[Javaun Thompson]

So, what do you think? I've gotten into this discussion before, with many people, and have seen it happen on the forums at many times.

I think we aren't dying, and never will, we sometimes grow less active then other times, but in the past two days, the forums have sparked new life, threads get bumped down to the third page without any posts, and if you leave for an hour, or even a few minutes, you'll miss something important. Look at the Super Mario bros for the SNES community, they are alive, and have been for many years, if an "old" game can stay alive for that long, then surely we can too.

So then, now it's your turn, will we die? Are we dying? Are we already dead (whoever votes that is crazy )?

[Kate Murrell]

I long ago accepted the fact that eventually, I will die. I'm assuming some angry shader will come back and take its vengeance for sloppy code.

As for Morrowind, I expect it to outlast me.

[Vahpie]

Morrowind has been going strong for this long and there are still many awesome projects in development, so maybe someday, but definitely not yet.

[Jason King]

In another thread, Fliggerty said:
"I think it's going to die right after Diablo II dies."

I think that's probably true.

Edit: I get the sense I was misunderstood. What I was trying to say is that classic games, like Morrowind and Diablo2 and the oft-mentioned and apt Mario Brothers, have a LONG lifespan. And as long as someone is playing Morrowind, someone is modding it. So I don't think we have anything to worry about just yet.

Edit 2: Thinking about it some more, I suspect we will see another huge surge of interest and new modders when Morrowind is released as freeware...

[Rhi Edwards]

In another thread, Fliggerty said:
"I think it's going to die right after Diablo II dies."

I think that's probably true.

I disagree.

[Aliish Sheldonn]

Would you care to elaborate?

-edit- hmm that sounded kind of hostile, though it wasn't meant that way; I'm just curious.

[Laura Samson]

I've been playing the game for 7 years, but modding for only about 1 year.
Modding has revitalized my passion for the game, and will easily add another 7 years for me.

Oblivion didn't stop MW, so i doubt much else will. I'll always come back to it, but I'm the type of person who stil plays my NES games sometimes, so I am just naturally an old-school gamer.

I don't know how people can look at MGE or MWSE or the new animations that are being created etc. etc. and think the community has died.

[Ysabelle]

every few years we a get thread like this. In the dawn of oblivion these threads were common, the same for fallout and when D3 was announced

back then we said morrowind modding would survive and here we are still going strong.

i think that if at least one person still mods morrowind, or one person still plays with mods in their game then the modding community will still be around.

[Krystal Wilson]

The Morrowind modding community will die.

Maybe not soon (probably not), maybe not in the next 5 years, but eventually morrowind as a game will be superseded.

As morrowind becomes older and older the number of people who have first hand contact with it will decline as it disappears from shop shelves and fewer and fewer people will be bitten by the morrowind bug. While there will always be people who happen to stumble across morrowind a tiny trickle of new interest will not be enough to sustain the community that currently exists.

The sharp drop in the activity of this board after the release of oblivion is an insight into what will happen to a greater or lesser extent every time a new RPG is released. As the morrowind community grows older and smaller the incentive to release mods form public consumption will decrease which in turn will mean that the attractiveness level of morrowind will stagnate. for example MGE helped morrowind to preserve fans in the face of newer games with better graphics, but as the community shrinks the likelihood of another MGE like mod being released falls due to the lower number of modders and the fall in interaction between them.

What I am trying to say is that the Morrowind community, no matter how much we shout otherwise, will decline because it is based on a rapidly aging game that will attract fewer new gamers and will struggle even with mods to compete against new releases.

[Alan Cutler]

snip

While you bring up good points, this is all tied to the commercial success of the game, if Bethesda advertised a modded Morrowind, it would spark lots of interest, and make the community bustle like crazy, we've seen this with the steam copy of Morrowind, but not to the fullest extent.

While gamers won't always notice the game, there still will always be this community behind it, no matter how small it will be at certain times, we'll stay alive.

[Lifee Mccaslin]

no, morrowind communities would probably survive my self, compared to another classic games totally unrelated to TES, Unreal 1 are still moving,well it aint moving very much but it does comes additions to it now and then,have place on forums(among the other unreals though) but anyway some life.

Guess morrowind end up similar with the rest of current tes-titles in one pack,and many years from now some old grumpy men and women gather together in found memories

[stevie critchley]

it'll die when I will die, and I have no intention to leave soon....

[cassy]

No it wont, or well we wont.

[Heather M]

it'll die when I will die, and I have no intention to leave soon....

And people say I'm a self advertisemant.

[yermom]

All I know is I come up here every couple of months and I can't keep up with all the recent awesomeness that has been going on. Don't think that counts as dying.

[Del Arte]

if new gamers are not noticing the game then community will enter decline as ppl gradually leave for various reasons (new releases, having 18 kids, dying, swearing off technology and moving to the south pole etc)

as the community declines a variety of things will happen:

1. the Chance of one of the dwindling number of modders coming up with a mod that will entice new ppl to play morrowind reduces
2. the chance of a new modder arriving and doign the above dwindles
3. the incentive for one of the remaining modders to release their mod reduces as the number of prospective dl'ers falls
4. fewer new mods = fewer new modders
5. as fewer mods are released the "community" will gradually die thru lack of stimulation

[Nicholas C]

considering that even the old DooM games (1,2) are still being played and modded beyond recognition, I don't see any reason why Morrowind would ever cease to be
sure there will be better RPG's, but the vast amount on information and the vast amount of mods available, still makes Morrowind "my" personal preference in RPG's (unless I play some Gothic 1)

and as Tamriel Rebuilt and "Animated Morrowind", etc., etc. etc keep bringing life, quality and quantity to the game; I don't see any reason why this would "die out"

sure, we're not as big as the DooM community (I think); but there's always "something" to modify in Morrowind, "something" to add, etc.

[Matt Fletcher]

I can't be sure, but then again - who can. I think our community will last long, but not forever. The problem is the slow degradation of games. With every year and next step in technology, they get prettier, but not smarter. The next generation of gamers is ... I gotta put this in a non-offensive way.. well they haven't seen much intelligence in the games, so they can't be "intelligent gamers", unlike us, who had to use our imagination along the games we went through. Next-gen games does (or tries to do) everything for the gamer. This creates an allegory - same thing happened with books, when television arrived. The characters were handed to people on a plate, they needn't to be imagined.

It's inevitable, future comes, but future doesn't necessary means improvement.

(Personally I'll stick to good ol' Morry foreva 'n eva. And when I get a better system, I'll just start to acquaint the deeps of MGE)

[Anthony Diaz]

I honestly only think the modding comunity will die if TES V is better then morrowind and CS is simaler. Otherwise it wont die untill TES VI...

[BaNK.RoLL]

I can't be sure, but then again - who can. I think our community will last long, but not forever. The problem is the slow degradation of games. With every year and next step in technology, they get prettier, but not smarter. The next generation of gamers is ... I gotta put this in a non-offensive way.. well they haven't seen much intelligence in the games, so they can't be "intelligent gamers", unlike us, who had to use our imagination along the game. Next-gen games does (or tries to do) everything for the gamer. This creates an allegory - same thing happened with books, when television arrived. The characters were handed to people on a plate, they needn't to be imagined.

I agree, the coming gamers don't see as much intelligence in games, this is partially why we see first person shooter games being so popular, while they are limited in aspects of story, etc. they are still some of the most popular games nowadays.

[Bethany Watkin]

Of course, like everything, it will die eventually. But not soon. Damn, we still need to finish Mainland Morrowind...

It's interesting to note that Oblivion didn't kill Morrowind. I'd argue that's because it had quite a different appeal (more simplistic, easier to get into, more focus on action). So perhaps if Bethesda were to turn back to a more Morrowind-esque TES-V by returning to in-depth character building and a more challenging, free-form experience, then that might sap the Morrowind modding community. Games that stay alive only stay alive because people keep playing them, either out of nostalgia, or because the game genuinely offers something that no later game has been able to. I think Morrowind's continuing popularity is because it does offer a lot that its successor doesn't. However, if another game were to come along that offers everything Morrowind has and more, then that appeal will be lost and perhaps the community will die, or at least shrink significantly.

Having said that, I suspect bethesda will not return to a more in-depth game. The sales figures clearly show that by making a simpler game you can appear to a larger market.

Edit: damn, I need to type faster..

[Kelly Upshall]

Maybe it will die sometime, but not in the foreseeable future. I?m coming back to the game and these forums every now and then for the last 6 or 7 years! I?ve never had more than a couple of months without playing MW. And I think there are more than enough ppl like me who really love this game. Til now I found no game that has kept my interest as long as MW. I don?t see the community dying, not at all.

[Francesca]

if new gamers are not noticing the game then community will enter decline as ppl gradually leave for various reasons (new releases, having 18 kids, dying, swearing off technology and moving to the south pole etc)

as the community declines a variety of things will happen:

1. the Chance of one of the dwindling number of modders coming up with a mod that will entice new ppl to play morrowind reduces
2. the chance of a new modder arriving and doign the above dwindles
3. the incentive for one of the remaining modders to release their mod reduces as the number of prospective dl'ers falls
4. fewer new mods = fewer new modders
5. as fewer mods are released the "community" will gradually die thru lack of stimulation

I agree with most of these points.

For me, it's already starting to happen. There have not been any WIPs on large quest mods that entail companions and romance outside of the Great House Romantic Subplots (what happened to that, anyway?) and Dance of the Three-Legged Guar. Dance is too silly for me. Well done, but not my flavor. GHRS seems more up my alley, but I've not heard anything on it in ages. There has never been an 'honorable' vampire clan/coven done for Morrowind that I've ever stumbled on, outside of -questionably- TU2, and that suffers the same problem as Dance. Campy. Silly. Not my taste.

Most of the mods you see these days are graphical, or only add dungeons and smaller things. I'm wanting to keep expanding on story and large companion quests, but there seem to be fewer and fewer of those as time is passing, and for me, that's about all that drew me to modded Morrowind. New races, hairs, faces, clothes are always lovely, but I've always been a heavily story-driven gamer, and unless I take up the pen and give myself migraines working out teleportation scripts, I don't think I'm ever going to see a story/companion mod on the order I want ever again, and that makes me quite sad.

[Rhysa Hughes]

It's like the Adoring Fan; the community will never die.

We're still modding, and that's what counts. I see at least one thread a week (sometimes more) from someone new to mods looking for suggestions.

Heck, even Daggerfall is far from dead. http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1017314 is going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. :drool:

[Timara White]

It will surely dwindle as NovemberRain said. But it is an eternal classic, so much as (the original) Doom still has modders, it will linger on among enthusiasts for a very long time.