I started this game series with Daggerfall. I was cautious about Morrowind after it came out because people claimed it was a "dumbed down " version of Daggerfall. I still bought Morrowind, paying full price for it. No regrets. Morrowind deserves to be called a great product. Morrowind made me forget about Daggerfall for a long time.

Oblivion I was mega-cautious about, because there were just so many complaints. When I'd read these complaints I was reminded of several things-
1. Origin's mistake on making Ultima 8 the way they made it. If a certain mistake can happen once, it can happen again.
2. Many of the gripes I had with Daggerfall seemed to be re-visited with complaints people had with Oblivion
3. The popular trend with companies to go too far with simplifying a product when one "more simplified" product in a product line is a success.

Just recently, I finally broke down and bought Oblivion GOTY for about $20. I am glad that's all I paid for it. Everything I was afraid of proved to be true. Oh, yes, I was blown away by the trees swaying in the wind, the grassy fields, etc. But, after taking a few seconds to gape at the game world, I set out to play the game and was very much dissapointed.

No, I was not expecting Oblivion to be "Morrowind II". However, Oblivion does feel like "Daggerfall II" which I certainly did not want.
In Daggerfall, if you walked through the game world, you'd mostly see just trees, rocks and plants. The game world felt rather empty. Oblivion feels kinda like this, just without the pixels. Morrowind's game world felt much more alive with all it's environments, from the snowfall in Solstheim, to the island hopping of Azura's Coast right down to the blight storms of Red Mountain. I see some variation as I travel around in Oblivion's game world, so it's not just terrible mind you. It's just that it kinda has that empty feeling that Daggerfall had.
Things seem to fall through the floor/ground a lot in Oblivion. It was so bad in Daggerfall, people coined the phrase "falling into the void"

That's just a few examples. I could honestly and truthfully go on and on about the similarities I see in Oblivion and Daggerfall. So, understand that I'm not comparing Oblivion to Morrowind. I am, however, comparing Oblivion to Daggerfall because I see a lot of the old, irritating trends. I don't know if Bethisda consciously meant to re-create Daggerfall of a kind, but it shouldn't have happened. Daggerfall was great for it's time, but that was the past. Morrowind told me they learned from their mistakes. Oblivion makes me wonder if they really did.

Whether someone prefers Oblivion or someone prefers Morrowind, one thing I've seen some people agree on is that they think Morrowind had too many skills. I just shake my head at this. I've said this before and I'll say it again. Morrowind did not have too many skills. It had just enough. It was perfect. Having roughly 4 or so skills per attribute meant you had options for training your character. My characters rarely used short blades. Yet, every one of my characters trained the short blade skill at least a little when I felt like I wanted to work on my character's speed attribute. Only time I ever had problems leveling up my character in Morrowind was when I was first learning the game. Beyond that, I never worried about how my character was going to level up and I loved that fact. I could just sit back and play the game. Now, I hear people getting all excited about sneaking around in someone's bedroom in Oblivion because they want to train the sneak skill in order to improve their character's agility. I'm like.. wha? You're joking, right? Apparently not.

Do I need to continue? I could go on and on if anyone wanted me to. I doubt anyone does. I think the point is made.

My point is this-
Bethisda simplified the overall game system when going from Daggerfall to Morrowind. When Morrowind was a smash success, I believe they tried to take it a step further to try and create more success, so they simplified Oblivion even more than Morrowind was. Essentially, they went too far, which I've seen companies do before. They took something that wasn't broken and tried to fix it. A lot of those fun, little things that Morrowind had (that nobody talks about) are gone and a lot of Daggerfall's drab irritations are back. If anyone remembers the company Origin, I think I saw them make the same "too much simplifying" mistake with Ultima 8. What's very ironic is they seem to have had identical strategies in game themes. Like Bethisda, Origin tried to make their "more simplified" product more cool by making it apocalyptic. Thus, in Oblivion you have, well, oblivion and the threat of the end of the word, etc. In Ultima 8, you had pentagrams, the eternal twilight and broken world of Pagan. Origin had the Guardian threatening to eat your world of Britania, Bethisda has the Prince Of Destruction threatening to eat the world of Tamriel. Identical strategies and identical game themes. Perhaps Bethisda simply repeated Origin's mistake. Look where Origin is now. What else can I say?

I've recently heard rumors that Bethisda is going to have an independant game studio develop TES 5. If so, then that tells me that _someone_ in Bethisda also things Oblivion was a failure, even though any moderator or company employee might rush to deny it.

If ANY of this is correct, any at all.. then Bethisda honestly does not need to go in the direction it's going in. Don't waste time with other companies and create more potential cost than you have to. Bethisda can re-create previous success by focusing on just that- what was successful. If Bethisda spent any kind of strategy revolving around customer complaints, then they need to stop and think. You can't base even 20% of your stragegy on customer complaints. If you base your strategy on failure, then more failure is what you will make. Compare the number of complaints to the number of products sold while remembering the old rule that the satisfied customer rarely speaks. Focus on success. Take your most successful product and simply ask yourself what was fun about it. If you can't answer that question, then go play more D&D for god's sake. Previous Elder Scrolls titles felt like they were made by gamers. Oblivion feels like it was made by Bill Gates.

I take that back. Even Bill Gates realised that pop-ups were enough of an odd, little annoyance that he added pop-up blocker to Internet Explorer. *Shrug*

Ok, I've wasted enough of your time. I'm out. Go ahead and bash me. I'm ready for it.

I don't think Morrowind had too many skills.

The biggest thing, to date, that keeps Oblivion collecting dust in my home is the small handful skills. I can't have any variety in my characters.

It worries me when people say it had too many skills, seriously what kind of gamer would want less choice?.
I dont know how you could ever have "too many skills" (as long as they werent completely useless), it just means more varied playthroughs with more distinct characters.

If they bring back the missing skills (and alot of other things removed in oblivion) in TESV i will be extatic.

... having the minotaur follow you into the inn whereby it goes on to kill two of the poor guests trying desperately to defend themselves

Pretty awesome indeed

Morrowind is my first and only.

There is enough room in my heart for Oblivion, but it shall never quite have the profound effect that Morrowind had.

Perhaps you're right, but Morrowind is just fantastic.

The archer guy outside the inn always distracted the minotaur.

Morrowind was my first

Theres something about Morrowind which was such an incredible experience for me, it was my first RPG, and my friends all played it.

It was just an amazing experience that I've never had since and realise I never will because it was so unique to me then it was as a game if that makes any sense.

I enjoyed Oblivion but it didn't feel as if I was in the same realm as what I played before, different environment and all that so maybe it was just me.

I played Oblivion first, and then went back and played the others. I would never have done that if Oblivion was a loser of a game. It rocked (and still rocks). But after getting a taste of the other ones, I see what people say about Morrowind. I see the progression/evolution of the games. Morrowind has a depth to it, the story is more engrossing, the NPC's have more to say (not just a one-line mostly vapid rumor), two or three times the amount of quests, the variety of factions, the atmosphere, there are more skill choices, it doesn't hold your hand nearly as much as Oblivion. It is more of an RPG than Oblivion. Over time and exposure to all four main games, Morrowind has become my favorite.

I'm an old school PnP RPG'er. Morrowind is more RPG-like than Oblivion. It's only natural that I would gravitate toward it. But please don't get me wrong, Oblivion is still enough of an RPG for me to freakin' love it.

Daggerfall's dungeons are a hair-pulling blast. Just thought i'd add that.

I played Arena back in the mid 90's. I beat it after playing it for a couple months. It was one of the first games that managed to scare the crap out of me. Who can remember turning a corner in a dungeon and hearing "ZOW!!!"?

I eagerly awaited Daggerfall, but I couldn't get into the clunky interface, so I never did play it through. I spent $80 for the collector's edition. I still have it, but the books and maps have since been thrown away.

Morrowind was also eagerly awaited and I preordered it. I played it for a couple months and got my character up high, saw amazing things and experienced some really neat stuff--then my hard drive crashed and I lost my character. The thought of starting over and building back up seemed daunting, so I played with the editor and gave myself some nice soul gems to get the best effects. I explored and used my goodies for awhile, then stopped playing it.

Oblivion, also preordered. I built my character up, made my way through the thieves guild missions and hit a rut when I was made aware that the game scaled mobs to your level. I lost interest and stopped playing it.

There is still plenty in Morrowind and Oblivion I haven't explored. I own the complete games and expansions on Steam, so I can play them at any time. I haven't gotten to the point where I want to dig into one of them yet, but I have them if I do.

You may be wondering why I posted if I'm not currently playing. These games were ground-breaking for the genre. They are classics, despite the flaws. I have fond memories of them all and I look forward to the next installment. Hopefully I'll find the energy to make it through the previous games plotlines before the new one comes out.