Haven't played a second of Morrowind without mods

Although I use only one: MGSO. That's all and I don't think Morrowind even needs any mods. I took MGSO for the graphics update, I'm cool from there on.

I played vanilla Morrowind (no expansions or anything) for quite some time. Partly for the reason that my old PC wasn't up for the task of running graphic-intensive mods.

Later I got a better PC and the GOTY. I really liked the new content, but ran into some serious bugs and stability issues. This kind of forced me to install the unofficial patch and the Code patch. Then I installed Better bodies, heads and clothes. After that I really got into Morrowind modding and started using a lot of them. What I run:
1. Better bodies, heads and clothes
2. Tamriel Rebuild(yeah, it's like having a third expansion times 3!)
3. Master Index
4. Havish (it's like having an additional DLC)
5. Book rotate (I really hated the piles of books, but wanted to collect and display them nevertheless)
6. Key replacer
7. Advanced herbalism( for my own herbal garden)
8. Stronghold expansions (a pack rat like me runs out of storage space in no time)
9. GCD (after a while I found the levelling system to be quite annoying)
10. Mournhold Museum Expansion
11. LCV schedules & nighttime locks (gives NPCs daily schedules and makes thieving more of a challenge)
12. Dracandro's voice
13. New Ald'Ruhn (makes my favorite city about 2 times bigger)
14. Indoril Greaves
15. Chalk (writing "Nerevarine was here" on the High Fane is fun!)
16. CanadianIce Robe replacer
17. Rise of House Telvanni (although I'm more of a Redoran fan, this new questline is quite interesting)
18. FPS tweaker (increased view distance)
19. Bitter Coast sounds
20. Healing (enables healers to provide healing services)

I also was using MCA for quite some time, but in the end it started to annoy the hell out of me and I uninstalled it. All the bandits with ebony and daedric weaponry reminded me of why Oblivions level scaling was such a mess. Other utterly OP encounters and immersion/balance breaking stuff didn't help either.

Overall I'm quite happy with Morrowind and I only use mods to enchant some stuff here & there or to add even more content to it. I even cut back on mods since some weren't living up to my expectations or didn't make that much of a difference. However I don't think I would go back to vanilla. Morrowind is way too fun to mod and I really like its modding community.

Call me weird, but even in its obviously dated state, I still find Morrowind to be an absolutely beautiful game. I may use some small mods here or there but no graphics overhauls or anything like that. I too am a bit of a purist and I'm not a huge fan for mods.

I use or used about half of the mods that SOMEONE_reborn listed (BB, TR), with a few notable exceptions. First, I switch between GCD and MADD Leveler, depending on the focus of the character, since GCD is pretty tough on hybrid-class characters (combat archers, spellswords, etc.), despite being more polished overall. Second, I gave up on the newer versions of MCA and switched mainly to Starfire's NPC Additions, although I sometimes use the older Morrowind Comes Alive version 4.1, before all of the overpowered stuff and supercharged NPCs were added. I've also got several of the LGNPC regional mods loaded, to provide a bit more unique dialog and a few small extra quests. Finally, I also add Morrowind Crafting, Necessities of Morrowind, and Abot's Water Life, so I can fish, hunt, mine, and make equipment, clothing, furniture, and edible food, etc. while wandering around the wastes, or for furnishing a stronghold or appropriated bandit cave.

Hmm , I run GCD for quite some time and I've even played some hybrid characters, but I never had any problems with levelling. Which problems do you experience?
Well, I deactivated MCA completely and the only thing I miss are the peaceful NPCs inhabiting the cities. All the utterly OP enemies, especially the ones armed with daedric equipment and those actively hunting the player were quite annoying and completely unbalanced. Mostly because this would require either a combat efficient build or a lower difficulty setting (thus nerfing normal enemies). It's like turning Morrowind's combat into an Oblivion-esque slaughter.
That's the mod I want to try next. Does it make up for those peaceful NPCs from MCA? Are there any particular problems you ran into?

So I previously voted that I am playing vanilla, but I currently have the following mods downloaded and installed:

• Fishing Academy
• Fishing House
• Toggle Sneak
• Animated Morrowind
• Animated Morrowind Expanded
• Enhanced Detection
• Mistress Tilani
• Scripted Spells
• Illegal Summoning
• Morrowind Achievements
• Dwemer Galleon

Some of these are mods I've used in the past, and either really enjoyed or downloaded for nostalgia's sake. Some of them are ones that I've recently tried that I liked. Others of them sounded interesting so I figured I'd give them a go. I may also be on the lookout for some more minor mods here or there, but again, I don't want to play with any heavy graphics or gameplay overhauls.

I found a mod to get rid of the black sun bug, but other than that I've never really tried Morrowind mods

I played the entire game vanilla when it was new. No reason to ever do it again now that things like graphics overhauls are available.

This!

When the free mod alternative gets lost next time or the upcoming stuff is as hard-coded as in Mass Effect,

people that play vanilla a decade after the making simply 'cause they can, will mock against it the day after,

'cause then they must. Try to teach me the people.

Edit: Objectively speaking, there is no good reason to play vanilla, it is just an advantage-less sport and no

imperative necessity, not yet. Think of it before it is too late.

For the record I play a lot of old games, but Daggerfall is difficult to understand when you're used to games with those graphics. To adjust and try to comprehend all of the stuff at the same time is generally a headache, I mostly just got a bit exhausted trying to take all of that in and lost interest. I never outright quit and decided not to come back, I just quit a play session one day and never went back to it. Just passed over it thinking "Eh, I'll play that again some other day, not feelin' it right now."

I'm determined to get into it again as well.

Yep, apart from MGE to allow for a resolution suitable for my monitor. I've probably put about 500 hours into the game over the last decade or so (most of that on the Xbox), and I simply don't see the need to mod the game. I haven't played it enough that the vanilla content has become boring to me, and if it ever did, I think I'd just play a different game, rather than mod Morrowind to be something that it's not.

The person who introduced me to the Elder Scrolls series is a Morrowind modder. When he gave me one of his old 1st-edition copies of Morrowind, Tribunal and Bloodmoon for Christmas last year I felt a little obligated to at least try mods.

At the moment I use a few house mods (one of which he made specially for my character), Children of Morrowind, Morrowind Crafting, a race mod and Tamriel Rebuilt. It's not exactly vanilla but it isn't what I'd call heavily-modded either.

Well, I did not see this coming, but interestingly enough I'll be able to experience vanilla Morrowind like I never have before because my awesome wife just bought me an XBox 360!!!

Ha ha! Yeah, I'm a little excited. We've had a rough year, and just got some surprisingly good news, and so she decided that in order to celebrate she'd get me the console with a Skyrim download! Yay! (Oh, and not one word about "she should have waited for the Legendary edition to come out"... nope, I'm thrilled, and the necessity of a few extra downloads bothers me not! )

So anyway, I'll soon be getting my very own copy of Morrowind GOTY for XBox, which I'm pretty sure is about as vanilla as it gets (well, if we abide by the "if Beth made it, it's vanilla" definition of "vanilla", that is!) This is actually the best of both worlds because...

I could not agree more with this, though I did not play it in 2002... I'm always late on things, and in this case I was a decade late. But the truth of it still shines through: there's just too much really nice stuff you can do with a modded game that vanilla simply does not allow for. I just installed a simple little mod called http://mw.modhistory.com/download--6136 that adds, well, trash cans, or the TES3 equivalent thereof, to the towns of Vvardenfell. This tiny, nearly invisible addition gives me a way to dispose of stuff don't want vendors hanging onto forever, or failed potions that do more harm than good. It's little things like that, as well as the big ones like graphics overhauls and land-mass additions, that make playing un-modded Morrowind on PC seem like cruel and unnecessary punishment! Ha ha! In other words, if you can mod the game, I don't know why you wouldn't. Again though, I just got a brand new XBox 360 from my awesome wife, so it will be very easy for me to have both now. That's certainly affecting my POV at the moment!

Still, all that said...

I just looked, and I'm actually not running that much either. I can't count them on one hand, but if I use both hands, both feet, and maybe borrow a few of the Mrs.'s digits... But seriously, I don't run a "heavily" modded game either... mostly gameplay changes to ramp up the difficulty, a few texture replacers (love DarkNut's work), and some fixes/patches. I could whittle that list down even further and still be happy. But even if I could get it down to just the dozen or so I really love, I still would not want to give them up as long as I had a machine I could run mods on. Some are simply too good to pass on, and should have been in the game from the start, imho. And that's coming from a guy who thinks Beth did most things right in the first place.

So, I guess if I could I'd change my vote to "both"! Thanks again for this thread, Rammsier... it's been a lot of fun participating in this one!

that's what i felt the first time i tried daggerfall after used to play mw for hundreds of hours. i feel like a person with eye disorders (you know, everything blurred).

congratulations!!

i wished i had a wife like yours (well, she's already a metalhead like me, so i cant complain too much)

by the way, you could choose the second option. it said you'll do vanilla next time..

cheers !!

Well, that would only be half true (if I said I'll do vanilla next time)... I plan to keep my modded installation running as well. So, when I do start up a new Player Character in my vanilla, XBox 360 version of Morrowind GOTY, I'll still have the current one I'm playing now in my modded version of the game. I am actually looking forward to comparing the two. That, and my lazy self knows that even though I prefer modded Morrowind to vanilla, sometimes I'll just want to chill on the couch and play, without hassling with the laptop, keyboard, and mouse! My lazy self has been trying to dominate lately, soooo.....

And hey, just a word of newlywed advice from a veteran of the marriage wars: watch out for phrases like, "I wish I had a wife like that"... they tend to be a little troublesome, if the Mrs. happens to hear of it, of course! In my personal experience, they seem to prefer things like, "I wish everyone could have a wife as awesome as mine! She's the best!" (and not to be sixist, the same applies to husbands!)

Have a great weekend!

EDIT: Wow. I've been writing in here like it's a trivial matter to get a copy of Morrowind GOTY for XBox 360. I didn't even realize it's no longer being made. A consequence, I guess, of living in the on-demand world so many of us now inhabit, is that I tend to take for granted that things will be readily available all the time. Well, I guess it is available, but $100 and up for a new copy of a decade-old game?... Well, I suppose that's not what I had in mind! Skyrim + DLCs didn't cost me that! (neither did Oblivion, actually)

Don't get me wrong... it's worth that, and more, really. I just can't pay that right now. Ha ha! Guess I'll have to dial back my "pure vanilla" Morrowind experience for a bit longer.

thank you for the advice. i of course wont dare to say that right in front of my lady. i'm actually okay with her, you can't win all you want. wanting too much will only make you disappoint too much more.

wow. a hundred bucks for a copy. i wonder how much it'll be 20 years from now. maybe you should buy it now, and 20 years later you can sell it for a sport car.

Ha ha! I have learned it all the hard way, believe me! And as happy as you were when you made your big marriage announcement, well, I think you're doing just fine, my friend. I just couldn't resist!

Ha ha! No doubt. I was really surprised! Yes, used ones are cheaper... but I've had just awful luck when buying used digital media. I pretty much never do it anymore. Time to save pennies...

And sorry for veering way off-topic again. I try to do better at that, really I do. Thanks for indulging my tangents!

yeah, we're fine here so far.

no problem, any advice wont hurt anybody. besides, we still got room to talk about the game anyway.
tonight's a long night, so cheers..!!