WoW: Morrowind

[Hanners-emerald-dream]

RPG elements have morphed into including games with measureable progression systems, and the story might be secondary.

Progression systems aren’t necessarily a bad thing. But they should be the secondary system, otherwise you start to lose the defining aspects of what makes an RPG.

[Swani-arathor (Swani)]

Aye, agree. Was just stating a reason why players who are focused on mechanics, are those who have learned that RPG is also games with measuareable progression systems. We are on the same page here.

[Marktatsu-tichondrius]

Other than combat and graphics (you could argue journal system, too, but that was fixed with Tribunal) I can’t think of one single thing that’s better about Oblivion. I waited years for it to come out and was bitterly disappointed.

It had captain picard so that was nice. May the fourth be with you number one

[Calciumplus-misha (Calciumplus)]

modders fix 99% of the issues people had with the latter two

Modders were never able to fix the things which, for me, were the primary issues with Oblivion and Skyrim.

3. So much stripped out in terms of skills, stats, wear locations, gameplay mechanics (like Modern WoW).

4. So much stripped out in terms of NPC and NPC association affiliation.

5. The utter dumbing down of the entire questing system to the point where you just follow an arrow to your quest target. Yes, you can turn the arrows off, but (just like in Modern WoW) the designers expect you to play with them on and the journal is now so pared down that it gives you no information about where to go. There are no clues in the landscape or bits of information to be gleaned about where to go by talking to characters either.

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Sure, the graphics have been improved outstandingly.

Morrowind’s UI and Journal system might have been clunky, but at least they were functional and were more than an extremely limited scrolling menu.

Yes, Morrowind’s combat was weak – but if you’re like me, as I’d hope most RPG gamers are, that’s an “action gamer” distraction that matters less to you than the rolling of the imaginary dice behind the scenes that calculates your chance of success.

[Stpatty-stormreaver]

Everquest was much more similar to Morrowind. WoW was more like a nintendo take on the MMO genre at that time compared to Morrowind or EQ. If you are comparing it to BFA then yeah Vanilla is a ultra hardcore RPG, but thats really only because BFA is… well… what it is.

[Calciumplus-misha (Calciumplus)]

This thread has inspired me to drag out Morrowind again.

I installed the Morrowind Overhaul 3.0 series of autopatches, and I also added the version 2 of the dark brotherhood delay patch (since this oversight it a bit game breaking as a newb) and away I went.

I urge anyone who hasn’t tried the game to give it a go.

You just have to go in remembering three things.

1. You need to read a lot.
2. Combat is DICE driven, not real-life manual dexterity driven.
3. Even with the overhaul it has dated graphics.

But it’s still the best CRPG that I have ever played.

I love how it’s the very opposite of hand-holdy and dumbed down.

I want to find my way to join a certain faction but there is no easy way to get there – I have to ask around. Most people have no idea, and I can’t remember how I did it years ago.

I love the way quests work too. One of the famous ones – solving the murder of a nobleman from one of the great houses – went a little bit like this for me:

I joined the thieves’ guild and had a quest to get hold of a key to the manor of one of the other nobles in town. I bribed his servant and secured the key – but before I returned the key to my guildmaster, I went in with my new key and ransacked the place.

The money that I made got me thinking… perhaps some of these other manors are worth robbing. There was another manor that I looked like I could access, but guards constantly patrolled by the door, so I couldn’t pick the lock. I ended up getting in my climbing onto a watch tower and taking a painful jump onto the manor’s upstairs balcony – I picked the lock up there.

While helping myself to the loot in this home, I encountered a terrified servant and a corpse on the floor. This was intriguing. After selling the corpse’s belongings for a pretty penny, I began to ask around about the murder of this prominent man. Most of the town was convinced it was a certain lizardy-type (Argonian) immigrant to the town. He claims to be being stitched up because, you know, racism.

More investigation and interviews gave me a description of the killer which matched a prominent figure of the group that is basically the Tea Party of Morrowind – the Commona Tong. I wanted to bring him to justice, but he denied any wrongdoing and he was too strong for me to kill – even so, this would get me locked up and there were loads of witnesses…

And this was all before I even had the quest to solve the murder!

I picked that up while visiting his great house leader a few hours later.

The game is so rich, so detailed.

I solved this quest once before, but I have no idea how to do it – I may not complete it for weeks.

If you long for more meat and complexity in your games – look past the lack of action combat and flashy graphics. This is an amazing game.