Is Morrowind worth playing now if you haven't before?

[Arkaijn]

Get all the right visual mods and you'll have a game that, in my opinion is better looking than Oblivion, I rather have low poly good looking characters than the bee sting faces from Oblivion.

Then stick to ranged combat until you've earned enough gold to bump up your melee stats. Morrowind combat works a bit like DnD and rolling those d20's in the beginning can be frustrating.

Once you've got that in place, you have a game that's much more open than it's successors. It doesn't force you to do things in a specific way and rewards out of the box thinking. I'm particularly fond of the stealing mechanics and the spellcrafting system, just makes sense to me that if I steal a bowl, I can sell it to whoever I like and not just the designated black market NPC. Also makes sense that if I sell that bowl back to the guy I stole it from or his neighbour, I'm gonna get in a lot of trouble.

Quests are also more interesting, more politics and backstabbings, and ballsing up has actual impact and consequences.

 

[aozgolo]

There's not one area of Morrowind where you know what's coming next.

Except Cliff Racers, you always know those #$%@ers are coming next...

 

[fix-the-spade]

I'd appreciate some good Morrowind mod recommendations? I'd mainly look for graphic mods that won't end up destroying either my system, or the game engine (I've got my fill of that with Oblivion).

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/119908-Morrowind-Overhaul-3-Modernizes-Morrowind

The mod collection in that article is essential, I'd look for some mods to the combat system too, I can't remember any specific ones but a look through Mod DB should come up with something useful.

 

[Rack]

People rave about the quest arrows but Bethesdas directions were barely any better in Morrowind than they were in Oblivion. Keep the Wiki with you at all times if you don't want to be driven crazy by obscure, inaccurate, incomplete or non-existent directions. Trying to find the mayor of a city in that game is harder than finding the lost city of Atlantis.

 

[AdrianCeltigar]

Of the 3 games in the series I've played (Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim) Morrowind is my favourite. They all have pros and cons, but Morrowind nailed it when it comes to immersion - which is kind of important in open world RPGs in my opinion. The main reason I find Morrowind to be more immersive is the limitations imposed on fast-travel; you can't click on the map and just show up anywhere, you have to make use of transit systems like paying the Mage's Guild to teleport you to another of their guildhalls in a different town or taking a boat plus a few more options. You can only get to so many locations via fast travel and then you have to hoof it the rest of the way and actually see the world which to me is much better. Note: You can also just disable fast travel via the map in Oblivion and Skyrim.

The engine is outdated and if you're the type to min/max your characters then it just turns into a spreadsheet (once you figure out the underlying mechanics anyways) but I've sunk more hours into it than any other Elder Scrolls game. It does have more skills to choose from and a much more customize-able enchant system, and more equipment to enchant since Body, Legs, Helm, Right Gauntlet, Left Gauntlet, Right Pauldron, Left Pauldron, Boots, Belt, Shirt, Pants, Robe, Necklaces and two rings could all be worn at the same time, on top of your weapons/shield. You could also create your own spells.

Alternatively there is an ongoing project for bringing Morrowind into shinier engines (Morroblivion and Skywind respectively.) You need to own a legit copy of the game and its expansions in order for it to work, and it's not complete yet but I know what I'll be doing once it's finished.

TL;DR Try it and if you can't get into it because it's outdated then shelve it and wait for Morroblivion and/or Skywind to be fully complete so you can play it in either the Oblivion or Skyrim engine.

 

[Jynthor]

People rave about the quest arrows but Bethesdas directions were barely any better in Morrowind than they were in Oblivion. Keep the Wiki with you at all times if you don't want to be driven crazy by obscure, inaccurate, incomplete or non-existent directions. Trying to find the mayor of a city in that game is harder than finding the lost city of Atlantis.

I have no idea what you're talking about, I only had trouble with one quest(and even then it was just over the hill of where I was) NPC directions are as good as they need to be. And yes, I did pretty much all quests in the game.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

If I had the time to dedicate to playing Morrowind I would definitely try to make it through. Last time I tried playing the thing (and I mean really tried, I wasn't just murdering everybody) I got far enough into the plot that I had just cured myself of Corprus (or whatever that disease was called). I hate that quest giving NPCs can be killed but it made things a little bit more exciting. It's worth looking at if you're into that kind of game.

 

[Frezzato]

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I actually think Morrowind's fast travel system is one of the best out there and far better than Skyrim or Oblivion. It still keeps the world feeling vast, without making it feel cheap.

And there's always the boots of blinding speed and ability to fly which combines well once you've really settled into the game too.

I never did find those boots. I had to settle on enchanting my own to get about 30 seconds of flight time per use, which was fine because I loved them for getting over water.

Also, I don't think the Boots of Blinding Speed would have worked for me because I played Morrowind on the original Xbox, which would hiccup every 50 feet or so whenever I ran. At one point the game started failing on me and refused to save. It started to delete all of my game saves one by one down the list and then crashed. Despite that, I tried it two more times, the equivalent of me playing Morrowind twice before I actually finished it in the end.

In retrospect, now that I have a decent PC, I might--no, no, no. Never again. NEVER AGAIN.

 

[PPB]

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Not to pick apart your argument but Morrowind does have a dark lord demi-god lording over the destruction of the world from within a volcano base who can only be defeated by questing for an ancient artifact and bringing it to the mountain.

What you are referring to is the main storyline, not the setting. What makes Morrowind unique in my eyes isn't the storyline, but more the world in which it takes place. I would also argue that setting is more important than storyline in Morrowind's case since most of the game content has nothing to do with the main quest.