.

Supposedly MW was on the list of games that could be played on
the 360. :shrug:

Most any cheap modern pc will play vanilla MW and a few graphical mods.
So, if you tried MW on pc and don't like it then your free to state, but if
you haven't, don't knock it until you tried it.

Console players are inferior. 'cause their machines are technogically weaker.
With that said, I'm pretty sure a cheat can be seen as anything that isn't in the vanilla game.
While something may be balanced, its presence makes it a cheat. Makes sense? No? Probably not...

(Graphic and Glitch fixing mods are an exception to this "rule").

Is this cheating? http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=6068

Whats with the haters... I've played on both console and PC, and have no preference (didn't use mods)... Stop the hating, its irritating to hear all this elitism, I am better than you, because I play on a different platform. Its like me saying, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is the greatest game in the history of the universe., because its a different game than Morrowind LOLZ HAHAZ! Exact same thing console-haters, just with consoles, not games.

What do you mean by this? (Only Zalphon to answer)

:facepalm:
What?
I don't think it has anything to do with the player.
Or are you trying to get the thread closed? :rolleyes:

I mean by it, that randomly hating is dumb, he has no reason to say they are inferior, without just reason, which he lacks. No one can say Morrowind or Oblivion is better than the other, because different people have different tastes, same with consoles and PCs.

Its unfortunate that people feel inferior or hated because of their platform
and go around accusing others as being elitist or better than others.

So see, it goes both ways, I feel neither. Man I should have finished sike skool... :rofl: