Why Morrowind, released in 2002, even today attracts so much people and spawn huge projects like Skywind? What's so special for you in this game? Is it alien setting, a feel of mystery, your first rpg or something else?
ps I'm against comparing Morrowind to other games here, or it may lead to holywar, which wasn't the goal. If it still will, just delete the thread.
First game I played so long even if my PC was in agony (even had to open it and have an external fan (I mean one for a room :P) to blow on it. My introduction to the elder scrolls (I knew about the other but didn't have a gaming PC at the time).
I wouldn't say I like it more than its successors. I love them all.
I loved playing Morrowind as a kid. Admittedly as a 14 year old kid playing such a huge game... my main goal was to at lvl 1-2 kill a local guard and steal his Bonemold armor because it looked so amazing!!!
Honestly, I've always loved Fantasy. For me Oblivion was great but Skyrim really captured the flowing engine and combat along with the immersive fantasy, dungeons and side quests in it's great engine!
I just want to see a game that's even deeper in its' own fantasy (Morrowind) Be brought back to the more, user-friendly engine and combat system so I can get to appreciate it all the more.
For me, Morrowind was the first RPG that did not force me to follow a strict linear path to it's end. I could do whatever I wanted and develop my character into what I wanted. The environments were huge. I don't think I ever really found everything to do in Morrowind.
Well for me it was and still is about the world itself. About how fun it was to explore a world so different from mine, and learn it's politics and history. All while running around and stabbing things with pointy objects. :P The world and lore just sucked me in and kept me there for hundreds of hours. I must have read every book in the game at least once. With the exception of the 32 lessons of vivec, for some reason those books bored me and I still don't know why. :/
For me Morrowind was the first elder scrolls i ever played and the best actually when i started playing it i had no idea what he elder scrolls was but i got into all the lore because at the time the history in the elder scrolls seemed alot cooler than real-life history :/ but its just an over-all best game ON EARTH.
i like it because of the huge environment, in skyrim you overpower the land once you get to a higher level and you can defeat stuff easy and find stuff easy because of the fast travel, in morrowind(i now that on the computer you can use console commands) you actually have to FIND the cave or quest objective or whatever, and it is HARD to find it sometimes, skyrim you are specifically shown what to do with the marker on the map so it is very easy and fast to get things done, it took me a LONG time to find the cavern of the incarnate, but it was fun finding it. in morrowind you feel small compared to the world of vvardenfell, in skyrim you feel top of the world. but i still think skyrim is awesome though of course.
My first RPG's were Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy and when I think about my first time playing Heroquest, I fantasized about a video game with similar freedom. Many years of dungeons trounced, dragons slain and games mastered, I was unable to find a single video game that offered a non-linear, sandbox experience akin to Table-RPG's.
I got my Xbox only for Morrowind when it first came out though I later got Sudeki. Morrowind let you go "Off-Rails" and have almost true freedom. However there was a catch. The whole world is out to effing kill you. The world was full of an alien environment, with giant mushrooms which I am obsessed with. It contained mean, grumpy, old and frumpy NPC's contrary to the trope of the "8-year old hero kid", and had a darker, adult feel.
Morrowind made you care about diseases and blight, bringing in a fun element to contend with. No other game has done everything. Oblivion is a bright, pretty and flat world. Vanilla, dull, boring. Only the Shivering Isles caught my interest. Skyrim is also kinda nice, but lacks the same magic that Morrowind had.
To answer you, it is nostalgia; when Morrowind came out, everyone knew it was a game-changer and the "old way" of making RPG's was unviable. Just as we sensed Skyrim will be the last with game makers like EA saying they feel like more than 30 hours of gameplay is wasteful. Coupled with ESO, really think Bethesda can make a "region" interesting again when ESO has the full map?
Morrowind was like Secret of Mana - and Final Fantasy 7, it made a whole lot of changes about how gamers think about games in general.
it's just interesting+unique fauna, flora + culture, without usual deers, bears and "fairy" creatures like centaurs.
Also MW was very creepy. Now games are soft, generic and 6+.
By far the most mesmerizing and artistic world for a game I ever played or probably ever will. Heck it even introduced me to religion and politics as a child. It influenced a random group of people of different backgrounds to come together to recreate their happiest moments (in a game that is). That and giant friendly mushrooms
for me it was the first TES game I ever played. I never know what it was I just got it borrowed from a friend on xbox after seeing his huge map laying out on the floor and finding out it was from an RPG game made me think that was beyond badass. as I played it the colors and the life of it became to real to me I was mesmerized by the colors and the sounds and the beautiful life that was Morrowind. when I had to give the game back that's when I got it on PC from a friend and I found out about mods. the first and only mod I used was a Marriage mod and it make it seem even more real. FUCK THIS GAME BRINGS BACK SO MUCH OF HOW LIFE FELT, THE ENDLESS ADVENTURES, THE COLOR,THE ROMANCE....THE CHOICES!!!!!! fucking nostalgia :')
Not to be negative, but what's the point of this post, it's just cluttering the active topics.
It's pretty simple, it's one of the most visionary, imaginative and fleshed out fantasy worlds ever created. It was executed pretty well, but not without flaws. The game did manage to pull through the most important thing - the setting. It's one of very rare instances, when a world so different from ours that it seems like another planet is so viable, that it seems complete. Most of that is probably courtesy of Michael Kirkbride, who's ideas I think are the most inspiring, and it's his vision that lives on in our (at least mine) minds and spawns those projects, not just the game itself.
And the game itself did many things right. Not all of the vision could be really presented at that time (and it's one of the things we're trying to achieve with Skywind), but the background lore I think stuck to us the most. Learning about all those different cultures, each alien and each distinct, also fitting their alien environment enough to seem real, unravelling ancient mysteries that aren't completely revealed in the end anyway (giving us freedom of interpretation), and of course amazing and carefully thought - through graphic design.
All in all I'd say it's the fascinating game world, and freedom of exploring it and learning about it, that was never done in such depth in any later TES games.
Perfect combination of
Perfect combination of everything you mentioned plus much more like detailed open world, exceptional graphics (for 2002), believable npcs (even bandits had unique names, in Skyrim you have generic "bandits"), excellent story, unique character development, etc.