It's completely useless, but I like the gloomy atmosphere, that's why one of my characters lives there and roams the marshes at night. It's so eerie. It also doesn't hurt that it's ruled by my favourite jarl.

It's nice to feel like you live at the end of the world sometimes.

Morthal has some serious bardic talent, though.

Morthal has become the definitive home for my PCs who practice Alchemy. Windstad Manor is outside town and includes a fishery (where you can stock River Bettys). If you don't build the house and you're playing a mage who enchants, Fallion's place has an Arcane Enchanter you can use to disenchant items. The lack of vendors and carriage service (I don't fast travel) is a nuisance but the swamp with all those great ingredients (canis root!) and wonderful ambiance more than makes up for it. Also, WIndstad Manor seems to be less susceptible to bandit/monster raids than Lakeview Manor.

You don't say! I can't bring myself to kill him during the Dark Brotherhood quest. Or maybe I can do it and resurrect him via console...

Windstad Manor is great, but doesn't really feel like part of Morthal, unfortunately. I try to keep both Hroggar and Alva alive just to keep the population of Morthal as high as it can get. Eisa Blackheart also makes her home in the Moorside Inn (although you have to renable her via console after you complete her quest because she just disappears).

I think the devs wanted to make it bigger but it was probably rushed, had a lot of potential at being Skyrim's gloomy town.

Alot of things were rushed in Skyrim for that stupid bloody 11/11/11 release date.

Or at least I'm pretty certain of that.

It's funny that people blame 11/11/11 for every single shortcoming of this game. As if Bethesda could have made everything 1000% better if they had developed it for another 5 years. Look how much good extended development time did to Duke Nukem Forever.

There's nothing to indicate that Bethesda wanted to make Morthal much bigger and it was rushed. Or rather, I'm sure they wanted to make every town bigger, every questline longer etc., but it's just impossible. So they did what they had to: established priorities. Morthal got shafted; a pity, but it happens. It still had more luck than the sad joke of a town that is Winterhold.

Morthal?..... mehhhh, must I really visit this place.... ok, ok, i take a look (usually the first thing my mind is telling me)

Pro

- average alchemy stuff in the area

Con

- Boring.... (at least for me)

- its a swamp.... why would you build in a swamp (insert "knight of the holy grail" joke here: .....................................)

- Enemy spawn is to close to the city

Mud craps killing people and guards are in a constant hunt the craps rage and firing 10.000 arrows from the stone bridge.... and still missing lil muddy.

Funny the first time .... less funny on later visits.

I got this problem on every playthrough.... to me Morthal feels like an incomplete area. Buggy and unfinished.

There's a couple of Morthalish towns I end up avoiding. Just like in real life I find myself at Walmart every day and have to force myself to shop elsewhere. There's no way to resist the temptation of having everything all in one place. These apothecary-only towns or smith-only towns or bereft-of-funds general store towns are annoying. When do I ever get around to doing side quests? Like never. Unless there's some personal profit side quest. Basically if it doesn't involve a housecarl for Hearthfire Expansion Country Living or orders from the vampire court I'm not around. Now Solstheim is where it's at. Everyone there is sixy.

I like the Vampire quest there, the side one's are meh. But it's just not a very practical place to spend a lot of time.

The swamps surrounding this miserable town (or should I say village?) contain great alchemy ingridients for Power-Levelling the skill. Otherwise the town is pretty much useless.

Not much that I do there, but I think I may just fast travel to movarth's lair and go vampire lord and murder everything in the cave before terrorizing Morthal just for the fun of it.

Killing Alva fo the free Tavern clothes, and never return.