Where do you guys rate Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind on the greatest-RPGs-of-all-time?

[NEScollector1982]

To me, Morrowind was one of my favorite games ever. The non-stop adventure that almost never ended, the engaging storyline and all the books to read! i would definitely rate it in my top 3, along with Earthbound and Chrono trigger.

[AMG]

Heh, I just got done playing it about 10 minutes ago with my umpteenth character. :)

I rate it very high on my all time list, maybe even #1. The main quest is average, I'll admit that. But the amount of factions you can join and missions you can do is awesome. For roleplayers, this game has so many options. Build whatever type of custom character you want. Build a monk, pure mage, thief, tank, summoner etc. Roleplay that character and join the factions to go along with them. The freedom to play how you want really makes this game stand out. I've been playing Morrowind for years, and I still come back for more.

[skylark]

I actually rate Daggerfall higher than Morrowind. Morrowind, believe it or not, felt small in comparison and didn't capture my imagination the way Daggerfall did. Plus, the game was really toned down to get a Teen rating. There was lots of nudity and sexual content in DF. Another thing that I didn't like, which is more a problem in Oblivion, is the way there's a creature filled dungeon every ten feet. Still a great game. The whole series is.

[YoshiM]

I never really got into Morrowind. It was a bit too psychedelic for me with the mushroom trees and the large bug-taxis. The combat controls were also a departure from Arena and Daggerfall, which bugged me.

To me it's a prettied up version of Daggerfall, an "evolution" rather than a "revolution" and I don't see it being that close to "greatest RPG of all time".

[Hwj_Chim]

I found it to be damn near unplayable with all of the bugs. Plus I just hated the way It played.

[Griking]

I actually rate Daggerfall higher than Morrowind. Morrowind, believe it or not, felt small in comparison and didn't capture my imagination the way Daggerfall did. Plus, the game was really toned down to get a Teen rating. There was lots of nudity and sexual content in DF. Another thing that I didn't like, which is more a problem in Oblivion, is the way there's a creature filled dungeon every ten feet. Still a great game. The whole series is.

I love Daggerfall as well. I remember periods of time where I'd just wander in the wilderness and find little villages. Unfortunately the game hasn't aged well due to its 3D graphics but Daggerfall is still one of my top 10 RPGs

[Gabriel]

I rate it along with some of the worst I've ever played, along with such gems as King's Field.

Sorry. I didn't like it at all.

[carlcarlson]

it's my personal favorite. the sheer amount of things to do and the way you leveled up your character made it almost perfect in my opinion. before morrowind i had all of these ideas about what would make a great rpg, and then morrowind had almost all of them. I hear daggerfall is much better, but like someone else said, it hasn't aged well at all, and trying to play it now doesn't go very well. morrowind is one of those games that some people absolutely love and others just hate. I guess it all depends on your style of playing.

[Snapple]

Definitely somewhere in the top ten, maybe top five.

Morrowind is smaller than Daggerfall, but the attention to detail is a lot bigger. Every town is unique and looks completely different. There are a million quest-y things to do, and it's fun to explore and mod.

[BydoEmpire]

For me, it's definitely in the top 5. It's one of my favorite games of all time, which is a little strange considering I never finished it. No game has ever had that amazing sense of exploration Morrowind had. What's over that hill? What's in that cave? Maybe I'll follow this river and see where it goes... It was a fantastic game.

[bangtango]

I haven't made it that far in the game but it is one of the better ones. Personally, I don't like that many RPG's and am not a fan of the genre. So I'd say it ranks up there very high with the ones I have played.

[Gentlegamer]

Morrowind has ruined me for Japaneses-linear-style "RPGs."

As a tabletop RPG gamer, I LOVED the open ended nature of the game, the factions, and the superb moral ambiguity inherent throughout the storyline and its characters.

There are some fantastic mods for it that make the game even better, too.

[theoakwoody]

I'm surprised Morrowind isn't playable on the 360.

[calthaer]

Not too high, in my opinion. Yeah, it's big. Yeah, you can do a bunch of stuff.

But c'MON. Ultima VII allowed me to BAKE FRICKIN' BREAD, if I wanted to. And that was over ten years ago. Why hasn't anyone made a world that cool since?

In Morrowind I maxed out a weapon pretty early into the quest, and then it just got plain boring after a while. No mounts to make travel easier (hello - Ultima VII's flying CARPET?); I just had to hoof it everywhere. The NPCs staying in the same exact spot all day, all night, never moving. Those stupid guards kept calling KEEP MOVING in that deadpan voice. Outlander this, outlander that, blah blah blah. They could at least have ten different things for them to say if I have to hear it all game.

And the dialogue was way more boring than even Ultima's NAME JOB BYE system. Not to mention that the world was pretty colorless, too - a big fat grey region in the middle of the map tends to do that to you.

Ultima, Bard's Tale, KOTOR - all way more interesting to me. I'm not a fan of the Japanese "train-track" games, but even a Final Fantasy game tends to keep my interest more than Morrowind did.

KEEP MOVING.

[Gentlegamer]

KEEP MOVING.N'wah!

[Overbite]

I like Oblivion more because, even though its smaller, it has more stuff.

Also because of the mods. I can make a character that actually looks semi-interesting instead of some creepy looking square-headed elf beast with its face on crooked. Just look!

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/9182/oblivion200706212133329vd4.th.jpg (http://img404.imageshack.us/my.php?image=oblivion200706212133329vd4.jpg)

wow!

For comparison, here is a shot of my character and a basic oblivion character

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/91/oblivion200706212134036mr9.th.jpg (http://img408.imageshack.us/my.php?image=oblivion200706212134036mr9.jpg)

he looks like a ham

[PDorr3]

That was the game that made me buy an xbox, never regretted it either. Since I was never a pc gamer morrowind on xbox was really the first rpg, or game for that matter where I truly felt like I was living in its world. Story? what sotry? hell the beauty of that game were the never ending quests, the ability to steal items, claiming a house for yourself and storing your items inside of it. Heck even the graphics, sound, voice acting, all top notch.

I wouldent compare it to turn based rpg's, to me games like morrowind and games like final fantasy 7 are traditional and action rpg's. However if I had to make a list of my top 10 rpg's of all time this would probably rank around 6-8.

[ProgrammingAce]

I rank it somewhere between Pac-Man and Need for Speed: Underground.

[carnage6]

Sorry to go off topic for a bit but which is the best version of Morrowind to get for Xbox? I heard different printings added some new stuff to the game.

PG

[ProgrammingAce]

Sorry to go off topic for a bit but which is the best version of Morrowind to get for Xbox? I heard different printings added some new stuff to the game.

PG

Get the game of the year platinum edition. It has the 3 expansion packs.

[Anexanhume]

Despite its glitches and some dull points of the gameplay, it's the most immersive game I've ever played, more so than oblivion. It makes you feel like you're really in another world, and you love every minute of it. In my top 3 for sure :D

[j_factor]

I didn't feel like I was in another world at all. Incidentally, I played Morrowind right after playing Shenmue II. My thought was "why the hell is everybody just standing around?!" Immersion was right out the window IMO.

On a more concrete note, I felt that a lot (if not most) of the quests in Morrowind were frivolous; the storyline was bland, and the battle system didn't do anything for me. The bugs are kind of inexcusable.

[djsquarewave]

wow!
Those are some ridiculous breasts there, even by western-RPG standards.

I could never really much get into either Morrowind or Oblivion. I put about fifteen hours into each one hoping they would pick up, following the main quest and doing lots of side wandering, but my interest completely fell off by that point. Felt fair too aimless to me, really. Also too damn much bloom in Oblivion.

Though I'm not much a fan of jRPGs either.

[TheDomesticInstitution]

I like this game a lot too, but there's so much to do- almost too much. I just recently picked it up off my self, and started playing it again (after about a year and a half). I don't know if I can ever finish it. I wonder what the finish ratio is for all the people who've played it. It can't be that high. Sorry for resurrecting a dead thread...but anyone else currently playing this game? It has really changed the way I think about RPG's, as most seem really small by comparison. I'm not a big fan of Japanese-style, turn-based games... with the exception of the KOTOR series on the XBOX.

[carlcarlson]

I am currently playing Oblivion, so I went back into Morrowind to check out my old save. I beat probably 95% of that game, including the two expansions. No other game has claimed as much time as Morrowind did. It's funny though, after checking it out recently I don't think I'll ever be able to play it again. I spent way too much time with it, and am too familiar with everything. Luckily I have Oblivion now, but I think Morrowind did a lot of things better. To answer the OPs question, I've got it in my #1 spot so far.

[TheDomesticInstitution]

Get the game of the year platinum edition. It has the 3 expansion packs.

If I'm not mistaken, only 2 expansion packs were released... and the "Game of the Year Edition" also comes in a non-platinum hits version, as it's the one I have.

[misfits859]

This game completely occupied my thoughts for almost two months when I played it a few years ago. I had to buy the game guide to beat it... I'd likely rank it somewhere close to World of Warcraft which is my favorite RPG ever.

[boatofcar]

So what exactly does Morrowind do better than Oblivion?

[TheDomesticInstitution]

It's cheaper and you don't need to buy a 360 to play it.

Seriously, I'm not sure. I've wanted a 360 ever since I knew there would be an elder scrolls game on it. I just have trouble with the idea of spending money on one right now (360) when I'm really starting to get a good xbox collection going... and of course all the other systems I own. Although when I do get one, oblivion will be the 1st game I buy.

[Ajax]

Once you have gone to every town, looted every house a killed every non-game charactor, you get lonely. But that doesn't really stop you from making another charactor.

[thegardentool]

It is a great game and it definately kept me a lot more busy than Oblivion. It was such a fun game that I've bought it three times, first time then two Game of the Year editions, all for PC. First one was stolen, gave first GotY away then bought the third to play it again.

Then again I've bought Oblivion twice, once for 360 once for PC because the controls suck on the 360.

[esquire]

I'd rate it at 6 Courics.

[m117]

Not to bash Elder Scrolls but I bought Oblivion and was only able to invest about an hour into it. It's definitely not the game's fault, as I respect it for what it is. Artistically, graphically and storywise, I appreciated what I experienced, I just didn't feel compelled to experience much more of it. Then again I haven't been able to enjoy an RPG since FFX (ahh, Final Fantsy XII, I had such high hopes for thou...).

[Volcanon]

It was decent, the fetch quests kinda sucked though. Murdering people was fun. I jumped everywhere so my jump stat became rediclous and I could jump over houses.

[G-Boobie]

I'd rate Morrowind in my top ten games, period. There's just something about how well designed the world is that most other games in the genre are lacking.

I love the Elder Scrolls series in it's entirety, but Morrowind stands out as the game that changed how I view immersion and design in sandbox environments. Sure the game was broken in many ways; your stats were super easy to exploit, there were more than a few crash bugs, and the graphics have NOT aged well, but I once spent two hours real time reading books in the bookstore in Vivec. Any game that can make me do that on my own time and enjoy it obviously has something going for it.

the way I look at how the world of Morrowind was designed can be summarized by the concept of 'substantialized minimalism'. The game world is huge, and there are literally hundreds of places and things to see. To make sure they could include as much of that as they could, Bethesda reduced the infrastructure of the surrounding game to it's bare minimum; NPC's stand in one spot, perpetually... But you never have to hunt down a favorite shop keeper or guild mate. The experience system is basic, almost simplistic, but it allows for some pretty creative builds, even if you do decide to exploit it. The character models are poorly textured and generic looking, but when you walk into a Dunmer camp during a sandstorm and see the locals walking into the wind, shielding their faces against the wind with their arms and scarves, you get a sense of their culture and place. It's all pretty amazing.

Many of the design decisions that annoy other gamers are totally valid; the NPCs are static in their location, the bugs are pretty unforgivable, and the fetch quests are pretty shallow. Despite that, there are places, stories, and themes in the game that in my opinion transcend their flaws.... Though if I even meet the guy who decided that Cliff Racers were a good idea, I will stab him in the eye. Seriously.

[Daltone]

I'd rate it far, far below Baulder's Gate II, KOTOR and even Fable. It was big and bland and just not terribly interesting for me.

[calthaer]

OK...I'm thread-liching here, and at this point a discussion on Morrowind probably belongs in "classic gaming" far more than "modern gaming," but I'm doing so for a reason: I want to revise my previously expressed opinion based on a new attempt to play through this game. In addition, there still - even eight or so years after this game has come out - appears to be an active modding community that is constantly improving / tweaking / changing this game.

Morrowind is not the best RPG of all time, but it's a far cry from a piece of dreck. I'd really say that the thing that saves this game from the bad review that I previously gave it is the fact that it's allowed the community to do so much with its editor. Many of the mods that have come out address the specific complaints that I had about the game, and liberal use of the UESP wiki pages make the game a lot more playable and enjoyable. I'm currently using "Living Cities of Vvardenfell" (gives NPCs schedules so that they are at home / at the bar / at work at different times during the day...even if they do "teleport" there, it's a big improvement), Herbalism Enhanced and Resources Enhanced (makes collecting things for alchemy worlds better), one that provides purchase-able houses and furniture to place in those houses (I'm surprised by how much this really makes me enjoy the game - the ability to buy a house, decorate it as you see fit, and of course to load it up and hoard all sorts of things) and of course the Code Project / Patch Project, which fixes all sorts of little things in the game to improve it. I think I'm also using a few other mods that change / tweak a few other things (Dark Brotherhood attacks, the ability to re-forge the "end-game" weapon into a different type, and of course one to limit the aggressiveness of those infernal Cliff Racers).

Point being: the mods change a lot of things in this game...if it doesn't quite suit your fancy, you can to a certain extent "bend" the game to your will, and customize it to suit your preferences. Even the skill system.

The big down-side to the game is, IMO, that you almost have to use the wiki. You can't really play this game enjoyably without some sort of guide. A map of the fast-travel points (which I didn't use before), a list of essential NPCs, and where to find decent items (you'll almost never come across them by chance - the world's just too big) are essential. It's annoying that you can't really ask NPCs about equipment necessary to perform certain skills...where you can buy soul gems of various types, for instance, or what places are good sources of decent weapons or armor - even information about what types of armor to be on the lookout for. I know they try to let you "be whomever you want to be," but if I were doing that in the Morrowind game world, I know that - given the prevalence of things that could kill you - I'd be asking everyone, everywhere, where I could obtain the tools for survival. Lots of other RPGs simply put these in the shop as soon as you reach a certain level...Morrowind hides them in out-of-the-way places and hopes you'll come across them (case in point: the one guy, in the whole game, that will forge ebony / glass / adamantium armor for you...and I can't ask the other armorers / warriors / whatever about him, or about someone "who makes good armor?").

So yeah...I'm enjoying this game a lot. It's a whole lot more fun with some of the additions other people have made to it. Can't wait to play Oblivion, since it seems that's equally customizable.

[stalepie]

I didn't like the graphics of it so I haven't played it.

[Trumpman]

Never played Morrowind, but the Elder Scrolls is first and foremost a PC series. The mods for Oblivion made the game ten times better - on the consoles you just can't experience that gain. They made Oblivion easier to understand in-game -- you don't need a guide to play it; some hardcore Morrowind fans weren't happy, but I think it was a good decision.

The worst decision made by Bethesda in Oblivion was to level your opponents. When you get higher in level, even the ordinary guards start having ridiculous gear, which is absurd. The mods, though, transform the game, getting rid of this problem and adding so much more.

In summary: you need to play Elder Scrolls on a computer. Reminds me that I need a new rig for Skyrim later this year...

[kupomogli]

The only reason I like Morrowind is due to the huge world. The world itself is better designed than that of Oblivion in my opinion. The thing I don't like about the Oblivion games is that they're too open.

Morrowind is like looking through Google and not knowing what you're searching for. That's the thing I hate about the game because when I owned the Game of the Year edition, I never really made any actual progression because it felt too much like every random person had you do a fetch quest here and there. With Oblivion you had some idea what to do because it pointed you in the direction you were required to go.

I like games that are similar to the Elder Scrolls games, yet are more enclosed much better. King's Field for example.

[misfits859]

Is it possible to beat the main quest without a guide? I always wondered if a large percentage of players actually beat it without help. After I finished it I just felt that the game world was just way too big to be able to figure it out on your own.

[pseudonym]

Yeah, it's possible to beat the main quest without a guide. I think that there are a couple of ways to screw up the main quest if you sell certain items, kill certain characters, etc. At least with Oblivion, you couldn't sell any important item and the quest page is much better than Morrowind. I've never played the PC version of Morrowind until recently.

[Gooch3008]

Morrowind is a fantastic game. A very fleshed out world to explore, indeed.

[swlovinist]

Morrowind has its fans, I am not really one of them. As time and priorities have changed in my life, so have my game tastes. Ten years ago, when time was unlimited, I probably would have wanted to play more games like this. I played Morrowind back in the day, and have to say I just got bored wandering. More of KOTR fan personally, but respect that this game is good...just not my cup of tea. I am now more in favor of games that you can pick up and play 15 minutes...not 150 hours..

[Lady Jaye]

I do have Morrowind for Xbox and I've yet to play it. In fact, I'll probably finish Oblivion first, and that was put aside when I started playing Dragon Age... Oh well, eventually I'll get to it, especially now that I have an original Xbox.

[misfits859]

Forgot to mention that Morrowwind's soundtrack is one of my favorite ever.

[calthaer]

Morrowind is like looking through Google and not knowing what you're searching for. That's the thing I hate about the game because when I owned the Game of the Year edition, I never really made any actual progression because it felt too much like every random person had you do a fetch quest here and there. With Oblivion you had some idea what to do because it pointed you in the direction you were required to go.

I think of it as being something like the early Adventure games, like King's Quest / Space Quest and so forth. I'm thinking in particular of the "NIKSTLITSELPMUR" puzzle, but in general those games required you to come up with the one particular solution - the one that the developers had in mind when they made the game. It's weird, because the quests aren't quite like this - there are lots of people that explain what the factions are, what sorts of skills they require, where to find the quest-givers for that faction...you can pretty much ascertain where to go to get some "action" that's appropriate for your character.

The problem is that there are loads of other "questions" that a player / character might have. Where can I find a particular item, or type of item, for sale? What kinds of "legendary" items are there that I might find particularly useful for my class / skillset? Or, what type of purchaseable item is "best-in-class," and who sells it? If you don't know about this, who would or might? Where can I find someone to train me in a particular skill? Where can I find the shrine to a particular deity? Where might I find a particular type of monster, or ingredient (that grows / spawns in one region or another)? What sorts of monsters out there should I be particularly wary of? You can't find out much of this info in-game at all, although it is there in part (e.g., there's someone somewhere that tells you that a particular town is a good place to buy spells).

Looking at the Wiki and getting those sorts of answers all in one place, I can see how the developers might have expected such things to be obvious, perhaps with a little bit of educated guesswork...but I can also see how, for a new player, trying to find these sorts of answers can be overwhelming to the point of forcing one to use the "hint" file. You don't even know where to begin, because there are few pointers - if any - in the game itself, and if there are, they're well-hidden (and some of them only showed up in the expansion - for example - and maybe slightly spoiler-ish - the museum that told the player what sorts of "artifacts" exist...but then again, this relies on a player finding the ONE place in the game where they can get that information, with no signposts pointing to the museum as the source of that info, and even then, the museum provides no hints as to where to find any of those artifacts). They even include "libraries" in the game with a lot of books, but said libraries don't contain any useful information whatsoever in terms of those questions I've posed. In a post-Google age, when people expect information on anything to be obtainable from some source out there, I hope that they make this a bit better for their future games.

[josekortez]

Saddest part is that I didn't understand what I was supposed to do with all the stuff I found in Morrowind until after I had played Fallout 3 on 360. Durh!!!

[Ninjamohawk]

I loved the atmosphere of morrowind but the combat is assy

[Zthun]

Yeah, it's possible to beat the main quest without a guide. I think that there are a couple of ways to screw up the main quest if you sell certain items, kill certain characters, etc. At least with Oblivion, you couldn't sell any important item and the quest page is much better than Morrowind. I've never played the PC version of Morrowind until recently.

It's possible, but this is one of the rare cases where having someone guide you through the game is more fun. Big worlds are fun to mess around in, but when you've got something overly massive; it's really not at all enjoyable if you find yourself at a point where you get stuck.

[Night Driver]

@ calthaer

No. You had it right the first time.