I first played Morrowind in 2005. My friend Andrew had the game laying around one afternoon while we were skipping school and hanging out at his place. I tossed it in. Created my character having absolutely no idea what things like destruction magic would have to do with the game or how important they would be. Got my assignment to head to Balmora and to Cassius so I set out. I got half way into Seyda Neen before I started wondering why the directions I was given were so vague for a video game. Walked west of Seyda Neen before I found a mudcrab and figured I could cause him a little hell.

I died quick and confused, incapable of punching a crab to death. So I immediately turned off such a stupid and boring video game.

Fast forward to 2007. I was at a video game rental store grabbing the latest Madden. I had enough to pick a second random game so I did, and without much thought or debate, I ended up grabbing Morrowind, not knowing this was the game I played and hated previously. This time, however I gave it more of a chance. I dont know what it was exactly, but this time I played it for a good five hours right off the bat. I was in love.

Most people on the forum here talk about how much they love Morrowind's culture. That didnt happen for me until I started diving into the concept art earlier last year. For me, what did it was all about the freedom. I could rob, give, kill, save, do whatever I wanted. The idea of a video game allowing me to completely ignore the main quest was so awesome to me.

I ended up buying the game for PC and discovered mods, of which it took me forever to figure out how to install them. Up until this point I was pretty much computer illiterate and wasnt really allowed any access to them. Finally I got them to work and became enthralled with the idea that I could do this myself. Vality's mods were the ones that most inspired me. That and TR. My first post to the Morrowind community for my first mod was that I was going to create Argonia. I wrote it on TR's forum to which I was told by a few people that it was impossible. Probably true but none the less I will never give up on that mod.

Everything after that is just the life of a pretty normal modder I suppose.

Edit:Haha, I see you and I started out pretty similar Fliggerty =-)

The first time I played Morrrowind was on a friends Xbox. It was the first time I really played a first-person game where you actually interacted with the world, and didn't just shoot it. I Was in love with the freedom of the game. I just wanted to explore. I ate so much moon sugar that I got stuck in a boat. I didn't play it much there, and I didn't have an Xbox, but it left it's mark on me. I don't know if I can ever feel that same feeling again, unfortunately. A few years later, Oblivion was already out, and I could finally buy myself a computer. I had been waiting to buy Morrowind. I had already known learned about mods while browsing the online, and I'm glad I got it for the PC.

I didn't use any mods, save the official ones and the Unofficial Morrowind Patch. I'll tell you though, that the more I played, the more I saw things that I wanted to change. Total immersion breaker. No, seriously, it's annoying. Oh look, the water is showing though the pond scum! And what's that? A floating mushroom! That stuff is seriously annoying, because I always notice it. I couldn't wait until I was finally done with Bloodmoon so that I could get to modding. I think what started me modding, was wanting to correct a lot of bugs. I was in the process of taking up continuation of the UMP before quorn started it. I had a huge list of stuff that I found, but quorn had the skills to do it better than I could have at the time. Mainly with the mesh work.

Now, I have a dock and some hundreds of potions mixed in with scripts that don't always work, in a small mass of uncompleted mods. I come and go, but I do intend to finish them one day. The main problem is that the ideas always grow! Another problem, is that you eventually just want to make your own game, because you'll never mod it to perfection.

I'd say my main reason for modding is because I want to play what I mod. I think I'd like knowing that people enjoy them though. I just have to finish one now...

I avoided Morrowind for about 2 years because I just knew it was going to be a massive time sink - that was before i even knew there was a construction set.

Then a family member rented out Morrowind for the Xbox and that was the beginning of the end - within a few months I had the GOTY for PC and was looking up tutorials on modding - I stumbled upon the forums through a reference in a readme and that completed the Tribunal for me - Morrowind, the CS and this Forum combined have svcked more hours out of my gaming life than anything else (except maybe Civ and I'm pretty much cured of that now)

I lurked for maybe a year and watched a few modders burst into flames like net-etheral memes - the spat between 2 modders in particular was almost legendary to watch if it wasn't so sickening - when some of my favourite modders moved on I realized that if I was going to play with anything new I'd have to go do it myself.

Faces were the first things i wanted to master - getting my characters and then NPC's to look lifelike was my goal - within the confines of the nif tools I'm pretty happy with the results

I'd like to leave Morrowind and move on - the trouble is that while i've found games with better animations, better combat or even better inventory management screens I haven't found anything more captivating, more addictive, more frustrating than Morrowind - especially the ability to craft my own stories and characters.

While I'm looking forward to Skyrim, I suspect i will still have a few more runs through Morrowind yet - Seyda Neen has not seen the last of me yet

I can't compete with these stories, since I have also only meet NPC's since starting on Morrowind (besides on messenger a lot with SG_Monkey).

I bought the game in the start of 2007, where I found it very cheap in the local gaming store. I didn't know anything about the game when I bought it, and at the time, I only played PS2 games.
I started the game, and it seemed like I just wandered around doing nothing, until I managed to actually finish one or two quests (like the fighter guild rat quest), and then a little later, I first entered a large cave and thought it was the most impressive sight, I had yet seen in a game. After that I was sold and play the game for 4 hours a day for five months, until I had done everything in GOTY and retired my nord, Zarnatheron, at lvl 45. I was stuck once and found the solution on the web on a gaming site called 'The elder scrolls'.
My next player should be a magic user, but despite my best intensions ended up being a all-powerful melee type again, so I found 'the elder scrolls again' and started downloading a few mods to balance my character. Since I also remember everything, I needed soemthing new to do in the game, so I started downloading questmods (mostly after recommandations here) which I never finished due to my game being corrupted at some time.
I had also read about the construction set, so I tried my luck making the flesh helmet wearable for my Aragonian and rebalancing some armor (I hated that templar armor was so weak, when I had to wear it, and it looked so good).
While most people seem to prefere graphic mods, I have always prefered landmasses and questmods, so eventually I thought about making my own mod, and thought about a necromancer faction, which never became more than a thought, eventhough I still have it all planed.
My next plan was the dwemer society, which in the beginning was really fun making, and I spent a lot of time making it. But the entusiasm could quite keep up, when my ambitions were bigger than my skills, so it's just sitting on my harddisk waiting to be finished (being around 75% finished, I should eventually finish it).
So nowadays I just play the the game from time to time with a lot of mods (and hope someday to finish my mod). But even if I only play the game in periods I look around here almost every day.

Recently I started playing Oblivion, but it is just can't compare to Morrowind because of the repetiviveness (when you have seen one oblivion portal, you have seen them all) and the hopeless levelling. Maybe mods will change that for me in the future, but for now I'll mostly stick to Morrowind.