I'm a fan of Oblivion and Fallout and recently I put Skyrim on hold after figuring it would be more fun if I waited for more patches and the toolset... So I decided to finally tackle an oldie I heard much about but to my great shame had never actually played.

So I installed Morrowind GOTY, the patches, the official plugins and the amazing graphic overhaul 2.0 from KINGPIX without which this game's visuals would be too offputting... and I embarked on an incredibly epic journey. I wanted to post here to say I -LOVE- the old school, no-holding-your-hand approach to Morrowind and miss it sorely from modern games. As I carefully explore the countryside I know I cant just fast travel back to town anytime its convenient and so preparation and careful training matters. You start out WEAK and have to bribe people for them to even look at you, and that rocks!! None of this "kill dragons straight out of the newbie dungeon" stuff!

But what rocked my boat is that at level 6 I just went back to the first village and heard about an Imperial ruin overran by skeletons and the Ward of Akavir. Boldly, I decided to go and with the little group of adventurers managed to crawl all the way to the depth of this combat-intensive ruin... only to get two-shotted several times in a row by an insanely powerful lich I can't manage to scratch! YESSS!! What happened to the Kangaxx's of this world?! Nowadays games are designed so you can kill anything you see just rushing in

Seems like there's alot more in Morrowind than I ever expected, and I'm having a blast. And now, I have a goal: to return to the depths of Firemoth, avenge my fallen companions and reclaim an artefact from the first challenging foe an RPG has thrown at me in years.

I hope they make games like this again someday.

PS. Bound dagger rocks in this game! As a Breton with Conjuration and Small swords as major skills, I dont even want to carry normal weapons XD

Seems what you're describing is a typical day in Morrowind. . Glad you're enjoying the game, it's about the only game i play now. What race and class are you?

I'm a Breton, and I made a custom class largely out of habit from Oblivion. Picking my own skills seems more fun than using a premade.

I picked Intelligence/Endurance, Apprentice BS, Destruction/Conjuration/Alteration/Small swords/Unarmored as Majors, and Illusion/Restoration/Alchemy/Sneak/Mercantile as minors.

Basically a Mage with some rogue-ish skills, working out pretty nicely so far I must say. Starting with 45 Conjuration and the Bound Dagger spell has been a great synergy with the small blade major. Then again, I dont know the game so maybe there are some glaring mistakes in that list, but that's alright. Part of the charm of a first playthrough

Yeah that lich is no joke. First time I went there, I am mowing down skeletons right and left. All the while thinking " this is pretty easy" even when several skelies attack at once. Then BAM! that lich is lighting me up. I remember just dodging back and forth behind columns just trying to survive (I didn't).

I dont know the game and dont want to spoil my adventure by looking up stuff on the Wiki, but I'm definitely keeping an eye out for lightning resist gear precisely for this

I miss the time when you needed to tailor strategies and tactics to specific encounters. *sigh* I still replay an heavily modded Baldurs Gate every other year...

I'm sure I'm a minority market, but I do believe there's still a way to make intense, challenging RPGs even with modern graphics. Someday, someone will pick up this mantle.

<sub>Its not just the "no hand-holding" approach thats missing from modern games. Its the story and depth.
Skyrim for me is a vast land of repetition. Blizzard went ahead and ruined Diablo 3. Dungeons and Dragons went ahead and made Neverwinter into an MMO. Ubisoft turned Sam Fisher from a cool, calculating, and patient spy, into a tempermental, heartless killer, and completely changed the gameplay and the overall vibe of the game.

Skyrim lacks the story and the depth in that story-driven dialogue has been completely replaced with nonstop voice acting. That change stripped away a good majority of the potential lore and story. You can only engage most NPC's in two or three conversation topics. Also, attributes, instead of being improved, were completely removed. There are barely any unique items outside of quests. In Morrowind, you could stumble across a random artifact that was not tied to a certain quest, in a random dungeon, and that item would not be "random" or "generated" upon opening the stupid chest up.

Leveling in Skyrim has been made completely irrelevant, a draugr deathlord that dealt 50% of my health in one move at a certain level, should not be doing the same damage after i've leveled 20 times.
80% of the "perks" are redundant and shouldve been implemented into the skills beforehand.

I patiently await the return of games produced, designed, and developed in the classical sense, no more "sequels" that only resemble the games that came before it because they share the same series title.
Until then, Skyrim is my last "modern" purchase.

On a happier note, I plan on getting into the old Baldur's Gate games, and purchasing the original Neverwinter Nights.</sub>

I get you, really. Mind you I can still enjoy Skyrim and Im sure Ill love it when itll be well-modded but its a shame that I feel Morrowind is superior in many ways. Games should be improving after all not just getting dumbed down.

Youre in for a treat with Baldurs Gate and NWN. If youre into mods, Baldurs Gate still have an impressive modding scene, but do a vanilla run first... which should keep you busy a few hundred hours

NWN1... how many nights of my youth I've spent glued to the toolset, recreating my little corner of Faerun? Good times. Not the most amazing single-player official campaign though... but I still liked it!

Great to hear you're having fun! I myself took a break from Skyrim and started playing Morrowind again.

I do like Morrowind, as I've been playing it more recently.(first timer) The lack of hand holding is great, but it'd be nice if there was more of it at the very start. THey just throw you into the world with 80 some gold and say "Have fun out there!" Other than that it is pretty cool.

I agree on that, if you haven't got any experience in Vvardenfell you can get pretty [censored] up in the beginning.

Depends, its really what got me hooked. That and finding an axe hidden in a tree trunk in the first village I was like "Wow. How the hell did I miss this game all those years?!" I like the little things, the extra options that they cut from the new games... wearing a robe over armor, how cool is that?! Spears! Crossbows! No fast travel!

I don't know about 'No fast travel!'

You have Divine and Almsivi Intervention, Mark + Recall, Silt Striders, Boats, and Mages Guild Transports. The 'fast travel,' is just integrated and immersive. And it's limited to be realistic.

Great game. One great thing is that you can pick a house that you like, kill the people who live there, and then it's yours!

Still feel like spoiling a bit. I'm sorry for this, but I still feel like warning. That is, you might never experience this, since it's not in the vanilla game at all. Siege at Firemoth is a plug-in. This is not to say there are no parts in the vanilla game where you wouldn't be needing lightning resistance!

I never did get a chance to play it on the computer, I only had it for the Xbox, and none of the DLC either, lol just plain jane Morrowind. To be honest, you'll get very tired of no fast travel from anywhere really fast, Silt strider, Mages Guild and boats are too out of the way most of the time. And sometimes, like ill need to go to Tel Vos and my Recall/Mark will be in Caldera or something. It gets really annoying sometimes. Oh and there's only three cutscenes. Lol that makes me mad lol.But there's also so much thats good too. I miss playing this game lol.

Many gamers of today have the patience of a guinea pig on steroids, and are therfore unable to slowly build up a character Morrowind style. If they don′t feel the sense of accomplishment fast they abandon the game and move on. Game companies have addressed that and make the games thereafter instead of making quality games. If at least they could make both kinds but I guess that would, as always, cost too much.

Sadly, this seems to be the course of the future and to that I say stop the world, I want to get off.

If you can, purchase yourself an intervention spell or mark/recall.

I can't even guess how many times I saved myself with them. I recently started again too as a pure mage breton. Was wandering around Marandus and accidentally bumped into 2 scamps at level 2. I pacify creature'd both of them, but didn't manage to get far enough away before they started chasing me again and caught up. I was looking through my spell list and was tossing as many offensive spells as I could think of and chugging magicka potions. I knew if I kept this up I was going to die. I knew there was no refuge nearby, so I desperately searched my inventory for something...anything. And there it was. A scroll of Divine Intervention. I had completely forgotten about it. Thanked my lucky stars and was in the shrine outside balmora in less than a second. I immediately looked for a mage with intervention for sale.

This thread echoes my feelings perfectly.

I'd say it's the other way round. The popular culture surrounding us has cheapened and become more "easy-to-get", disposable, more linear and faster to use... the term of it could be "commercial". This, along other things close to it, is what has shaped majority into these quick entertainment consumers who can only demand more action for less trouble. Our inner nature might not have just poof, changed, in a few decades. It's the world around us that shapes us into being more... simple?

I think you′re more right than you can imagine. We′re supposed to be dumb, that way we can be controlled more easily.

Exactly. But I don't think it's a "Grand Scheme for Making Us More Stupid and Taking Whatever's Forced Down Our Throats" now involving even mainstream gaming companies. It's just a marketing issue. (Not to say there is no "Grand Scheme" at all though.) But everything we see is affecting us really; it's not just a simple one-way "simple culture -> simple people" nor "simple people -> simple culture". Both or those kind of support each other, and things tend to intertwine into each other and everything affects everything, the world is a chaos with less linearity in it that our minds make believe, etc, etc.

Glad to see you're enjoying the greatest game of all time.
I'm not holding my breath for a better game that Morrowind; it's just not possible. I doubt anyone wants to try.

I still hold on to Deus Ex
It′s amazing how so many old games are still so great. They had action/combat as well as modern games, but they were so much more than that.

I think the problem is the games nowadays try to make a movie experience at the expense of actual gameplay and length.

I love how the OP called it "Small Swords". That's just awesome.