Morrowind: Combat - 4 Quests - 5 World - 5
Oblivion: Combat - 4 Quests - 4 World - 3

Morrowind:
Combat: 3
Quests: 5
World: 5

Oblivion:
Combat: 4
Quests: 3
World: 4

Morrowind has "ok" combat, it isn't good, but it could be worse.
Oblivion has good combat, it works. The Deadly Reflex mod makes it better. (I like this mod so much I almost forgot that it was a mod, it was in the game already)

Morrowind's quests are amazing, there are a lot, and you can't complete them all on one playthrough.
Oblivion quests were average, some were boring, but the good ones raise the score from 2.

Morrowind has one of the best game worlds I've ever experienced, there is almost every type of environment in the game.
Oblivion may have a similar looking world all the way through, but since it looks like Northern California, I have to give it a 4, for familiarity.

Thanks fireal, Tausig2, and GT409!

Morrowind:
2 combat
3 quests
5 world

Oblivion:
3 combat
3 quests
3 world

The combat in MW was "adequate" to resolve encounters, and did that quite well. Beyond that, it wasn't all that well animated or self-explanatory (especially because of the lack of a "miss" animation), and it took a few tries to figure out that spamming the button was a bad idea. Oblivion's combat was marginally better. It was a lot more "entertaining", but didn't really depend all that much on the character's stats and abilities. It was a decent "FPS" combat system that didn't work well as an RPG mechanism.

Quests were six of one, half a dozen of the other. Each game had its good and bad quests, and while OB had a few exceptional thieving and assassination quests, others were just "follow the big compass arrow and do what we told you". Morrowind had more than its fair share of simple "fetch" quests, especially at the starting faction ranks, although there were occasionally some odd twists and unexpected conflicts of interest to make you think about what you were trying to do, with a few more surprises or things to puzzle over in the higher level quests, and there were FAR more quests than in OB.

The island of Vvardenfell, while represented in crude and blocky polygons in MW, was unique and interesting, with a lot of apparent thought put into location design and placement of individual items. Oblivion, with its wavy grass to hide the underlying terrain, much higher polygon count to make things look nicer in general, and pre-constructed high-resolution "tiles" to quickly build cookie-cutter dungeons, just didn't have the sense of mystery and wonder that the earlier game did, and was mostly artistically "dull" in comparison.

None of this even remotely touches on overall "gameplay", which I felt highly favored MW. A lot of OB felt more like an "activity" than a game, because success at tasks was guaranteed, and both challenge and reward were always adjusted for the same bland degree of difficulty. MW frequently made you EARN what you got, and the sense of accomplishment was far sweeter than by having everything just handed to you for following the arrows.

Thanks Kovacius!

Morrowind:
Combat: 1
Quests: 5
World: 5
Oblivion: all 5's

Only thing that irks me the most was the Combat in morrowind i can hardly get in a hit i think everything else says it all

Morrowind
Combat - 4
Quests - 4
World - 5

Oblivion
Combat - 4
Quests - 3
World - 2

I'm one of the odd people who actually liked Morrowind's combat. If you svck at using something to fight, you should svck at using something to fight. I also liked Oblivion's combat though(Manual block and spellcasting not needing to be "readied").
Questwise, Morrowind's made sense, but I knocked a point off for the terrible directions you could sometimes get. Oblivion had some good quests and some terrible ones, so I put it at average.
World. Morrowind created a world. I had to learn about it or I'd be completely lost. I actually felt like a stranger in a strange land, and the handcrafted touches really made the place shine. Oblivion made me feel like I was playing LotR but with ES races. And pretty much every "dungeon" and landscape seemed same-ish. Barely anyone acted like there was a crisis, and politics was basically non-existent.

Thanks ArenthianSniper and Cecilff2!

Morrowind:

Combat: 3
Quests: 4
World: 5

Oblivion:

Combat: 4
Quests: 4
World: 3

Off topic, to the people that rated Oblivion's world higher than Morrowind's, why? Is it because it's prettier? Or because it's less exotic and more normal? Or what?

Morrowind:

Combat - 3
Quests - 3
World - 5

Oblivion:

Combat - 4
Quests - 5
World - 4

To me it just felt more alive, Morrowinds world also transitioned too quickly from one environment to another. At some points you can almost stand with one leg in one environment and your other in another, like the world was put together by puzzle pieces from different puzzles. That's my reason anyway :shrug:

Thanks Broken-Scale and shadowbeast368!

All right, I can agree with you on that, I suppose. But that can be mostly attributed to the differing levels of technology, can't it? I mean, people would probably say Oblivion's landscapes transitioned too quickly if it had been released in 2002 (Snow area straight to forest, forest straight to swamp).

Morrowind
Combat: 3 - Combat was OK, I liked the dice rolls and character skill importance.
Quests: 4 -- Quests were great with non-linear great conflicted stories behind them.
World: 5 --- Fantastic, moody, dreamy, unique...

Oblivion
Combat: 2 - Level scaling and non-importance of character skills ruined it for me.
Quests: 1 -- Less consequential, non-conflicting, and Hand Holding!!!
World: 3 --- OK, and nice graphics.

Skyrim, prediction
Combat: 5 - Right on the spot!
Quests: 5 -- Versatile roles and dynamic quests!
World: 4 --- Looks great, if not that much unique.

Thanks Sphagne!
I agree with your Skyrim prediction.
Though, the setting of it is exactly what I've always wanted, so I might even give the world a 5. :flamethrower:

Morrowind
Combat: 4 -somewhat out of my chars direct control with block,no zoom on bows but have crossbows,throwing weapons and spears.
Quests: 5 -couldn′t be much better.
World: 5 - almost perfection.

Oblivion
Combat: 5 -more controll,and zoom on bows outweights other drawbacks with missing armour,weapon and classes (shortblade,longblade etc)
Quests: 4 - a tad to easy with the compass and all.
World: 4 -slightly feel of being small with fasttravel and viewing distances,put SI in there and it gets a 5.

Thanks jaxawier!

Morrowind

Combat: 2
Quests: 3
World: 5

Oblivion

Combat: 4
Quests: 5.
World: 4

Based on results from this survey I have come up with a final 'rating' of each game so they can be easily compared:

Morrowind: 4.2/5 (84/100)

Oblivion 3.3/5 (66/100)

People were 18% more satisfied with Morrowind than Oblivion. This is scary, because Oblivion was developed years after Morrowind came out, and it got WORSE?! And not just by 1 or 2 percent, by neerly 20%!

I hope Bethesda sees this and really thinks about it, and what they did wrong. That way we can have better games in the future.

Your fairly new to this forum so you may not have known, but this forum is mainly comprised of Morrowind fans, seemingly anyways.

The word "better" in this case is subjective because it's based off of peoples opinions. You might find, if you tested everybody in the world who has played both Morrowind and Oblivion, that people will generally prefer Oblivion. But that's just my speculation. It seems, to me, that the "hardcoe" crowd tends to enjoy Morrowind more for it's depth, and people enjoy who Oblivion tend to because it's more accessible, and generally easier to just jump into for a couple of hours.

IMHO I think Oblivion upgraded a huge number of things, but it also scrapped many things that made Morrowind a great game in order to appease the many of complaints they received.

Morrowing had a better, more varied world. sure.
Oblivion had a lot better combat.
They both are about even on the quests relatively straight forward RPG stuff. Neither was particularly poor or great.

But what about character customization/control( from character creation, to spell creation, to enchanting).
Oblivion was much better.

And immersion graphics/sound/the ability of the game to make you feel like you are "there".
Oblivion wins here again IMO.

If the world is engaging /interactive enough, I don't care about quests. I'll go do my own thing.

MORROWIND
Combat:3
Quests:4
World:5

OBLIVION
Combat:3
Quests:5
World:1

Lets see...

Combat,MW3,OB3:
They're the same? Ohh,that was unexpected! Indeed.Morrowind didn't have great animations perhaps,and dice roll wasn't that great,but to me,MW let the player have more control on combat.
-First of all,weapons had much more detailed damage system.There was "chop-slash-thrust" system for everything,and you'd need to know what you were supposed to use.You could thrust an axe,but it wouldn't be effective.Hoever,you could use it to keep the enemy at distance and stagger him,while you'd run away to say,drink a potion.It was more satisfying to kill my downed enemy with a chop,even if I was using a slashing sword.Or kill your enemy in the face with a warhammer thrust,was a finishing move IMO.Not to mention since YOU were trying to swing the weapon in the most effective way,it was more rewarding when you learned how to use it actually.Oblivion didn't have these "previlages" to me.Now that I think of it,I should have voted 4 for Morrowind and 3 for Oblivion!

Quests,MW4,OB5:
Even though Morrowind's story was much better,the advanced AI of Oblivion made the quests more fun.NPCs moving around,and being less static managed to save Oblivion!

World,MW5,OB1:
Morrowind's world design was the thing that made me fall in love with it.Every single area had its own vibe,and was not like any place on Earth.To me,Morrowind is a world design masterpiece,and of course has the BEST world design in ALL OF THE TES GAMES.
So,Oblivion's medieval Europe and dull forests couldn't come near.To keep Oblivion's score 1,I'd have to give Morrowind a 100.

Morrowind
Combat:2
Quests: 4
World: 4

Oblivion
Combat: 4
Quests: 4
World: 4

I found Morrowinds combat extremely frustrating. Quests and world were quite nice but the world was a bit ahead of the curve on the brown.

Oblivions combat was vastly improved while setting and quests were pretty much the same but in higher graphical fidelity.

MW
Combat 3
Quests 4
World 5

Oblivion
Combat 3
Quests 3
World 2

Combat in Oblivion seemed better at 1st but quickly got very repetitive and boring (just like MWs ).
Both games had good quests. Oblivions were better written but MWs many more factions with their own questlines meant characters with similar skills and attributes could feel quite different. Also the MW MQ was much better.
Oblivions lore was much less interesting than MW.
Oblivion never got beyond being an ok game for me and I doubt I'll replay it much whereas I still play MW fairly often.

As Shadowbeast pointed out, the forum tends to reflect a skewed sample of the gaming community. Most of the posters here are the "fanatics", as opposed to the "occasional" players who don't care enough to post here. Morrowind hit it big with the more avid fanbase, and is heavily represented here on the forums by the players who still play, or at least recall it fondly and are still following the series closely. Oblivion did better with the less-extreme or part-time gamers, who make up a large portion of the sales base (difficult to judge how large because fo their silence), but are under-represented here. Problem is, they're not as "reliable" a market for future releases as a dedicated following.



OB had "more interactive" combat, and was "better" from a FPS perspective, but it didn't reflect the skills and abilities of the character as well as MW's system, so it was a "worse" RPG" combat system.
Character customization in OB was better from a visual perspective, but the heavy reduction in skills, and especially the "irrelevance" of skills like Security and Speechcraft (which were in effect "replaced" by mini-games and player skills), made it a lot less meaningful. That's not "better", just "different" at best.

Enchanting went from something that any character could do to a limited degree, but could become insanely powerful if you worked at it in MW, to something that "any barbarian" could do with equal ease to a trained Mage in OB, by using Sigil Stones. The types of enchantments went fom 3 (Cast on Use, Cast on Strike, and Constant Effect) down to 2 (no Cast on Use) in OB. Taking Enchantment as a skill in OB simply didn't pay, and my attempt at playing an Enchanter character came to a quick end as I realized that it was pointless. That again isn't my idea of "better".
Spell creation was easy in MW, all you had to do was pay a small fee to the proper Mages Guild member and you could have any spell tailored to your needs, regardless of level or class. Casting it was another story, and required something called "skill", and possibly another called "practice". How is OB's system better?

Morrowind made me feel like I was "there". Oblivion made me feel like I was "here", but with supernatural powers and Daedra running around. Better graphics, yes. Better sound, maybe. Cyrodiil was boring, though. The lack of "working" transportation, lack of farms that farmed (except for the nicely done area around Skingrad), the lack of mines that produced anything other than Goblins, and other such details left me feeling like it was the aftermath of a disaster that exterminated the population and left it in ruins, rather than the busy and industrious heart of a still-thriving Empire just past the height of its power.

The focus of the two games was totally different, and what one player likes about one and hates about the other is exactly what another player hates about the one and likes about the other. That's the downside of Bethesda's attempt to broaden the marketbase of the game by making it more FPS-like, at the expense of RPG play.