I like Morrowind's setting a lot better. I liked the experience of being placed in an unfamiliar world. I like the political structure of Vvardenfell with clans and great houses. It felt like a grand "what if" experiment. What if you lived on a volcanic island that had ash storms? What if the local deities were actually real? What if creatures evolved differently, with a focus on invertebrates and bipedal dinosaur-like creatures? What if mushrooms could grow to enormous sizes? What would the food staples look like, the domesticated livestock? What if your armor was made of chitin and your weapon made from the crystalized blood of a dying god (ebony)?

In contrast, I found TESIV's cyrodiil to be familiar and bland. Forest are composed of ordinary trees, inhabited by mundane bears, wolves, and deer. The ruler was an emperor with lesser liege lords governing their cobblestone middle-ages towns. Food was from ordinary carrots, lettuce, pumpkins, sheep, cheese, graqes. A few iconic mythology figures from Earth religions make appearances (will o' the wisp, minotaur, unicorn, ogre). The generic-named respawning NPCs didn't really help make anything stand out as special.