This really confuses me. People act like Morrowind was the [censored] messiah of TES, I'm not saying it's a bad game but it's definitely not the best TES either. It also confuses me that people think that TES started to dumb down after Morrowind, when in fact Morrowind was dumbed down more than any TES game to date.

Its a matter of taste. You say things like "it's defnitely not the best TES" and "in fact Morrowind was dumbed down moore than any other TES game to date".

They are no more facts than my opinion that MW was the most original and imaginative settings with the widest possible options for playing and developing widely differing characters.

I believe it is and I'll argue it but I accept others have the right to prefer other games in the series for whatever reason they choose.

Morrowind isn't the best RPG of the series, Daggerfall did it better. Morrowind isn't the best combat game of the series, Skyrim did it better. Still, at least in my opinion, Morrowind offered the best combination of the two. It was the first game of the series to use a smaller and far more detailed hand-made worldspace, rather than an immense but 99% empty procedurally generated plain, so anything before it suffers badly due to that lack of meaningful world design. Every game since Daggerfall has had more and more content either removed completely or stripped of any sort of significance or challenge, so Morrowind suffers the least from that out of the newer more detailed worldspace games.

Quite simply, if I could have Daggerfall's level of character creation and development along with the latest technical innovations, it would potentially be a much better game than Morrowind. Unfortunately, I can't, so Morrowind remains as my clear favorite. I'm quite willing to trade the little bit of lost content from DF for the better worldspace. The comparatively far more minor improvements in that worldspace in the newer games are not worth the additional loss in content, in my opinion.

While the change from DF to MW was huge in terms of the worldspace, MW still retains the same "failure at tasks" as DF, and still has a sense of interaction between the various factions and guilds which the later games steadily removed. DF and MW retain a similar style of gameplay, with character skill being far more critical than player skill. The skills presented in the game almost all had profound effects on your character's ability to successfully perform tasks, and your advancement in organizations dedicated to those skills also required you to improve them. As an example of that, my first OB character quickly learned that his intended profession of Enchanter served no purpose in OB, because any untutored barbarian could produce enchantements (with no chance of failure) by using a Sigil Stone, which were on par with those of a highly skilled professional Enchanter. My next rogueish Imperial character quickly found that his Speechcraft and Lockpicking skills were both effectively rendered pointless by mini-games which relied almost entirely on player dexterity and timing, not on the character's skills. Further play then proved that it made more sense to actually choose your most important skills as MINORS, so you wouldn't level up as quickly, which made NO sense from ANY rational in-game perspective. Doing that in either DF or MW would quickly get your character killed. That's about as fundamental of a change as I can imagine, and not a good one in my opinion.

Add to that an extremely well-thought-out culture and world which just got better and more intricate the deeper you dug into it, and Morrowind was a true gem in a slightly rough disguise. Expecting the same level of detail and thoroughness in the next game, I was appalled to find that there wasn't any more than minimal mention of the infamous Imperial power seeking, NIbenay-Colovia differences, greedy money grabbers, rampant opportunism, corruption, intrigue, or the epic rivalries between merchants and guilds that were claimed to go on in the heart of a massive empire just past the peak of its power. Instead, we got a skin-deep set of politics, guilds working in isolation from everything around them, officials who were "concerned" but not making any attempt to exploit the power vacuum, and a province that was essentially all-but empty of the agriculture and industry to sustain a vast empire. The only thing being produced in the local mines was goblins, and other than the half-way decent portrayal of farms around Skingrad (and one farm with an "invisibility" problem), there was nothing more than the ruined remains of farms throughout the entire province. I felt cheated, not for having bought the game, but for the permanent loss of a more "proper" Imperial Province, which that "imposter" game usurped.

Skyrim somehow managed to take a game which was already pared down to little more than the basics and strip out even more content. How can anyone NOT think that Morrowind is the best game in the series?

I agree with this.

This doesn't confuse me at all, because I am one of those people. I think Morrowind has the most interesting setting, the best writing and the most fleshed out society. I'm also the most attached to my Morrowind characters because I liked the character definition the game provided. The technical components that look dated in today's standards (combat, npc life sim, stealth, etc) didn't bother me at all back in the day. The fact so many people hold this game in high regard after all these years , despite the undeniable progress in many departments with Oblivion and Skyrim (stealth, physics, graphics, ai, etc...) means that they really did something right with Morrowind, and that may vary from one player to another, but in general this is how you know a game has reached cult status: its public image ages better than the game itself

This is a non-issue to me, because with Morrowind they re-booted the series. Compare the map size, 3d implementation and world detail in Daggerfall vs Morrowind, and then compare Morrowind vs Oblivion vs Skyrim. You will notice that, with Morrowind, Bethesda chose a smaller scale that they think optimal for a more interactive gameplay experience in a more detailed world. That's why I think the Morrowind-Oblivion-Skyrim trio is a distinct category in the series, not very comparable to the first two games.

Morrowind had the best balance of a good world, good character customisation and a good story. The world may not be as detailed as Skyrim's, the character customisation may not be as extensive as Daggerfall's and the story is surely not choice-laden like New Vegas (though that was made by Obsidian) but struck a good balance. The other TES games didn't have that good balance unfortunately.

However, if we combined New Vegas's story, Daggerfall's customisation and Skyrim's world then we will have the best RPG of all time.

I personally think it is the best TES to date as well for many reasons. Most reasons were covered by Kovacius, which was a great post by the way.

I think both oblivion and Skyrim had potential to beat out morrowind, but the way the games were developed, to me personally they fell flat on their faces.

Yes, the dumbing down of the game series started at Morrowind, there's no dispute in that. But there's also no disputing that they continued to dumb down the series afterwards. I guess most of us hit our happy medium in the state of Morrowind, and afterwards they just gutted too much. There was no real sense of exploration in oblivion and skyrim, the compass markers would let you know if there was a cave on the other side of that hill, and let you find every place in one playthough without actually having to look myself. I know the entire province of Skyrim and Cyrodil, every dungeon and where everything is, yet with morrowind there are still dungeons i havent found (and ive played MUCH more morrowind then oblivion and skyrim over the years, not to mention they havent been out as long).

Going by the current trend, one could expect the next TES to have 3 skills, no attributes, no guilds (because they svcked so much in skyrim and everyone knows with bethesda, instead of fixing something that svcks, they just remove it), no blunt weapons (cus come on, who uses blunt weapons when you got cool swords?), only heavy armour (cus again, why use light armour when you got heavy armour being superior? If you want speed, then dont use armour), 5 different spells in total (why have the player get bogged down with mundane choices such as spells to use?), but the game will have really awesome graphics, QTE cut scenes when you kill dragons - having you do some crazy god of war style killing by ripping the dragons eyes then it's heart with your bare hands - and last but not least, the coveted Awesome button (you press it, and awesome happens).

It's weird. You have 230 posts and you still don't know of the theory ?

There is this theory,that the first TES game you will play,will be the one you consider the best of the series.

Thing is there are many things changing from game to game. Features are added,removed,or changed,and different people prefer different features.

That theory has been beat to death a million times over.

There are many posters here who have played Oblivion or Skyrim first, but still think Morrowind is the best of the series. Of course, im not one of them, but they are here and in abundance, so I'll just let them speak for themselves when they see this thread.

Great theory....except that I can recall at least dozen posters in the last few months who played OB or SR first, but prefer MW, as well as a few who played MW but prefer SR. Not all theories are proven true.

An incorrect theory: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1364804-is-it-agreed-that-the-first-es-game-you-play-will-be-your-favorite/

I agree.

I played Oblivion first but think Morrowind is the best for the reasons Kovacius stated.

Your entire post is basically your opinion. To a lot of people, Morrowind is the best TES game to date. To others, that title might go to any of the other four games.

It's really not that hard to go and find a post about how Morrowind is the king of the series. There's usually a new one showing up every week.

I know it's just a matter of opinion but come on, people act like it has no flaws, no bugs, nothing bad, which is complete [censored]. A lot of people on these forums act like it's the god of all games.

I think I need to clarify that I'm not dissing Morrowind! because I love that game. I'm just confused about why some people treat it like the best thing since porm.

This is a funny question to ask, "why people have other preferences than mine? How is this even possible?"

I think Morrowind is the best rpg of the last three for this reason: I enjoy it the most. I hope this helps.

I think Morrowind is the best, although I like Oblivion and Skyrim almost as much.

Apparently Daggerfall has much more skills, more clothing options and generally more of everything than Morrowind and is in some ways more realistic (such as more realistic scale, gold having weight and possibly other things), but I'm not interested in playing it, because

* Getting lost in enormous dungeons is something I avoid, if I can.

* Only first person perspective. I can't play in first person.

* Graphics matter to me. Yeah, that's shameful and superficial, but true.

Oblivion is a very nice game and has improved upon Morrowind in some ways, such as NPCs having schedules, better animations, and that we're able to sit on the chairs, but the lore and story simply aren't as interesting. I'm not going as far as saying the Oblivion version of Cyrodiil is bland (it is a beautiful place which feels the most alive of the games imo) but Morrowind does feel like a more believable and more thoroughly developed society. Morrowind also offers a larger variety in clothes, weapon and armor, and I like playing dress up It was also Oblivion that introduced the Quest Arrow, which wouldn't have been so bad if there had been an option to toggle it off and good enough directions to play the game without it.

Skyrim is the game that looks the best imo, and it also introduces some great things like children (though all children look the same), more followers, cooking, and smithing. The idea with perks is nice and Nord society is better portrayed than the Imperial. We even get the option to choose sides sometimes, but not as much as in Morrowind. But the NPCs are very tiresome and feel sort of robotic with their constant blurting out the same introduction line over and over, and I also dislike how the player is sometimes more or less forced to do certain factions or quests (Clavicus Vile's probably being the worst example). You pass by an NPC, they say something, and KAPOOF - a new quest! The quests and stories overall are of the lowest quality of the 3 newest games (though I'm not saying they are all bad).

Morrowind's graphics are fairly bad, that's true, but the style is really cool and with mods you can make the game look as good as Oblivion and Skyrim. It has the most interesting story and lore (from my perspective) and most complex society and culture, and the gameplay and UI are the neatest (with the exception of combat). The game isn't perfect, and Oblivion and Skyrim aren't bad, but I consider Morrowind the best (and I started with Skyrim, then played Oblivion, then bought Morrowind).

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that I'm confused as to why people act like Morrowind has no bugs and wasn't dumbed down at all.

I've never heard anyone saying Morrowind has no bugs.

I prefer third person too, but I never manage to fight effectively using that option, mostly because I am always missing the targets without the little cross in the middle of the screen. So sad I always have to switch to first person when enemies are nearby.