i actually started playing the first Arena and Daggerfall, but didn't really get into them
as i was enjoying the wizardry, ultima underworld series alot more that time (anyone remember those oldies?)

Really became a fan because of Morrowind because of the luscious gfx (at that time), the absolute freedom of a fantasy
open world, and the hauntingly beautiful main theme. It still is a good game to this day, and certainly has its nice moments.

A few things i didn't like about morrowind however, was how tedious it was to find the locations for some of the quests.

One quest in particular the Mage guild quest where u had to go to Punabi and retrieve guild dues.
I spent the whole day searching for the damn place and i just can't find it, even though i have tried my best to follow the directions on the journal.
Finally gave up and went online to look at the map and location. That was pretty frustrating lol.

Cliffracers were also really annoying, and also after i found some of the face mods, i cannot believe how ugly the vanilla faces looked.

Morrowind is still a very good game, and i feel the later series has improved on it.

Certainly the later games would never be able to capture the initial wonderment that i felt when i started Morrowind,
but they are very good games in their right.

The problem I believe was because it was first-person. I remember Baldur's gate and it work for that game. But since Morrowind was first-person, you should hit the target. It just felt out of place when you know you're hitting the monster but apparently missing because the game rolled to low for you. It felt weird.

Hmm, maybe I should have phrased that differently. It's the CoD players I mostly hate. Most of them boast their game is the best thing to ever happen. That its so revolutional and amazing. They just can't stop talking about it. Honestly, CoDs a good game, for sure, but I just don't play them anymore because they feel very similar amongst eachother just reskinned, slightly updated graphics, new maps guns ect. Nothing truly feels new and worth another 65$. None the less, its still good. But I'm over it. If you know what I mean. I love Battlefield 3 but that's because I've been a BF fan since before Bad Company. But Bad Company was my first purchase of the series. My general point though was not for hate on the game, just some of the obnoxious, ignorant people who play it. I just phrased the end of my first post not so well. And about being 12 when I played MW, I think that had a lot to do with me being slightly scared to leave the big cities and go far into the wilds. To be honest, I didn't do many quests. 10 at the max. But yet I still had the time of my life playing it. I put atleast 100 hours into it ( doesn't sound like much but it was a good bit considering I didn't quest haha ) and wish I still had a working xbox.

Yes, I prefer Morrowind over Skyrim.

The setting of Vvardenfell was interesting and full of unexpected things like the Vivec Cantons, Telvanni mage towers, more diverse and alien wildlife etc You can't have things like this in either Cyrodil or Skyrim because these two provinces are more similar to our earth, more familiar.

I liked that more effort was put in to making the available spaces, towns and dungeons more interesting and what really made a difference for me is that instead of the randomized loot we have now, there were unique items placed there specifically. All items were like that, you didn't get generic enchanted weapons.

I have the same feeling towards the leveling scaling in Oblivion and Skyrim, while Skyrim has improved in this aspect IMO leveling scaling still ruins the real feeling of progression, there should be places that are too dangerous to go and similarly there should be places were you can wander through without worry.

The combat in Morrowind, while visually awkward was brilliant because it was all based on your skills and attributes. The reason you couldn't hit that Mudcrab with a dagger, was because you have 5 in short-blade skill - try an Axe, you have 30 skill in that. Makes sense to me.

Which brings me to my next point. In Morrowind you had far more options, freedom in how you built your character but also choices that had consequences such as Class, Major skills, Birthsign etc this helped produce a sense of who your character was. Similarly there was far more choice in regards to skills and equipment, as you all know it wasn't just Armour/hands/feed it was left and right pauldrons, cuirass, left and right gauntlets, l/r boots and so on. Not to mention you could wear clothing over your armour and that there was light, heavy and medium armor.

This same thing applies to weapons and weapon skills, there was short blade, long blade, axe, spear, hammer etc now we have 1-handed and 2-handed? Since when does an Axe, handle the same as a sword, or mace.

Yea, anyways - I'm getting carried away, I just wanted to try and get across that there are legitimate reasons behind why people prefer Morrowind to Oblivion and/or Skyrim and I don't believe for one second that people can dismiss these claims by saying it's nostalgia, that's not the case at all - as I've just explained there in much to be liked about Morrowind above and beyond what todays TES games give us.

IMHO:

Morrowind: Best lore, and the best overall "feeling" to the setting, especially if you have good graphics mods. The combat system feels a bit clunky these days, though, and the magic system (no regenerating magicka + "spell cast failed!") is a bit irritating.

Oblivion: Better gameplay and graphics than Morrowind, but it more or less ignored most known TES lore. No Colovian vs. Nibenese conflict, no politics, no jungles, etc. The Cyrodiil in OB simply didn't feel like the "real" Cyrodiil.

Skyrim: MUCH better lore than Oblivion, and almost as good as Morrowind. Great setting, too. Improved combat over MW, and of course better graphics. I don't really miss the loss of certain skills, either, since the perk system feels like it makes up for this. Everything in Skyrim just feels more real. I feel like I'm actually in the Skyrim of TES lore!

Skyrim wins over Morrowind, but Morrowind kicks Oblivion's butt, IMHO.

I've played all of the Elder Scrolls games all the way back to Daggerfall.

Morrowind had tons of content but I hated the UI and Daggerfall, Oblivion and Skyrim don't have any thing annoying like Cliff Racers. There were times where I killed Cliffracer after cliffracer after cliffracer. I still have bad memories of it. I love Morrowind but I place it last on my lsit of Elder Scrolls games.

The kind of players who favor Morrowind over the later installments are the same kind of players who probably enjoy sitting down and having a fun session of D&D or some other real RPG. Morrowind catered to that type of audience by placing emphasis on the RP in RPG, while Oblivion and Skyrim cater more towards players who enjoy picking up a game and playing it for a dopamine rush by placing emphasis on the G in RPG. Not to say that a player who favors 4 or 5 over 3 is necessarily dumb or has ADHD, but the overall direction that's been taken during the last two games has been done to appeal to those characteristics more than what would appeal to a true RPG fan. That's where the money is, after all.

A big thing that I think has a lot to do with why people still continue to point to Morrowind as the title holder of the ES franchize is that when it came out, Morrowind was absolutely groundbreaking, and pressed the limits of how much of a true RPG that a video game RPG was capable of being at the time. While the combat system and graphics may seem dated now, the fact is that almost every single fault that Morrowind had was due to the lack of technology available. There were very few bad choices made in Morrowind's design. Almost everything they were able to implement they implemented as best they could at the time. That's not to say there weren't :some: bad design choices (The by-and-large uselessness of having different attack types if one will almost always be unquestionably better, the frequency of cliffracers, and in my personal opinion the hitstun and stagger animations made melee combat unnecessarily frustrating at times) but they were few and far between.

Oblivion and Skyrim, however, have a number of game design choices that were in very poor taste, such as the level scaling (Which Morrowind had as well, but nobody complained about it in Morrowind because it was done much more organically) and a lack of control compared to Morrowind (less viable playstyles, less options for weapons and armor, less customization for armor and clothing, less vanilla spells, no spell making, unavoidable fixed animation finishing moves, less freedom in enchanting, the list goes on...). Of course this doesn't mean that either were necessarily bad games (Ok, it doesn't mean that Skyrim was necessarily a bad game.), it just means that what's wrong with the game is more frustrating to some players because it feels like what was done wrong could have been prevented had the developers taken the time to apply the same painstaking care and finesse to their newer games that they applied to Morrowind in regards to their choice of game design.

This is why there are players who still favor Morrowind. Morrowind's faults are things that couldn't have been helped except to have made the game years later, while the faults in Skyrim and Oblivion are due to very bad decisions that the developers made when creating the game. ES3 has a perfectly reasonable excuse for almost all the shortcomings it has. ES4 and 5 do not.

Overall I do think Skyrim is better, simply because Skyrim is new and Morrowind is old. New games are going to be better because of better graphics and more fun gameplay, plus when the bigger mods get released Skyrim is only going to get better.

Despite Morrowind being old, however, it is what got me into the Elder Scrolls and even newer games in general. Morrowind is the first game I spent over 100 hours on and it is also the first game I ever modded. Plus despite its age Morrowind does have a lot of things Skyrim doesn't - more weapon choices, more spells, more armor choices(you can wear robes over armor), vampire clans, and numerous other things.

But again, I understand why some wouldn't like Morrowind. I tried playing Daggerfall once and I just couldn't get into it; the graphics were too bad and I just could not make myself enjoy it. For its time I'm sure it was amazing, but by todays standards most people just can't bring themselves to like it.

i think morrowind is greatly overrated, i did love it, but it doesnt hold a candle to skyrim.

You've summed it up perfectly IMO, this is what I was trying to say and you've done a better job : P thanks. If only people would read this and understand why, but I don't think they will.

Honestly, it's a mixed bag for me. For sure, one of the most important parts to me, combat, is amazing in Skyrim while Morrowind's is well, trash.

However, I find the worlds in both to be equally engaging.

My main gripes are what keeps getting taken out. Fine, I know the reasoning why Bethesda took out pants for armor. (IIRC, it was something about clipping, and making characters look good) I still don't like it. Spell creation being taken out is also a big minus. Oh well, at least we can finally raise undead and all. I don't think I'll ever get over losing teleportation (semi fixed by the fast-travel, done perfectly in Skyrim, as compared to Oblivion. I think I would have preferred simple horse carriages for everywhere, though, instead of just popping the map open and teleporting) and levitation. If I can fight aerial enemies like dragons, why can't I fly?

I also hate the lack of armor types. I'd like more than just Steel, iron, fur, leather, hide, dwarven, daedra, elven and dragon. Granted, I'm not too far in my smithing, but I never see anyone in scale armor or chainmail armor. Where's the relatively simple ability to dye weapons and armor. Oh well. I suppose it's a testament to the game that these relatively minor things are the only real gripes.

Another big thing for me is the lack of weapons. Where are my spears? IIRC, in Morrowind you had: Short swords, long sword, katanas, dai katanas, 1h axes, 2h axes, bastard swords, broad swords, 1h hammers, 2h hammers, spears, staves and wakizashi...

What's in Skyrim? 1h sword, 2h sword, 1h axes, 2h axes, 1h hammer, 2h hammer, staffs (magic only, no martial arts staves) and that's about it. Would it really be that hard to just put in some katanas and stuff? Just call them imports from Morrowind or somewhere...What if I want to be some type of Samurai? What if I want to be some type of swear-wielding Dragoon?


Still, overall, Skyrim blows every prior Elder Scrolls game out of the water, and the first one I've truly loved playing.

I actually liked TES: Arena better than Morrowind.

I just never could get into Morrowind.

I can't advocate playing vanilla Morrowind or Oblivion.

I actually really hate Oblivion with a serious passion but that is besides the point.

Morrowind, in many ways is "better". It was more RPG friendly, "pen & paper" oriented, and just all-out original. If you spend some tender loving care modding it (mechanics, graphics, balances, etc.) and actually devote time to playing it objectively, it can be a better experience than Skyrim. If you want it to be.

Daggerfall is still the best TES to date IMO.

I just picked up Morrowind again after not playing it for quite a few years. I got the new graphics mod that completely overhauls everything, and let me tell you, it is pretty awesome. I am playing it and Skyrim together, and they do have quite different feels.

Morrowind feels like you are actually there, like you are really in this land, exploring. It feels real the same way a book can feel real when you are completely absorbed in it. Skyrim is great, but it still feels like a game. Maybe it is the flash of leveling a skill every time, or all the monsters being tailored to my level, but it feels so much more like a game that I am playing, where as Morrowind felt like a story I was living.

I am trying to figure out how Morrowind accomplished this, and my best conclusion is that Morrowind has forced immersion, where as Skyrim has optional immersion. In Skyrim, you can play it without ever getting into the story, the quests, or the grittiness of the world. They designed it so that everything is so easy: fast travel...leveling...questing with easily seen map markers. The truth is, you cannot really screw Skyrim up. You would have to be braindead to not be able to clear a dungeon in Skyrim.

Now Morrowind...THAT you can mess up. You can pick the wrong skills right off the bat and have an extremely hard time for the first good chunk of the game. You can run into dungeons that are close to your starting area that you are not ready for. Not only that, but like people have said in this thread, no one really tells you what to do. There are no easily follow-able map markers. Morrowind draws you in because it is the only way to play Morrowind. You HAVE to read your quests so you know what the hell your even doing. You cannot coast by because at its core, Morrowind is a HARDER game then Skyrim.

Morrowind has forced immersion. You cannot play that game for an extended period of time without being drawn in. Now...with Skyrim (and Oblivion). I can fast travel to every quest marker, or very close to it. I can kill the thing, or get the item, and return it for the shiny object. Rinse and repeat. I can always trust Skyrim to show me how to play, display it in big letters I can read, and let me know I am getting more powerful with nordic chanting and all the dazzle.

Can't trust Morrowind like that. Morrowind starts you at the bottom of the heap, and even though you can get just as overpowered as you can in Skyrim, you feel like you earned it. You did not just follow a compass marker around, you thought it through, used effort and willpower, and really conquered your world. You feel like you get good at Morrowind...whether that be in exploration or whatnot, but you put in work and you are rewarded. Skyrim...ehh...its so easy to play. They hand everything to you, it's like a movie that you can just sit back and watch instead of a challenge to your intellect and ability to survive.

I could never get into morrowind....i enjoyed daggerfall more but i LOVE skyrim
Its world feels like it has more depth to it
The world is more lived in with people milling about doing there jobs trying to survive in the harsh landscape....
In morrowind npc's just stood there reminding me that they were waiting to give me a quest

In skyrimthey would give me a greeting, a backstory, and most of what i wanted to know and hey if they had a quest too then that was a bonus...if i didnt want the quest i could just walk away and let them go about there business

The world feels more lived in and is loveingly handcrafted...
After hearing about the landmasses already modeled outside of skyrim i cant wait for there future DLC plans

Here's what I think of the Skyrim and Morrowind.

Skyrim Pros
-Skyrim has better graphics/animations, Well duh, it's been how many years since Morrowind? If it wasn't there would have to be something seriously wrong with Bethesda. Luckily, there isn't.

-Skyrim has horses! I love this. It may not be as great as Oblivion horses were, but I still like it. It has carriages too, but you don't really use them, unless you just want to get to the cities for the first time.

-Skyrim has dragons. Need I say more?

-Skyrim has dual wielding! never thought this would be in Elder Scrolls, but here it is! Can be used with spells too.

-Perks. More customization and helps define your character.

-Voice acting. Gives a great feeling to the game, but seriously limits the amount of quantity in dialogue. The diversity in voices this time around is great though.

-Starts on a high note. Immediately entering the games feels amazing and svcks you in. For me, it lost this feeling as time went on.

-Adds more to everyday life and noncombat features. The inclusion of smithing, mining(rather than looting veins), woodcutting, and mills is great. Marriage is too!

-I loveenjoy having followers. It's like your own sidekick!


Morrowind Pros
-Morrowind has a much more diverse landscape. Everything in Skyrim is in Morrowind and more. Morrowind has deserts, swamps, islands, snowy areas, towns, diverse cities(could be argued for Skyrim, but look at the diversity of Morrowind vs Skyrim), forests, mountains, ect.

-Morrowind has more towns and cities in it's much larger world. Sure Skyrim has a couple large cities, but Vivec wold have something to say about that...

-Morrowind has longer and more fulfilling guilds and factions. There's much more guilds in general and they have longer quest lines.

-More spells + you can create your own. Don't understand why this was removed. Did people not like it? If they thought it was OP, they could have fixed it easily.

-Cross faction rivalries! The Great Houses, Thieves Guild and Camonna Tong, Morag Tong and Dark Brotherhood (just lore, not gameplay), and Tribunal Temple and Imperial Factions.

-More Quests, But Skyrim has unlimited quests, doesn't it? Well only if you count endless raids on bandit hideouts and dragons as quests, then sure it does! But if you mean properly written quests with story, then Morrowind wins by far.

-Balanced. In Skyrim, Destruction magic is useless beyond a point. Smithing, however, makes you invincible.

-A sense of growth. Enemies do not scale in Morrowind, so being able to clear out a dungeon can only be done when strong enough. In Skyim, everywhere can be beaten whenever you choose. The only significance of higher levels is stronger draughs and bandits.

-Diversity of weapons/armor/magic. While medium armor is not really needed, the customization it adds is great. You could level up in unarmed combat and defense. You also have spears, Mysticism, throwing weapons, and separation of weapon skills.

-Much more items! There was a huge amount of weapons and armor. Always finding new things.

-Way more creatures in this game. Skyrim does have giants, dragons, and mammoths(all of which I love); but Morrowind has much more.

-Ends on a high note. The ending of this game is great. It builds up to this, as the beginning isn't the best.


Skyrim svcks us in from the very beginning, something Morrowind does not manage. However, Skyrim loses its amazing feeling over time, while Morrowind just keeps getting better and better. Morrowind has much more content, a better atmosphere, and better faction story lines. Skyrim does bring in same nice new features like the radiant AI, but its lost much of what made Morrowind so great for me. It does have its cool moments from time to time, like the beginning, Sovngarde, and your first dragon fight, among others, but these are just the occasional thing, only truly special the first time. Morrowind just doesn't start out with its best features up front. It takes time to enjoy its full potential. This is what loses many people, they don't get drawn into it and don't bother finishing it, rating it as a poorer game than the rest of the series. It just takes a little time. Many of Morrowind's current problems can be fixed with mods. Improved textures and NPC with animations can be added without changing the game. What Skyrim misses, would change the game to add. There not things that would keep it with its original vanilla feeling. Don't get me wrong, I love Skyrim. There's much to it that is amazing, and I'm sure with DLC there will be great things. Bethesda has said they plan on several large expansions(like with Morrowind), rather than lots of small ones(like Oblivion). But to me, Morrowind is still the best.

What the hell kind of [censored] logic is that? So all remakes must be infinitely better simply because their new. I have no problem with your opinion, only the terrible logic that you used to leap there.

meh i like skyrim more than morrowind, and i started with oblivion. I just can't get into morrwind because the way people walk. and every town i'v been to on morrowind (which is only like 2) nobody walked around just stood perfectly still... may have been a glitch, but didn't really care for it. Went straight back to oblivion until i heard about skyrim then pretty much died until it released lol.

Skyrim does not have Cliff Racers. Therefore, Skyrim is better.

;)

This is bang on. Fantastic description of the differences.

Oblivion, Morrowind and Skyrim are all great games. I prefer Skyrim overall so far though.

I played Morrowind and enjoyed it but my main problems with it were it's terrible combat system, even for an old game that was no excuse for such a poorly implemented system. I also hated reading all the text, I understand it gives more flexibility in terms of what you can do but I also hate reading walls of text.

I would love Morrowinds depth with Skyrims level of eye candy, but I don't think that will ever happen because as someone else said it's a tradeoff between the two

I attempted to get into morrowind on several occasions, but i never got very far. I put in Skyrim and after a few minutes I'm hooked. Skyrim has moments that just capture me. I've played a ton of games for many many years so it is an accomplishment for a game to do this. I know it has some faults, but what it does do well, it does very well.

Now I know that some could say that since I didn't put enough time into morrowind that I don't really know morrowind. True, very true, but IT didn't draw me in. That's just my experience, and I can see how others would really love the environment. I personally, love the nordic touch in skyrim. The atmosphere is awesome. The accents are awesome. I read a couple people post that they found the environment in skyrim boring. What?

I also agree with the nastalgia effect. I put tons of hours into diablo 2 when it first came out. I remember how epic those cinematics were. I was reading about diablo 3, recently, and felt like playing a little D2 to nip some of my desire for the diablo universe. It was aweful. I couldn't do it. I guess I've reached a certain point of experience with graphics that older ones just lose their flavor. I remember starting up a Final Fantasy 7 game only to wonder how the hell did I ever know what was going on in the midst of these pixels? lol

Morrowind > Skyrim

All I care about when playing an rpg is story and character development, and to some extent the atmosphere. I don't realy care about the combat.

Morrowind was the one ES game that I never played all the way through, I never even bothered with it's expansions. I just did not like that game for all of it's entirety. I still think Daggerfall was a better game than Morrowind, How you like them apples? lol

In my opinion:
Morrowind > Skyrim > Oblivion
Morrowind was the game that introduced me to TES games and RPG's.
Skyrim is just brilliantly done with the crafting, the perks and personaly I like the story.
Oblivion was alright, but I didn't have that spark I had with Morro and Skyrim.

Also if you don't like the out of date graphics on Morrowind, check out this site: http://morroblivion.com/
It's a mod that allows you to play Morrowind with Oblivion-like graphics.