Morrowind Reflections

[wolfheart]

TL;DR Not a request for help, just rambling about my feelings for the "Big 3."

This is merely a thread praising the relative stability of Morrowind (with the help of the modding community of course) compared to Oblivion and Skyrim. I've only ever crashed a few times in the entirety of my Morrowind playthrough (still ongoing) while Skyrim is crash city and Oblivion CTDs a moderate amount of my playtime.

All 3 of these games are heavily modded, and I make sure that each one is as compatible as I can make it, using the tools that the generous modding community have made for us peons. I use BOSS (mlox for Morrowind), TES4/5/F3/Edit, and Wrye Bash to sort out conflicts, remove dirty edits when needed, and sort out my load order to provide a smooth playing experience.

I also use "stability enhancers" that help keep each game from CTD too often (Oblivion Stutter Removal, or the Skyproc Patchers, for example). Which brings me to my point: Morrowind, despite its age, really outshines Oblivion and Skyrim not just because of how ridiculously hard it was in comparison, or the atmosphere, story and depth, but also because of how stable the game is. I can go hours and not worry about saving every minute.

These are just my personal opinions, based on my experiences with the games, and how I feel about them.

[lesliewifeofbath]

I still think Morrowind is a better game....just sayin' I could do so much more with it. Decorating my homes was much easier, the story line is better, the general creativity was better, the people better looking--yes I think so, the mods are better (probably because they had a few more years to develop), and for me, Morrowind was just more fun to play. Oblivion--definitely and Skyrim--sorta are much better suited for consoles.

[luthien]

Hey Wolfheart, I just want to let you know that I pretty much share your sentiment and the lack of responses to this thread I believe does not mean that most people think otherwise.
I can speak for a number of friends who all think of Morrowind as the best in the series, including Skyrim. I do love Skyrim too, but Morrowind just holds a special place in my heart.
In fact I recently installed it again on my newer PC and this time I started out with the Morrowind Overhaul package, and holy Guar!
If you have not looked into it give it a try, it makes the game look stunning! Everything is sharp and clear, the colors pop, the water looks more realistic than Skyrims and overall the graphics and landscape now look better than Oblivion. Screen shots really do it no justice, one has to see it live to really appreciate it.
The Overhaul is a package of mods and utilities that will in one package give Morrowind an amazing face lift and game enhancement; best of all after the initial install you can add more mods to it, though you have to be careful which ones do not compete with the ones already included, but Tamriel Rebuild for example works well with it, so that now you can explore not only Vvardenfell but half of mainland Morrowind in glorious HD!
Personally I may not have picked every mod included in the Overhaul but it beats Vanilla by a long shot.

[ygern]

I love all three, and I can't say that any of them has been that much of an issue with crashing - usually it's a mod that is the culprit.

MW will always hold a special place for me in my heart, and in fact I'm still playing it. I still find it in a strange way the most interesting Main Quest - even though I know some people never even touch the MQ .

On the other hand, there is a clunkiness to it that you don't get in the other two games. That's not really a criticism, that's just its age showing a bit.

But I don't really feel I can say I prefer one to another anymore. Each have their strengths and weaknesses, and I enjoy them for different reasons.

However, I do still regard Morrowind as my characters "true" home, and so does she

[blockhead]

Morrowind is my favorite game of all time. I just didn't contribute to the thread (until now) because I have already gone on about it in other threads.

[candesco]

By default morrowind has an unstable savegame system and if you don't save often then your progress will be lost. Now morrowind code patch makes the savegame system more stable. You better still save on a frequent base though. Sometimes morrowind still causes a ctd. It's not as stable as GTA: San Andreas or Titan Quest, which i can play for hours without saving. Although i do save often in GTA:SA because i sooner or later become wasted. Then it's usefull to have a save and not loose all your weapons Strange enough i didn't had much ctd's with oblivion. Only the well-known bugs, like the falling orc in skingrad.
Morrowind is also my favourite game of all time. And like blockhead i also had said things about it earlier on.

[Jac]

I released about a dozen mods for Morrowind and helped others with about half that. I only released one mod for FO 3 and none for Oblivion. That's how I feel about TES.

[blockhead]

Agreed on the lack of stability. Morrowind is crashy. I usually keep four rotating saves. So if one gets corrupted, I have three earlier ones. And I save often, maybe every five minutes?

[jgf]

The original Morrowind was so buggy and crash prone that I actually deleted it and threw the disc away after about the hundredth time I killed something with an arrow only to find myself instantaneously back at the desktop. The GOTY edition has been so stable that I've installed it fresh on each new computer then overwritten that with the continually growing version from the old system (which must by now be eight or nine years old). I do miss the old grand soul gem bug though, even if it did make the game too easy.

The quicksave function is unreliable, often corrupting saves; but since someone informed me of that and I began using regular saves I've had no issues.

Have never tried Oblivion or Skyrim since general consensus seemed to be they were flashier but not exactly better than Morrowind ...plus my antiquated system can't even maintain 30fps everywhere in Morrowind, I'll not burden it with something more resource intensive.

[blockhead]

One of my crash reduction measures has been to limit Morrowind to a maximum frame rate of 30.

Yeah, it's crashy, but I love it. Best frigging game of all time. With, believe it or not, Fallout 3 as a close second.

[Jac]

Sometimes Morrowind will crash with a BEX error when running under Windows 7 64-bit. To fix this, follow these steps:

• Click on start, then control panel.
  
• Click on System and Security.
  
• Click on System.
  
• Click on Advanced System settings.
  
• Click on the Settings button underneath Performance.
  
• Click on the data execution protection tab.
  
• Select the bottom radial button that says "Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select:"
  
• Click on the add button and navigate to morrowind.exe.
  
• Select it and click Ok twice. Close all of the windows.
  

[jgf]

May 19, 2013 1:26:04 GMT blockhead said:

One of my crash reduction measures has been to limit Morrowind to a maximum frame rate of 30.

Yeah, it's crashy, but I love it. Best frigging game of all time. With, believe it or not, Fallout 3 as a close second.

Mine is limited to 30fps also, but running 1680x1050 some areas, such as Balmora Expanded, only get about 9fps ...and some rooms of Pearl Palace drop to 2-3 fps.

The only game with greater longevity for me has been Transport Tycoon, having been on every system since 1995 (though for the past ten years in the OpenTTD version). Periodically I reinstall oldies like System Shock 2, No One Lives Forever, Deus Ex, or the Thief series; other permanent residents of my game drives are racing sims and MS Flight Sim.

I remember Fallout 1 & 2, absolutely hated both; never tried any newer versions.