Wow

These forums have been around for much longer than whenever the last topic dates in here. There were a multitude of topics that have been lost. You are not seeing everything when it would have been as popular as Skyrim, or even Oblivion for that matter.

short answer is no, because the sad truth it is more profitable to sell dumbed down stuff for the [censored] kids rather than put effort into a work of art they will hate because they gotta use their brain

Oh look here, I found this mod for Skyrim. Didn't test it yet, but it sounds promising: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=11135

While I never played this game until this month, I can see these more hardcoe role playing games being of plenty of appeal now. The people we see at the game stores buying games we think are mindless may just like that kind of thing. RPGs have always been a big thing, same with strategy games. There's still a large enough audience to appeal to as far as stuff like Daggerfall and Morrowind goes. hardcoe RPGs are things people would check out today if the game had promos that showed off the parts that will interest people instantly like variety of things one can do, the elements people will find interest in such as a mythical creature we love to put in fiction too much or even a clip of the culture of the game world could be shown such as how market places look and how towns are structured. Maybe even putting in a system similar to Borderlands's randomly generated guns could help make the promos get people interested.

Marketing is how a new IP or anything gets more people interested in it. Poor attempts at marketing have killed the success of many games. One of my all time favorite games, Psychonauts, wasn't really marketed well I'm assuming since it would have likely been a game people would find interest in. Okami sold badly because it had poor marketing. Two good games that were hurt by poor marketing.

Marketing doesn't mean painting buses with the name of the product on it. Just spread the word through promos uploaded onto Youtube. Make ads that could appear on sites to promote the game. Make Facebook pages for the game's characters. Just because it doesn't seem like something the public will like doesn't mean it will be hated. I have tried enjoying the Assassin's Creed games, and find them dull. The series is apparently popular despite the weird pacing and slowness of the first game.

Um, Skyrim is not a graphics intensive game.

Morrowind had great graphics for its time.

I'd say people these days care less about graphics with the increasing success of indie games and the current (read: Old) consoles limiting the usage of the latest and greatest.

Awesome. It's amazing how much difference those few lines of text can make in not being totally dependent on the quest marker/quest arrow system. It seems so lazy that there was no directional text included in the first place, it's almost like the Skyrim developers intentionally left it out so you are *forced* to use the quest compass.

Once again since the release of Morrowind; "thank the Divines for modders."

Why do I get the funny feeling that there were at least 200,000 Morrowind posts "back in the day" just about the Dwemer Puzzlebox, and another 200,000 about "I can't hit anything"?

Looking at the huge Skyrim numbers, I can see why Bethesda had to clear out some of the old posts. Oblivion probably had a significantly greater number of posts over a couple of years than Skyrim has managed in a few months, and I can't even imagine the total figures over the last decade from the Morrowind mod forum alone. Granted, the popularity of the internet has grown steadily, so there are more people online to post than 10 years ago, and the total number of computer/console gamers has steadily risen as well, so the number of posts for any newer title are going to be higher than for a comparable title several years ago.

Despite that, am I the only one who'd like to see the TOTAL numbers of posts for the TES games (not just since the last clearout), just for curiosity?

How does anyone really know this is true? As the poster before you mentioned, there has not been a game produced for this market in nearly a decade. Sure, it won't be as big a market as the casual market, but too small to profit from? How does anyone know? Is there some statistical data out there I am not aware of?

Morrowind passed the 4 million sales mark a few years back ,so a guess of total sales in the region of 5 - 6 million by now seems fair IMO which suggests to me the market for a well designed open ended RPG is sales expectations perhaps between 1 - 3 million copies in the short term. If the game has a construction set and is succesful enough to warrant the making of a couple of expansions and spawn a large modding community that subsequently produces cartloads of additional content then long term sales can reasonably be expected to be a few million more.

However, for an RPG the success of Morrowind has been truly unique which most wannabe developers of RPGs can only ever dream of and never mimic , so understandably the tendency has been to dumb down RPG elements and spice up the action and visuals to entice the mainstream gaming market.

Sales figures for Morrowind show that the potential market for RPG's runs well into the millions and certainly big enough for low/medium budget titles to make a profit, however the fact that all the old developers RPG's are either long gone or making different genres indicates that making a financially successful RPG is not that easy.

Morrowind had the sense of mystery and unknown the other don't have.

It's all how you see it. Personally I don't think the new TES games are dumbed down. They can't keep releasing Morrowind over and over.

I don't think anyone's asking for Morrowind 2. If Skyrim, for example, had the same setting/graphics + the gameplay of Morrowind, it would most definitely be my favorite TES yet. As it is now it is super fun but it feels totally different from what I always perceived TES to be.

I dunno. I see Skrim as a lot like FF. Not in the linearity (Skrim isn't linear), but in the way that it feels like at every turn it's STYLE rather than HEART. I've never had a character in Skrim that I gave a crap about. They don't have anything going on in their lives other than maybe one or two things. It's all about what would look cool, not about making you feel for anything going on in the world. I feel the same way about FF as a series (at least after the SNES games. They got less and less about putting something at stake for the characters and much more about making cool scenes or having realistic looking Anime Hair. In Skyrim, it's about giving you something "cool" to do, but without any connection at all to the person giving you that job. There were events like that in Morrowind, even not connected to a quest -- go to any farm or mine, steal the slave key and free a slave -- more emotion from the experience of setting a poorly drawn sprite free from a bad master than saving any city from a dragon. It's not that dragons aren't "cool", but that nothing is at stake -- I've never seen a person hurt from a dragon, and after the dragon is gone, it's like it was never there in the first place.

Morrowind was more like Suikoden. Poor graphics (at least compared to FF), the quests weren't quite as interesting, but it made up for it by being the RPG with heart. You cared about the land you were saving, most of the people you recruit for your fortress had either very strong personalities or a strong reason to want to solve the main quest. That was morrowind. Not quite the big boy, not a lot of flash, in fact, anti-flash, I'd say, especially in the walking animations. But everything had either a personality of its own or a reason to care about it's own connection to the story. If you do something, or an event happens, you're going to see something change. It has a personality and a heart.

It just seems as that's what people want sometimes. Personally, Oblivion was the one who was different for me. Morrowind was pretty good, but Skyrim has a more interesting world to me. I get drawn into the atmosphere immediately. But to each his own.

Totally agree with this.

To me, Skyrim has the best and most interactive world in a TES game yet. It's a shame that the quests and NPCs are totally uninteresting, because the world can only hold my attention for so long.

Same here. A lot of the characters from Morrowind are memorable, even years later. And I care very much about my character and develop her backgroudn story more and more. With OB & SK, I don't even know who my character is. I just type some generic name for him/her. I could write one but I don't feel the connection with OB or SK like I do with Morrowind. I play OB and SK to see what the games and quests within them are like and how well the atmosphere is and environment is designed. But I don't play them to experience a meaningful story, like I do with Morrowind.








Well said, Slartibartfast. It pains me to say that you're most likely correct. The most popular genre of this generation is action/adventure. Since Bethesda is slowly going more and more down that path, it looks like the classical RPG is dying more and more.

Agreed. I liked the Skyrim Main Quest, but it would have been better if:

1. the pace was slower
2. Bethesda hadn't tried to make it so akin to the Morrowind one. The Battle of Red Mountain blows the Dragon War out of the water and to be honest, Paarth is a bit of Vivec (the treacherous lieutenant type), but that's not really a bad thing since they are alike only in that and tricksters are always fun.

Your opinion is your own and you know it better than I do of course, but...

If the quests and NPCs kind of svck, then there isn't much left in the world to pull you in. The scenery is very pretty, and I like the 'cold, mountainous forest and wilderness' setting a lot. But, the Imperial vs. Stormcloak questline and subplot is incredibly shallow and unsatisfying, the main quest is just okay, though I really liked Paarthunax (sp?). To be completely honest I really had to think for about five minutes to remember Esbern's name, none of the characters grab me while I'll probably always remember Divayth Fyr and that weird arch villain with the Tiki mask we all love. What else is there?

I'd love to see a game of Morrowind's scope, they did the opposite of hand holding. If anything, they blindfold you and kick your ass into the wilderness and make YOU figure it out.

I didn't register until well after Oblivion came out but the first time I went to this forums was sometime in mid 2000s maybe 05 not sure, people were polite there were a lot of welcome threads and I was highly confused by the hyperlinks to fishysticks so I just visited the uesp wiki after that. Lots of people lurk rather than post about games is my point though.

If you compare the Skyrim and Oblivion forum lots of people started posted in Skyrim before it even came out it I followed the Skyrim forum for info for a long time I'm sure tons of posts from before it was released is still in there.

Anyway as for another game like Morrowind I wouldn't bet my right sneaker on it. They try different stuff with all the games just trying to make something a little more fresh and possibly, innovative playing experience they wouldn't want to appear as a stagnant company and roll out elder scrolls modern warfare20 every year.
Morrowind had some great gems in it though. I really miss the map being blank and filling out as it gets explored it was fun comparing my map with a friends just to see what different areas we'd explore and stuff. My friend spent tons of times in the grazelands I spent most of mine in the ashlands, he'd have like massive chunks of solstheim filled in where I'd have a few small trails.

New I shouldn't have wondered into the Morrowind lovers forum Its a great game but Oblivion folks... Oblivion...

(Sorry if I offended anyone)

Yes, I think that's exactly how feel. I dunno, I used to put it down to bethesda dumbing the series down, but Skyrim has a lot of new mechanics that people asked for to improve the gameplay, but it just feels like Bethesd doesn't know what they want the series to be like, as if they've lost their way.

It feels like they were just going through the motions without really understanding the heart that made the previous games fun to play in. Skyrim feels cold in more ways than one.

Not wishing to sound elitist or anything but the average Morrowind player would have spelt 'knew' correctly.

Compared to Morrowind, Oblivion was shallow.
Skyrim is a disaster.
Most RPG elements removed, and what is kept is shallow and unstatisying.
Where Morrowind offered an actual world, with politics and religion and a history, language, everything..
Skyrim looks pretty and thats that.
Im severely dissapointed at the lack of everything in the game, from variety in equipable items, actual dialogue, quests with some bite to them, lore, everything, except the graphics.

I simply will not buy a Bethesda game again if this is what its come to.
I find it staggeringly unbelievable to see the 'progress' in the series from Daggerfall to Skyrim.
Its like comparing a cardboard box filled with wonderous goodies to a cardboard box with pretty stickers on that is empty.

What blows my mind is that when I was playing Morrowind I got the impression of it being a game made by people who loved games.
There was so much freedom, nowhere did the game say 'no you cant go there, no you cant do that'.
At the time I could not wait for the next installment as I seriously thought that things could only get better.
Now delicious freedom such as levitation or enchanting is either removed or completely hard capped and boxed in, now the game tells you every second that, no, you cant do that.
Conversely, everything that you needed to work for is gone. No more doors you cant get past because you dont have the security level, now when you see a locked door you know behind it is a single room, because there simply arent any locked doors in any quest path.
Its saddening, disheartening and annoying.

From what I've seen Skyrim offers a fully functioning world with beautifully crafted landscapes and realistic NPCs.
In Morrowind most of the world-building and storytelling is done through text, and whilst that is good to an extent, I find that when I want to roleplay in a computer game instead of on paper, the main merit is seeing everything your character does come to life. Morrowind's NPCs were little more than stationary text-dispensers. Compared to newer titles it just fails to immerse me in the way that other games do.