I know you guys probably get a lot of these, so let me just start out right. I am not new to Morrowind, vanilla or modded. On a previous computer I had a successfully modded Morrowind game with over 450 mods installed, including a ton of custom patches to get conflicting mods to work. That took about a month to work on, but I was able to play a save for over 2000 hours before losing my computer.

Anyways, kinda got off topic. I really want to start playing Morrowind again, but I was looking through some of the mods I was more familiar with and noticed a lot are outdated. It has been about 3 years since I last even touched the game. Now, my question here is what you guys consider essential mods for a returning player, as well as a few other mods I am looking for.

I have a list that are essential for a game, the Patch and Code projects, Morrowind Comes Alive, Children of Morrowind (actually anything by Emma is essential imo), Tamriel Rebuilt, UL and Rise of House Telvanni. Few others, but those are the biggest.
My inquiry extends to cities though. I really want to find some mods that expand the cities, like the Balmora expansion mod. My only problem is that Balmora Expanded is incredibly old, even when I was playing it was outdated and conflicted with a lot of individual mods that were better quality. Same for the old Vivec expansion mod. However, a search on google just comes up with those. Are there any newer, better quality (not necessarily graphically) mods that expand the cities, especially Balmora, Sadrith Mora and Vivec?

I know I could search Nexus or PES for mods to fit those categories, but I found that the longer I spend on those sites the more bloated my game becomes with mods. I have zero self control when I find a cool mod. lol