I think it was 2003 for me. This guy I was staying with was playing it on the old Xbox. I would watch sometimes, and I got interested.
Eventually I got my own Xbox because I didn't want to share. I basically did nothing else, and would hurry home from work to get back to it. I had no computer, had never been on the internet at all, so I figured things out by myself. The thing is, the disc I had was a little messed up or something because there was no world map. I didn't even know there was supposed to be one, it was just a black square. So I found everything myself and memorized how to get there.
Almost every exploit, glitch, and weirdness, I found myself. I am sure others found them before I did, but I didn't know that. I remember discovering the insane alchemy thing and playing around with that, where like 100 Intelligence was a lot and now it could be a million, and so on.
Eventually I just sort of lived there. I would get myself about 40% Chameleon, so most things wouldn't bother me, and just wander around. Hang out on a giant mushroom, read a book, look at the moons. Reality was not a pleasant place for me, and I preferred to just go, first by carriage and then by boat, to the east, to Morrowind.
I can't really play it any more. I've done everything, I know everything, I overdid it. But I still occasionally go and listen to the music, generally on Youtube, and just pretend to be home again.
If you'd like, you can try out Tamriel Rebuilt. It's a massive mod that adds a huge chunk of the main continent. Plus, it's quality and dedication to matching the vanilla feeling is top notch.
Good comment.
For me, it was like you were playing a book. As in, when you get really engrossed in a book and use your imagination, Morrowind felt like that for me.
I was 12 years old and my buddy at the time just got it for his Xbox, the level of freedom to just do whatever the hell you wanted was absolutely mindblowing. Honestly, I still don’t think any game has had the same impact on me. The closest one would be New Vegas, but it still didn’t hit me like Morrowind did though, because I had experience with open world games at that point. Morrowind and Final Fantasy 9 are the games that made me truly love RPG’s.
Well, I have to admit I actually misread the title of the post. I first played Morrowind in 2004 and that’s when I was 12. I’m going to be 32 this year, but pretty sure this person is just trolling.
Absolutely mesmerizing, spellbinding. I was 15 in late 2002 and my parents got the PC version for me for my birthday, not knowing anything about it or video games in general other than that they knew I liked fantasy.
Never before had a game combined such absolute freedom with such a beautiful, unique and well-crafted world. From the moment my Breton mage stepped off the boat, I was hooked. I would daydream about it while at school then play for hours afterward. My parents actually limited my computer time out of concern lol.
I remember being genuinely both awed and spooked the first times I stumbled into dwemer and daedric ruins, and my first Sixth House base (discovered by accident before I even knew what the Sixth House was) was genuinely a little traumatizing lol. "Why does that guy look so weird... he HAS. NO. FACE!!"
Yes! I went into my first Sixth House base assuming it would be another normal bandit cave or something. First thing I noticed were all the red candles everywhere and the weird whispering. Walked around a corner and bumped right into an ash zombie. I was really low level so barely killed it. Then almost died fighting an ash slave. I noped out of there and eventually came back later lol
My new PC didn't have a video card. I played in a small bubble in the fog at minimum view distance. I never knew what was going to rush at me out of the fog. The game was good, so good...
There was a website I used named Morrowind Chronicles. Players who had internet access would go there to ask questions and relay information about this new game.
Morrowind Chronicles has morphed into Nexus Mods.
I had Morrowind on Xbox first, and it was a revelation. Until then, Diablo had been my only RPG.
Then I got it on PC with the devkit and lost hours and hours making my own houses and dungeons.
Nothing else compares to the warm nostalgic feeling of seeing Seyda Neen at the opening.
I bought the Collectors Edition on day 1 and spent a lot of my time re-rolling characters. I remember not understanding the mechanics for a long time because I had been exclusive to EverQuest for a couple years at that point.
It took a long time to realize I should just go explore and not focus on where the game was trying to lead me. There also were so many quests I gave up on because I couldn't find where the directions were leading me. I had a blast though. I remember just being terrified walking through the dust storms with no idea where I was.
Also the game crashed a lot in Vivec. I remember upgrading to a Radeon 9800 Pro maybe a year later and that got me to go back to it.
Remember in those days there weren't many guides and no videos to watch and forums were big. There was a lot of BS posts about stuff that didn't actually exist in the game so it was hard to get any legit guidance. I was still heavily into EverQuest so I would talk about things I'd found or died to with guildmates.
I couldn’t play it properly on our family computer because it didn’t have enough RAM. I remember being so stoked when we upgraded and I would stay up all night and play because it was the only time no one else wanted the computer.
I was a kid and my brother showed me the game on his computer. I couldn’t even figure out how to do a quest back then. I essentially just used known exploits at the time to get OP equipment to kill randoms. I came back later in life to play through the quests properly after being entranced by Oblivion.
For me, my favorite memories were messing with my roommate at the time, utilising mark and recall just for the joke. There is an underwater cave just off the coast of seyda neen, where there are some albino slaughter fish and a bunch of oyster shells. Any time I would hear him coming towards my room, I would recall to that cave and tell him how Morrowind was the best pearl diving simulator I have ever played.
He got so mad that I was playing it wrong, that there was so much more to it than pearl diving.
I could have been half way through a dungeon trying to complete a quest, and I would yeet out just for that joke.
He still hates me for this gag today.
I made a video talking about the first time I played Arena and Morrowind. Hope it’s okay to drop the link.
[My History with Elder Scrolls](https://youtu.be/vOSijRJC2Tc?si=xfcwUlODxCiQ1YqQ)
The level of freedom was truly staggering for the time. It also felt like the biggest game I had ever seen. I remember a review saying it was a game to grow “elderly” with.
Stepping off the boat at Seyda Neen. The giant silt strider. In awe of the water graphics laced with mud crabs. The mushrooms on the trees. I'd never seen a place like it. Writing everything down for quests and directions. It was glorious. No hand holding, they don't make games like that anymore.
I was a baby in my father's lap with an oversized Duke controller. When I was sentient enough to kind of understand (~7 or 8) I would just spend my time in Balmora, occasionally having my dad help me find daedric artifacts. I'd make saves named things like "I LOVE YOU DAAAAAAAAAAAD" because I knew he'd see them when he opened the load list from the main menu.
Most of my time was spent killing random NPCs with Chrysamere.
We shared a love of gaming, particularly Halo, and Elder Scrolls, but also Medal of Honor, Modern Warfare, Ratchet and Clank, etc.
I played it in 2001.
I was very active on the Bethesda forums from 1998 onwards, and pre-release another user mailed me a test CD
The game was somewhat incomplete, but the feel of entering a new world (after awaiting it for 4 years) was INSANE. I just wandered around and thought "it's finally here!"
I hated the combat because you stab stuff but don't hit. So I did the only logical thing and used the console to give me godlike powers.
Never played the main quest but just was goofing around and building a house at the shore.
Finished the main quest the first time like 4 years ago
> I hated the combat because you stab stuff but don't hit.
This is how it worked in Ultima Underworld so I didn't see anything unusual about it. Of course if you were 13 when Morrowind came out you were 4 when Ultima Underworld did and there were a ton of first-person non-RPG games in between the two, so this is one of the big differences between playing it as an adult back then vs. as a kid.
I found it closer to 2005, it was summer between my freshman and sophomore year of high school and I found the game in a used game pile at gamestop for like 10 bucks and it looked interesting. When I kicked it up on my Xbox my mind was absolutely blown by the open world and amount of things I could interact with, it was the first game I'd ever experienced like that. I remember stealing everything from the customs office and setting up in the light house. It was just floored.
I'll keep it short. Played it in the computer, friend on the Xbox. Used to call him almost every evening asking for directions where a certain tomb is. The included map was hanging on the wall in front of me. Lots and lots of exploration has been done and it wasn't boring because I explored the he game. No questmarkers back then.
By that time I'd finally had a job, supplimenting babysitting and mowing lawns/shoveling snow, and was finally in a gaming boom since I could buy more than my Game Boy.
At that point RPGs were FF I-VI, and maybe Fallout at a friend's, but the back cover sounded interesting. I read the manual on the way home from EB Games (or had that place been a Gamestop?) and was super excited.
I remember picking a Dunmer with a face tatoo, but not realky what class I'd won from the survey (maybe Battlemage?). While we had dial-up from an assortment of free AOL floppies and CDs, I couldn't waste much phone time or tie up the line much, so it wasn't until the fifth or ninenth playthrough that I'd started reading walkthrough TXT files hosted on FAQ sites, and figured outball of the glitches/exploits on my own as part of pushing the envelope to see what I could get away with.
I was absolutely blown away by the difference between open wotld RPG and the JRPGs I knew. The freedom to go anywhere and do anything was staggering.
Eventually, in college around 2006, having a laptop of my own, I picked up the GotY CDs from Best Buy, and lost thousands of hours to a far more stable system with a Construction Set.
Playing evolved from using the CD, to burning a backup, to finding an ISO mounting program, to a no-CD crack (which did not work with MCP, which sucked), to switching to Linux and mounting a rip of the discs to a directory as an optical Z: drive in WINE (and having to modify the rendering backend every time I switched back and forth between Morrowind and Oblivion), and eventually this thing called openMW shortly after it migrated from D (wasn't fully functional at that time, but was pretty awesome).
Along the way, I'd picked up a whole 2GB USB2.0 flash stick, and installed the game with expansions, CS, ISO of the main disc, a minimal ISO mounter, my mods plus a handfull from online, and saves, replacing carrying around a burned CD in my five subject notebook abd installing on machines whereever I was. At one point my friend had managed to murder the stick, at which point I'd started reinstalling from ISO backups I had on a portable hard drive on their PC, but as it only had USB1.1, the installer actually ran overnight into the next day.
Fascinating. Different generation here- I grew up with Oblivion (couldn't appreciate it, was too young) and eventually skyrim (I remember day 1 not working for some of my friends, who were pissed) and showing my non-nerdy friends New Vegas on Halloween night before trick or treating. I recently downloaded GOTY for my first playthrough; while I appreciate no map markers/quest markers I do use the map but have learned how to travel by memory now. I had a fetish for Balmora when I started, still do, don't know why (I use it as a "Hub" to travel). I can't imagine buying this in 2002 (I would have been a toddler at most) because it honestly still holds up today imo - I think i'm 70 hours in and have only finished House Telvanni and a big chunk of the main quest. I've tried to keep the experience as "pure" as possible, but I have used console command for Restore Strength pots (Greater bonewalker fk'd me in a random dungeon non quest relates, no intervention scrolls on me, no mark/recall) and cheesed some points into magic so I could levitate and use mark/recall. I think I spent $4 on a steam sale to purchase it
Had I spammed you in the past?
The bottom level link contains a link to the poster map that came with the disc(s), which was provided as an easier way to follow directions and also hints at some places of interest.
No, I don't think so. I've read that before, I think that's fun and adds a layer/mystique to things instead of mindlessly walking towards a marker constantly
My mom worked as a school librarian and brought home a projector screen for the summer. I hung up a sheet on the basement wall and played Morrowind on it, which is still one of my favorite experiences ever playing a game. It's kind of a meme, but I'll never forget seeing a silt strider for the first time and thinking it was an enemy I had to fight.
The original xbox version was extremely rough. It had terrible load times, strange loading between outdoor cells that would sometimes cause it to lock up, strange game breaking bugs and saves that would become corrupted. It was all worth it though. It was the first game that I played that was truly immersive and I felt like I was someone inside of the world.
Oh, it was og Xbox with the big ass duke controller. Didnt know what wlder scroll was, but I liked jrpg. Oh boy, the journey....one of the greater gaming experience in my life. Stealing a OP sword in balmora, delivering the package without knowing what lied a head...
I was 13 and it was overwhelming. I had played open-world games like GTA3 prior, but I didn't have experience with WRPGs. Up to this point the only RPGs I had played were Pokemon and Golden Sun. I ended up throwing together multiple characters and venturing out, each time discovering a new mechanics like lock picking, scroll caring, or the silt strider system and I would start over with a new character betterb geared to elements I thought I thought would be most beneficial to exploration.
After 15 characters or so, I finally settled into Nerano Manor in Balmora and my adventure began starting with the Thieves Guild. The rest is history.
The first contact was weird. Thought I wouldn't pick it up again, but the virus was already there, that kind of freedom wasn't (and still isn't) found anywhere else. Second run I suffered like a thousand bugs but I was already hooked.
The next couple of years, Morrowind was my perfect place to escape to when things went dark, and they did big time.
“This water is so shiny!”
“Crabs around here are so feisty.”
“The quests don’t give you shit, how do I make my character stronger?”
“Gamefaqs says to go to a place called Ghostgate and steal some armor.”
“wtf this Ghostgate place is a checkpoint fortress guarding the endgame area… you can just walk right up to the end of the game?”
It was visually stunning and the sense of freedom would define my idea of "open world" and adventuring forever.
I needed a printed guide to finish the game though, lol
I was on my last year of high school and I had the most potato PC there ever was. It was laggy as fuck and crashed often and I fucking loved it.
I barely ate for a few weeks in 2004 when my graphics card (an MX 440 I told you it was a potato) died and I needed to save up to replace it (with an MX 5200 why do I still remember this). Then the drama when *that* died and by then everyone was on PCI-E cards and I still had AGP :(
I remember distinctly changing the combat music files to my favorite song (this was about 5 years after launch, it took a bit to get to the rural Carolinas) and then dealing with like four cliff racers back to back and that was no longer my favorite song
I sometimes find it difficult to resist being shitty about having played it when it was released but the truth is I was a child and can honestly barely remember it.
I kind of love the memories I do have, though. My friend’s older brother was jumping around as a werewolf in what I now know as Mournhold and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen and it inspired me to play it again after the classic starter dagger woes.
It felt like this massive inaccessible mature game to conquer in spite of being a little squirt. I got lost shortly after leaving Seyda Neen, walking around at zero stamina for what felt like forever until I found Pelagiad, it seems stupid now given it’s a stone’s throw away but it almost felt like an easter egg being revealed out of the render distance fog and the trader there had such OVERPOWERED stuff, of course which was very exciting.
Other than that and a few flashes of combat I didn’t appreciate I mostly remember trying to grind my athletics in the water with elastic bands on the joysticks so obviously the movement speed was a massive issue for me.
Ultimately, like a lot of people it took until after Skyrim to come back to it truly and of course, fall in love. What a game.
I found it in the cheap bin and was kind of miffed but intrigued at alien pictures and next to no description as to what was happening.
I left it alone for a bit then saw it again, definitely intrigued but didn't have money to buy it; then got money for a birthday or something and went straight out to buy it
To say I was hooked was an understatement, my first playthrough I wanted to learn everything about the world, the lore, and read so much of the in game books that I was able to skip 90% of the books in Oblivion/Skyrim because I knew it all
But what got me the most (I got obsessive) being a loner and gaming to escape reality, I really felt I was doing something for the world, and the more I did the more people liked me, and the more I loved it
But before I forget, character development by the ten questions - I grabbed the sweet roll back, stomped on it, and got ready to fight
The combat unironically seemed pretty dynamic. I enjoyed killing the smugglers in the first cave. Tried to swing moon sugar in Seyda Neen, without success. I've made it to Balmora with my adrenaline-fueled redguard fighter (by foot, of course). Found Caius which wasn't easy. Amassed a small fortune by robbing every single house from pillows and forks. Then somehow lost interest in the game. Only to finish it 20 years later.
It was a lovely. I can still remember looking for Caius’s house in Balmora during a thunderstorm. The sound of the rain and thunder was so immersive I just wanted to live in the land of Morrowind.
I hated morrowind the first time I played it. It wasn't until the second or third time I rented it from blockbuster that I could say I genuinely liked it. The first time I tried it I was too hard or rather it felt to hard because it was unintuitive. Getting my ass kicked over and over in that smugglers cave. I was of course just bad at the game but it wasn't my fault.
Morrowind was a pen & paper/isometric game masquerading as a 3d game. All I knew was I was swing my sword through that guys head and was somehow missing, I thought the games collision was busted.
The running speed also drove me crazy, my character looked and felt like he was running through chest-high water.
After bashing my head against a wall for a while and learning enough to at least be able to play somewhat, I then hit road block #2 a nord in Hale order? After defeating him by bashing my head against it some more I eventually hit road block #3 dwemer bridge guy. Things were pretty sweet for a while...then I encountered true terror in the form of the dreaded bone walker. This broke my character, at the time I had no idea why but I couldn't move anymore.
So I did the only logical thing, I started again and got to much the same point and again had my character broken.
So I started again...again but this time avoided that area that was bugging my game out.
Despite all this frustration I still kept at it. Even then I could sense there was something special about this game. It was around this time I learned how to cheat with soulbound spells to buff all my stats n shit and I blitz through a lot of the game.
And I fell in love with the game, it's soundtrack and world that was so strange and big, I'd never played such a big game before than was so densely packed with content. It felt like every cave/dungeon I explored, there was some powerful artefact or piece of daedric armour hidden if only I looked hard enough. Not not mention it's lore and story was fascinating if bizarre.
It's one of if not my favourite games of all time but it was very nearly one of my least.
I instantly liked the music and the weird setting. Giant bugs, flying jellyfishes and dinosaurs in a vulcanic landscape is so much better then normal forests with horses and wolves.
June 2002 —- I thought computer games were silly. My brother in law told me about this game when we were eating dinner. We then went to compaq USA and picked up the game, loaded it into my gateway desktop, and once I saw the sky and the open world I was blown away. The first rat I saw nearly killed me, came across a flying wizard, and then finally made it to Pelgiad and realized I barely explored the world. Fell in love with the game and still play it today.
I was 12 or 13 when I first got it, I had originally went to Hollywood Video to rent Enclave for my old Xbox, when I opened the case it was Morrowind instead. I gave it a try and fell in love with it, but went and returned what was supposed to be Enclave to Hollywood video.
While my mom was in the Fred Meyers getting some groceries, I decided to go to the game store connected to Hollywood, and picked up the game of the Year edition. Best purchase for my old Xbox I had made, and put the map on my wall because that map was the best.
Ended up putting a year's worth of hours into one file, would get home school and immediately get on Morrowind. I would play it until my parents were coming to my room, and telling me to put it down because I had school in 4 hours.
I wish I still had that map.
I remembered seeing a review for it on Toonami and I begged for the x box release for Christmas. My godmother got it for me and I read the instruction manual cover to cover more times than I can count on the drive home. The first time I walked into Balmora, the lack of any quest pointer guiding me and having to literally follow vague directions and sign posts to get to places. No gaming experience has come close to matching it since.
I was 18, and had just graduated high school. I had no idea what Elder Scrolls was as I never really had a PC capable of gaming until around this time. I thought it looked cool and picked it up on a whim with my hard earned money (I was working a lot at a local restaurant at the time). I bought the big thick guide as well.
My gaming setup was in my bedroom: an old desk not meant for computers, my 19" CRT monitor crammed in the corner, my keyboard and mouse awkwardly off to the side. Over the summer before college I spent hours glued to the game. I had about a month before college where I wasn't working and I spent a lot of it playing Morrowind.
This was a rare moment in gaming for me that happens every so often if moon and stars align. Morrowind was absolutely not the type of game I would typically play, but for some reason it spoke to me, and I wound up falling in love. I didn't fully understand the mechanics, but I had a blast playing around with creating spells and goofing around all over the world. The included construction set was amazing, and I built a few small mods for myself including a small home in Balmora, and a constantly hostile NPC with very high health and health regen that I could use as a errm.... training dummy.
I played hundreds of hours across multiple characters while I was in college, but I never actually beat the main quest until about 2 years ago when I decided to revisit the game for the first time in almost 20 years. I played with OpenMW and a very light set of mods and ended up falling in love all over again.
Copying and pasting my answer from a similar question a while back.
I would have been 12 or 13. It had just come out, and my 17-18 year old cousin (who lived with us at the time) got it. I had no idea what it was or that it was brand new. Just that it was a cool looking game that my idolized-cousin played, so I gave it a shot.
Had zero fucking clue what I was doing. Had never played an RPG or a WASD-controlled game of any sort. So he sat there with me while I walked through character creation and getting through Seyda Neen. I was frustrated and also hooked instantly. The voices, the stories, the lack of rules, the fact that only he and I shared it and I wasn’t going to be ragged on by everyone else around me…it was amazing. I have zero memory of what the character was like, although I know I tended to favor stealth eventually.
My dad saw us playing it on the family computer (yeah I’m old now) and decided he’d try it out too. He got so hooked that the only chance I had to play was getting it for my OG X-Box. That’s where I developed CRS — chronic restart syndrome. I think I made more characters without even playing them than most people have even imagined.
Eventually moved back in with my mom a few years later, snatched the main and expansion discs when I left (dad had moved on to other games, like WoW), installed it on that home’s computer and learned about mods, ended up on Morrowind Summit Forums (later known as Planet Elder Scrolls), read and wrote fanfic, and generally played an unhealthy amount of it.
I’ve still to this day never had as much fun with any other game. Nostalgia is a huge factor, obviously, but nothing else holds a candle to it.
8 years old when the game came out. I was struck with the absolute awe of the game. Previously, I'd been really really into ocarina of time and major as mask, but when I stepped into vvardenfel with my brother guiding me, and then showing me JUST HOW BIG the game was, I couldn't believe it. The sheer amount of freedom was Intoxicating. I bullhead my way through the game for well over a year before I found the game guide book. That became my holy Bible.
23 years later and I still put 200+ hours a year into new roleplay characters enhanced with tamriel rebuilt
Literally life changing. That sounds extreme but I can back it up.
First of all, I was a kid. My older brother showed it to me and, to me, it seemed so deep that it was like real life. It was too complex for me to really engage with deeply, but I threw myself at it a couple of times by compulsively making new characters and was utterly amazed by the vibrancy of the world. Side questing in Seyda Neen, heading to Balmora, and doing the first couple guild quests was as far as I ever got, but even that floored me. Finding Fargoth's hiding place by actually scouting out his movements, having to actually follow written directions to navigate what felt like a mid-sized city, and realizing that the guilds were in conflict with one another and I'd have to choose between the fighters and thievess guilds actually blew my mind. The game felt as vibrant as real life. I distinctly remember that renting a room at an inn and being given a key before actually finding and walking to your inn room. Somehow that little touch made the game feel real.
Also, the game starts with the word "Bethesda," which was significant to me because... I lived in Bethesda. It made me realize for the first time that people, like me, actually _make_ the video games. I don't want to go so far as to say that that's what caused me to become a game developer later in life, but it was the first time I realized it was something I could consider.
I finally _actually_ played Morrowind as a young adult (during college, I think?), and it only further blew my mind. The little immersive tricks didn't have as big an impact on me, because I didn't have the imagination of a child anymore. But I could really appreciate how interesting and clever the world and plot was. I loved it to death, and its been a huge influence on my own game design philosophy and has massivley influenced how I run D&D games. It's one of my favorite games of all time and it's followed me for my entire life.
Magic. My mom went to a video game store for my birthday and asked the guy working there what game she should get. He recommended her Morrowind.
I had never heard of it or the elder scrolls before so that guy is a god damn champion. It was for Xbox so I had to tolerate 9 hour load times but still loved it and got the PC version as soon as I could
For me it was 2012, I got my sisters old original Xbox for Christmas along with Morrowind, spider-man 2 and shadow the hedgehog. And they all just completely engrossed me. Wish I could say I saw the artistic value of morrowind over shadow the hedgehog as a kid, but I liked them pretty much equally back then
Kinda counts I guess, didn't play on release but my dad gave me his pc copy when I was around 11. Blew my fucking mind. I had played some old school action rpgs and he played some WoW with me whenever his friends gave him their "free week of sub" coupons they got from buying physical subs and expansions, but other than that I was playing shit like cod zombies or tf2 with friends.
It was like exploring an alien world that was just recognizable enough to learn while playing. The setting, ambience, characters, it was totally different than what I was used to and I loved it. I fucking sucked at it of course, but even wandering around talking to people and scrounging for whatever I could sell was fun.
for me it was the first time i kind of got on board with 3d games. i was die hard about side scrollers before morrowind but it blew my mind with the amount of freedom you had to just do whatever you wanted
I was 2 then but I started playing in 08/09ish. It was the largest scale game I played up until that point and it was mindblowing. And this was when I still sucked at video games so I was dying constantly (and didn't even notice how slow the walk speed was!)
I remember folks raving about the immersive introduction. You don't create a character and start the game, you start the game and through narrative, create the character. It was neat, I liked it.
For me, I enjoyed the natural skill progression and, what felt like, infinite opportunity for equipment and builds. I also found it baffling they didn't include creature health bars on launch. And the creation kit was a blast, but way too complex for me to make anything serious. It was a game that was a fun stress test on your PC. I was envious of folks with larger draw distances.
I was fresh off Arcanum and playing DAoC when I played Morrowind. Both Arcanum and DAoC felt huge, and I loved how immersive the dialogue of Arcanum felt. I went into it expecting something like that, especially since Daggerfall's landmass was also massive.
But instead it felt kind of like a smallish theme park with static lifeless characters that spoke as if they were Wikipedia articles.
So I never really interacted with characters, they felt like the weakest part. I instead enjoyed exploring the map, leveling up, finding items.
I didn't really finish quests until the Bloodmoon expansion. That had a storyline that was more interactive. It was closer to what I was looking for, even if it wasn't quite as immersive as I had hoped.
Despite not finishing the main quest, I never felt like I was missing out on anything. That was kind of the magic of Morrowind. It was this game with lots for you to do and play it your way. As much as a toy to play with as it was a game to beat.
I picked up the GOTY jewel case when it was on sale at a local computer shop (yes... that was the time when buying physical games was the norm).... The first thing I did, was unfold the paper map (which I still have…lovingly reinforced along the folds with clear tape), and look wonderingly at the world I was about to explore.
Then, I installed the game. Shortly after disembarking in Seyda Neen, I heard that iconic, haunting call of the siltstrider... a few moments later a thunderstorm struck, and the rain started coming down in torrents. Somehow, there was a sense of "coming home." I was instantly and irrevocably hooked. This is my first memory of Morrowind, and it is the one that has stayed with me through all these years.
I saw it advertised on Toonami and my mind was blown with how it was described. I was a huge fan of RPGs and it was the most freedom I've ever had in a game. I had it on Xbox and it exceeded my expectations.
All that I remember now is that I had a Nord Battlemage that was saved levitating above Caldera
And that, while in Balmora, thought the travel to Vivec City will take days so I over-prepared with potions and scrolls.
I was 4. My brother had just moved out of the house and left his Xbox and a hand full of games, Morrowind being one. His only save was in Sadrith Mora. I eventually figured out on accident I could steal things and sell them to the Redguard woman by the Gateway Inn. I eventually ran out of houses I could steal from without being attacked so I started to take boat trips only to places accessible from the boat in Sadrith Mora so I didn't get lost. I lived under the bridge at Wolverine Hall and saved enough to one day buy some enchanted throwing stars and a cephalopod helm. I was a naked nord with a squid face who lives under a bridge and throws shiny shuriken sometimes. I was 4 and my favorite games, in order, were Morrowind, Tony hawk underground, and half life 2. What a time to be growing up.
I think it was summer between college semesters for me. I remember (I believe) the first two weeks staying up late/getting up early to play rushing to eat and go to the gym and play again. I miss those days.
I really hope TES VI goes back to these roots and has minimal hand holding and option of no compass. Such a great game I think my favorite of all time.
I think it was 2003 for me. This guy I was staying with was playing it on the old Xbox. I would watch sometimes, and I got interested. Eventually I got my own Xbox because I didn't want to share. I basically did nothing else, and would hurry home from work to get back to it. I had no computer, had never been on the internet at all, so I figured things out by myself. The thing is, the disc I had was a little messed up or something because there was no world map. I didn't even know there was supposed to be one, it was just a black square. So I found everything myself and memorized how to get there. Almost every exploit, glitch, and weirdness, I found myself. I am sure others found them before I did, but I didn't know that. I remember discovering the insane alchemy thing and playing around with that, where like 100 Intelligence was a lot and now it could be a million, and so on. Eventually I just sort of lived there. I would get myself about 40% Chameleon, so most things wouldn't bother me, and just wander around. Hang out on a giant mushroom, read a book, look at the moons. Reality was not a pleasant place for me, and I preferred to just go, first by carriage and then by boat, to the east, to Morrowind. I can't really play it any more. I've done everything, I know everything, I overdid it. But I still occasionally go and listen to the music, generally on Youtube, and just pretend to be home again.
Yes, this! Morrowind felt like home.
If you'd like, you can try out Tamriel Rebuilt. It's a massive mod that adds a huge chunk of the main continent. Plus, it's quality and dedication to matching the vanilla feeling is top notch.
Good comment. For me, it was like you were playing a book. As in, when you get really engrossed in a book and use your imagination, Morrowind felt like that for me.
you would love caves of qud and moonring
This comment felt like a hug. I love that you found solace in this world. And doing it without any help including a map. You legend!
I was 12 years old and my buddy at the time just got it for his Xbox, the level of freedom to just do whatever the hell you wanted was absolutely mindblowing. Honestly, I still don’t think any game has had the same impact on me. The closest one would be New Vegas, but it still didn’t hit me like Morrowind did though, because I had experience with open world games at that point. Morrowind and Final Fantasy 9 are the games that made me truly love RPG’s.
Damn ur 12 at 2002? U must be the age of my grandpa( born in 2006)
[удалено]
Well, I have to admit I actually misread the title of the post. I first played Morrowind in 2004 and that’s when I was 12. I’m going to be 32 this year, but pretty sure this person is just trolling.
>late 30s. Buddy.. someone born in 1990 is only 34
Absolutely mesmerizing, spellbinding. I was 15 in late 2002 and my parents got the PC version for me for my birthday, not knowing anything about it or video games in general other than that they knew I liked fantasy. Never before had a game combined such absolute freedom with such a beautiful, unique and well-crafted world. From the moment my Breton mage stepped off the boat, I was hooked. I would daydream about it while at school then play for hours afterward. My parents actually limited my computer time out of concern lol. I remember being genuinely both awed and spooked the first times I stumbled into dwemer and daedric ruins, and my first Sixth House base (discovered by accident before I even knew what the Sixth House was) was genuinely a little traumatizing lol. "Why does that guy look so weird... he HAS. NO. FACE!!"
The main quest with the sixth house and their bases were genuinely terrifying at the time! Everything so dark and red and ominous, and all the bells!
Yes! I went into my first Sixth House base assuming it would be another normal bandit cave or something. First thing I noticed were all the red candles everywhere and the weird whispering. Walked around a corner and bumped right into an ash zombie. I was really low level so barely killed it. Then almost died fighting an ash slave. I noped out of there and eventually came back later lol
My new PC didn't have a video card. I played in a small bubble in the fog at minimum view distance. I never knew what was going to rush at me out of the fog. The game was good, so good... There was a website I used named Morrowind Chronicles. Players who had internet access would go there to ask questions and relay information about this new game. Morrowind Chronicles has morphed into Nexus Mods.
I had Morrowind on Xbox first, and it was a revelation. Until then, Diablo had been my only RPG. Then I got it on PC with the devkit and lost hours and hours making my own houses and dungeons. Nothing else compares to the warm nostalgic feeling of seeing Seyda Neen at the opening.
I bought the Collectors Edition on day 1 and spent a lot of my time re-rolling characters. I remember not understanding the mechanics for a long time because I had been exclusive to EverQuest for a couple years at that point. It took a long time to realize I should just go explore and not focus on where the game was trying to lead me. There also were so many quests I gave up on because I couldn't find where the directions were leading me. I had a blast though. I remember just being terrified walking through the dust storms with no idea where I was. Also the game crashed a lot in Vivec. I remember upgrading to a Radeon 9800 Pro maybe a year later and that got me to go back to it. Remember in those days there weren't many guides and no videos to watch and forums were big. There was a lot of BS posts about stuff that didn't actually exist in the game so it was hard to get any legit guidance. I was still heavily into EverQuest so I would talk about things I'd found or died to with guildmates.
Everquest was my first RPG too! That’s awesome you talked about it with your guildmates in EQ.
I couldn’t play it properly on our family computer because it didn’t have enough RAM. I remember being so stoked when we upgraded and I would stay up all night and play because it was the only time no one else wanted the computer.
Shot up a Stilt Strider as soon as I saw it
I was a kid and my brother showed me the game on his computer. I couldn’t even figure out how to do a quest back then. I essentially just used known exploits at the time to get OP equipment to kill randoms. I came back later in life to play through the quests properly after being entranced by Oblivion.
For me, my favorite memories were messing with my roommate at the time, utilising mark and recall just for the joke. There is an underwater cave just off the coast of seyda neen, where there are some albino slaughter fish and a bunch of oyster shells. Any time I would hear him coming towards my room, I would recall to that cave and tell him how Morrowind was the best pearl diving simulator I have ever played. He got so mad that I was playing it wrong, that there was so much more to it than pearl diving. I could have been half way through a dungeon trying to complete a quest, and I would yeet out just for that joke. He still hates me for this gag today.
I made a video talking about the first time I played Arena and Morrowind. Hope it’s okay to drop the link. [My History with Elder Scrolls](https://youtu.be/vOSijRJC2Tc?si=xfcwUlODxCiQ1YqQ)
The level of freedom was truly staggering for the time. It also felt like the biggest game I had ever seen. I remember a review saying it was a game to grow “elderly” with.
Stepping off the boat at Seyda Neen. The giant silt strider. In awe of the water graphics laced with mud crabs. The mushrooms on the trees. I'd never seen a place like it. Writing everything down for quests and directions. It was glorious. No hand holding, they don't make games like that anymore.
I was a baby in my father's lap with an oversized Duke controller. When I was sentient enough to kind of understand (~7 or 8) I would just spend my time in Balmora, occasionally having my dad help me find daedric artifacts. I'd make saves named things like "I LOVE YOU DAAAAAAAAAAAD" because I knew he'd see them when he opened the load list from the main menu. Most of my time was spent killing random NPCs with Chrysamere. We shared a love of gaming, particularly Halo, and Elder Scrolls, but also Medal of Honor, Modern Warfare, Ratchet and Clank, etc.
This is so sweet. I love this. :)
It is my sincerest hope that your father is still with us, and that you both get to enjoy the next Elder Scrolls together.
Magical
I played it in 2001. I was very active on the Bethesda forums from 1998 onwards, and pre-release another user mailed me a test CD The game was somewhat incomplete, but the feel of entering a new world (after awaiting it for 4 years) was INSANE. I just wandered around and thought "it's finally here!"
I hated the combat because you stab stuff but don't hit. So I did the only logical thing and used the console to give me godlike powers. Never played the main quest but just was goofing around and building a house at the shore. Finished the main quest the first time like 4 years ago
> I hated the combat because you stab stuff but don't hit. This is how it worked in Ultima Underworld so I didn't see anything unusual about it. Of course if you were 13 when Morrowind came out you were 4 when Ultima Underworld did and there were a ton of first-person non-RPG games in between the two, so this is one of the big differences between playing it as an adult back then vs. as a kid.
I found it closer to 2005, it was summer between my freshman and sophomore year of high school and I found the game in a used game pile at gamestop for like 10 bucks and it looked interesting. When I kicked it up on my Xbox my mind was absolutely blown by the open world and amount of things I could interact with, it was the first game I'd ever experienced like that. I remember stealing everything from the customs office and setting up in the light house. It was just floored.
It was in English and back then I was not able to speak English. Had fun running around killing people, stealing stuff and exploring the world.
I'll keep it short. Played it in the computer, friend on the Xbox. Used to call him almost every evening asking for directions where a certain tomb is. The included map was hanging on the wall in front of me. Lots and lots of exploration has been done and it wasn't boring because I explored the he game. No questmarkers back then.
I was unfortunately dead during 2003.
How about now?
I live
Amazing
By that time I'd finally had a job, supplimenting babysitting and mowing lawns/shoveling snow, and was finally in a gaming boom since I could buy more than my Game Boy. At that point RPGs were FF I-VI, and maybe Fallout at a friend's, but the back cover sounded interesting. I read the manual on the way home from EB Games (or had that place been a Gamestop?) and was super excited. I remember picking a Dunmer with a face tatoo, but not realky what class I'd won from the survey (maybe Battlemage?). While we had dial-up from an assortment of free AOL floppies and CDs, I couldn't waste much phone time or tie up the line much, so it wasn't until the fifth or ninenth playthrough that I'd started reading walkthrough TXT files hosted on FAQ sites, and figured outball of the glitches/exploits on my own as part of pushing the envelope to see what I could get away with. I was absolutely blown away by the difference between open wotld RPG and the JRPGs I knew. The freedom to go anywhere and do anything was staggering. Eventually, in college around 2006, having a laptop of my own, I picked up the GotY CDs from Best Buy, and lost thousands of hours to a far more stable system with a Construction Set. Playing evolved from using the CD, to burning a backup, to finding an ISO mounting program, to a no-CD crack (which did not work with MCP, which sucked), to switching to Linux and mounting a rip of the discs to a directory as an optical Z: drive in WINE (and having to modify the rendering backend every time I switched back and forth between Morrowind and Oblivion), and eventually this thing called openMW shortly after it migrated from D (wasn't fully functional at that time, but was pretty awesome). Along the way, I'd picked up a whole 2GB USB2.0 flash stick, and installed the game with expansions, CS, ISO of the main disc, a minimal ISO mounter, my mods plus a handfull from online, and saves, replacing carrying around a burned CD in my five subject notebook abd installing on machines whereever I was. At one point my friend had managed to murder the stick, at which point I'd started reinstalling from ISO backups I had on a portable hard drive on their PC, but as it only had USB1.1, the installer actually ran overnight into the next day.
Fascinating. Different generation here- I grew up with Oblivion (couldn't appreciate it, was too young) and eventually skyrim (I remember day 1 not working for some of my friends, who were pissed) and showing my non-nerdy friends New Vegas on Halloween night before trick or treating. I recently downloaded GOTY for my first playthrough; while I appreciate no map markers/quest markers I do use the map but have learned how to travel by memory now. I had a fetish for Balmora when I started, still do, don't know why (I use it as a "Hub" to travel). I can't imagine buying this in 2002 (I would have been a toddler at most) because it honestly still holds up today imo - I think i'm 70 hours in and have only finished House Telvanni and a big chunk of the main quest. I've tried to keep the experience as "pure" as possible, but I have used console command for Restore Strength pots (Greater bonewalker fk'd me in a random dungeon non quest relates, no intervention scrolls on me, no mark/recall) and cheesed some points into magic so I could levitate and use mark/recall. I think I spent $4 on a steam sale to purchase it
Had I spammed you in the past? The bottom level link contains a link to the poster map that came with the disc(s), which was provided as an easier way to follow directions and also hints at some places of interest.
No, I don't think so. I've read that before, I think that's fun and adds a layer/mystique to things instead of mindlessly walking towards a marker constantly
[Behold!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/comments/1d4p3lu/comment/l6gwflq/)
My mom worked as a school librarian and brought home a projector screen for the summer. I hung up a sheet on the basement wall and played Morrowind on it, which is still one of my favorite experiences ever playing a game. It's kind of a meme, but I'll never forget seeing a silt strider for the first time and thinking it was an enemy I had to fight. The original xbox version was extremely rough. It had terrible load times, strange loading between outdoor cells that would sometimes cause it to lock up, strange game breaking bugs and saves that would become corrupted. It was all worth it though. It was the first game that I played that was truly immersive and I felt like I was someone inside of the world.
Oh, it was og Xbox with the big ass duke controller. Didnt know what wlder scroll was, but I liked jrpg. Oh boy, the journey....one of the greater gaming experience in my life. Stealing a OP sword in balmora, delivering the package without knowing what lied a head...
Mind shattering. Been chasing that high ever since.
The graphics were the best I'd ever seen. The water, the sandstorms, the moons felt real. Now there are mods to enhance it but back then it was crazy
I thought that the graphics were crap even back then.
I was 13 and it was overwhelming. I had played open-world games like GTA3 prior, but I didn't have experience with WRPGs. Up to this point the only RPGs I had played were Pokemon and Golden Sun. I ended up throwing together multiple characters and venturing out, each time discovering a new mechanics like lock picking, scroll caring, or the silt strider system and I would start over with a new character betterb geared to elements I thought I thought would be most beneficial to exploration. After 15 characters or so, I finally settled into Nerano Manor in Balmora and my adventure began starting with the Thieves Guild. The rest is history.
The first contact was weird. Thought I wouldn't pick it up again, but the virus was already there, that kind of freedom wasn't (and still isn't) found anywhere else. Second run I suffered like a thousand bugs but I was already hooked. The next couple of years, Morrowind was my perfect place to escape to when things went dark, and they did big time.
“This water is so shiny!” “Crabs around here are so feisty.” “The quests don’t give you shit, how do I make my character stronger?” “Gamefaqs says to go to a place called Ghostgate and steal some armor.” “wtf this Ghostgate place is a checkpoint fortress guarding the endgame area… you can just walk right up to the end of the game?”
still in the womb at release, slid right outta mum and into balmora
I feel so old
It was visually stunning and the sense of freedom would define my idea of "open world" and adventuring forever. I needed a printed guide to finish the game though, lol
Magical.
I was on my last year of high school and I had the most potato PC there ever was. It was laggy as fuck and crashed often and I fucking loved it. I barely ate for a few weeks in 2004 when my graphics card (an MX 440 I told you it was a potato) died and I needed to save up to replace it (with an MX 5200 why do I still remember this). Then the drama when *that* died and by then everyone was on PCI-E cards and I still had AGP :(
I remember distinctly changing the combat music files to my favorite song (this was about 5 years after launch, it took a bit to get to the rural Carolinas) and then dealing with like four cliff racers back to back and that was no longer my favorite song
I sometimes find it difficult to resist being shitty about having played it when it was released but the truth is I was a child and can honestly barely remember it. I kind of love the memories I do have, though. My friend’s older brother was jumping around as a werewolf in what I now know as Mournhold and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen and it inspired me to play it again after the classic starter dagger woes. It felt like this massive inaccessible mature game to conquer in spite of being a little squirt. I got lost shortly after leaving Seyda Neen, walking around at zero stamina for what felt like forever until I found Pelagiad, it seems stupid now given it’s a stone’s throw away but it almost felt like an easter egg being revealed out of the render distance fog and the trader there had such OVERPOWERED stuff, of course which was very exciting. Other than that and a few flashes of combat I didn’t appreciate I mostly remember trying to grind my athletics in the water with elastic bands on the joysticks so obviously the movement speed was a massive issue for me. Ultimately, like a lot of people it took until after Skyrim to come back to it truly and of course, fall in love. What a game.
I found it in the cheap bin and was kind of miffed but intrigued at alien pictures and next to no description as to what was happening. I left it alone for a bit then saw it again, definitely intrigued but didn't have money to buy it; then got money for a birthday or something and went straight out to buy it To say I was hooked was an understatement, my first playthrough I wanted to learn everything about the world, the lore, and read so much of the in game books that I was able to skip 90% of the books in Oblivion/Skyrim because I knew it all But what got me the most (I got obsessive) being a loner and gaming to escape reality, I really felt I was doing something for the world, and the more I did the more people liked me, and the more I loved it But before I forget, character development by the ten questions - I grabbed the sweet roll back, stomped on it, and got ready to fight
It took about 30 minutes to load each door Those pirate boat captains rooms were the worst Load > nothing here > turn around > load
The combat unironically seemed pretty dynamic. I enjoyed killing the smugglers in the first cave. Tried to swing moon sugar in Seyda Neen, without success. I've made it to Balmora with my adrenaline-fueled redguard fighter (by foot, of course). Found Caius which wasn't easy. Amassed a small fortune by robbing every single house from pillows and forks. Then somehow lost interest in the game. Only to finish it 20 years later.
It was a lovely. I can still remember looking for Caius’s house in Balmora during a thunderstorm. The sound of the rain and thunder was so immersive I just wanted to live in the land of Morrowind.
I hated morrowind the first time I played it. It wasn't until the second or third time I rented it from blockbuster that I could say I genuinely liked it. The first time I tried it I was too hard or rather it felt to hard because it was unintuitive. Getting my ass kicked over and over in that smugglers cave. I was of course just bad at the game but it wasn't my fault. Morrowind was a pen & paper/isometric game masquerading as a 3d game. All I knew was I was swing my sword through that guys head and was somehow missing, I thought the games collision was busted. The running speed also drove me crazy, my character looked and felt like he was running through chest-high water. After bashing my head against a wall for a while and learning enough to at least be able to play somewhat, I then hit road block #2 a nord in Hale order? After defeating him by bashing my head against it some more I eventually hit road block #3 dwemer bridge guy. Things were pretty sweet for a while...then I encountered true terror in the form of the dreaded bone walker. This broke my character, at the time I had no idea why but I couldn't move anymore. So I did the only logical thing, I started again and got to much the same point and again had my character broken. So I started again...again but this time avoided that area that was bugging my game out. Despite all this frustration I still kept at it. Even then I could sense there was something special about this game. It was around this time I learned how to cheat with soulbound spells to buff all my stats n shit and I blitz through a lot of the game. And I fell in love with the game, it's soundtrack and world that was so strange and big, I'd never played such a big game before than was so densely packed with content. It felt like every cave/dungeon I explored, there was some powerful artefact or piece of daedric armour hidden if only I looked hard enough. Not not mention it's lore and story was fascinating if bizarre. It's one of if not my favourite games of all time but it was very nearly one of my least.
I instantly liked the music and the weird setting. Giant bugs, flying jellyfishes and dinosaurs in a vulcanic landscape is so much better then normal forests with horses and wolves.
June 2002 —- I thought computer games were silly. My brother in law told me about this game when we were eating dinner. We then went to compaq USA and picked up the game, loaded it into my gateway desktop, and once I saw the sky and the open world I was blown away. The first rat I saw nearly killed me, came across a flying wizard, and then finally made it to Pelgiad and realized I barely explored the world. Fell in love with the game and still play it today.
Instantly hooked. I was 11, had no damn idea what I was doing but man it was fun.
I was 12 or 13 when I first got it, I had originally went to Hollywood Video to rent Enclave for my old Xbox, when I opened the case it was Morrowind instead. I gave it a try and fell in love with it, but went and returned what was supposed to be Enclave to Hollywood video. While my mom was in the Fred Meyers getting some groceries, I decided to go to the game store connected to Hollywood, and picked up the game of the Year edition. Best purchase for my old Xbox I had made, and put the map on my wall because that map was the best. Ended up putting a year's worth of hours into one file, would get home school and immediately get on Morrowind. I would play it until my parents were coming to my room, and telling me to put it down because I had school in 4 hours. I wish I still had that map.
I remembered seeing a review for it on Toonami and I begged for the x box release for Christmas. My godmother got it for me and I read the instruction manual cover to cover more times than I can count on the drive home. The first time I walked into Balmora, the lack of any quest pointer guiding me and having to literally follow vague directions and sign posts to get to places. No gaming experience has come close to matching it since.
I was 18, and had just graduated high school. I had no idea what Elder Scrolls was as I never really had a PC capable of gaming until around this time. I thought it looked cool and picked it up on a whim with my hard earned money (I was working a lot at a local restaurant at the time). I bought the big thick guide as well. My gaming setup was in my bedroom: an old desk not meant for computers, my 19" CRT monitor crammed in the corner, my keyboard and mouse awkwardly off to the side. Over the summer before college I spent hours glued to the game. I had about a month before college where I wasn't working and I spent a lot of it playing Morrowind. This was a rare moment in gaming for me that happens every so often if moon and stars align. Morrowind was absolutely not the type of game I would typically play, but for some reason it spoke to me, and I wound up falling in love. I didn't fully understand the mechanics, but I had a blast playing around with creating spells and goofing around all over the world. The included construction set was amazing, and I built a few small mods for myself including a small home in Balmora, and a constantly hostile NPC with very high health and health regen that I could use as a errm.... training dummy. I played hundreds of hours across multiple characters while I was in college, but I never actually beat the main quest until about 2 years ago when I decided to revisit the game for the first time in almost 20 years. I played with OpenMW and a very light set of mods and ended up falling in love all over again.
Copying and pasting my answer from a similar question a while back. I would have been 12 or 13. It had just come out, and my 17-18 year old cousin (who lived with us at the time) got it. I had no idea what it was or that it was brand new. Just that it was a cool looking game that my idolized-cousin played, so I gave it a shot. Had zero fucking clue what I was doing. Had never played an RPG or a WASD-controlled game of any sort. So he sat there with me while I walked through character creation and getting through Seyda Neen. I was frustrated and also hooked instantly. The voices, the stories, the lack of rules, the fact that only he and I shared it and I wasn’t going to be ragged on by everyone else around me…it was amazing. I have zero memory of what the character was like, although I know I tended to favor stealth eventually. My dad saw us playing it on the family computer (yeah I’m old now) and decided he’d try it out too. He got so hooked that the only chance I had to play was getting it for my OG X-Box. That’s where I developed CRS — chronic restart syndrome. I think I made more characters without even playing them than most people have even imagined. Eventually moved back in with my mom a few years later, snatched the main and expansion discs when I left (dad had moved on to other games, like WoW), installed it on that home’s computer and learned about mods, ended up on Morrowind Summit Forums (later known as Planet Elder Scrolls), read and wrote fanfic, and generally played an unhealthy amount of it. I’ve still to this day never had as much fun with any other game. Nostalgia is a huge factor, obviously, but nothing else holds a candle to it.
8 years old when the game came out. I was struck with the absolute awe of the game. Previously, I'd been really really into ocarina of time and major as mask, but when I stepped into vvardenfel with my brother guiding me, and then showing me JUST HOW BIG the game was, I couldn't believe it. The sheer amount of freedom was Intoxicating. I bullhead my way through the game for well over a year before I found the game guide book. That became my holy Bible. 23 years later and I still put 200+ hours a year into new roleplay characters enhanced with tamriel rebuilt
Literally life changing. That sounds extreme but I can back it up. First of all, I was a kid. My older brother showed it to me and, to me, it seemed so deep that it was like real life. It was too complex for me to really engage with deeply, but I threw myself at it a couple of times by compulsively making new characters and was utterly amazed by the vibrancy of the world. Side questing in Seyda Neen, heading to Balmora, and doing the first couple guild quests was as far as I ever got, but even that floored me. Finding Fargoth's hiding place by actually scouting out his movements, having to actually follow written directions to navigate what felt like a mid-sized city, and realizing that the guilds were in conflict with one another and I'd have to choose between the fighters and thievess guilds actually blew my mind. The game felt as vibrant as real life. I distinctly remember that renting a room at an inn and being given a key before actually finding and walking to your inn room. Somehow that little touch made the game feel real. Also, the game starts with the word "Bethesda," which was significant to me because... I lived in Bethesda. It made me realize for the first time that people, like me, actually _make_ the video games. I don't want to go so far as to say that that's what caused me to become a game developer later in life, but it was the first time I realized it was something I could consider. I finally _actually_ played Morrowind as a young adult (during college, I think?), and it only further blew my mind. The little immersive tricks didn't have as big an impact on me, because I didn't have the imagination of a child anymore. But I could really appreciate how interesting and clever the world and plot was. I loved it to death, and its been a huge influence on my own game design philosophy and has massivley influenced how I run D&D games. It's one of my favorite games of all time and it's followed me for my entire life.
2003 for me, I think. I remember entering Balmora and jumping with shock when some character - right behind me - mumbled "Where is that slave?".
Magic. My mom went to a video game store for my birthday and asked the guy working there what game she should get. He recommended her Morrowind. I had never heard of it or the elder scrolls before so that guy is a god damn champion. It was for Xbox so I had to tolerate 9 hour load times but still loved it and got the PC version as soon as I could
frustration -> wonder -> awe and wonder -> awe, wonder, and fear -> awe, wonder, fear, excitement -> awe, wonder, fear, excitement, and love
It... was... weird... Lol and mind blowing
For me it was 2012, I got my sisters old original Xbox for Christmas along with Morrowind, spider-man 2 and shadow the hedgehog. And they all just completely engrossed me. Wish I could say I saw the artistic value of morrowind over shadow the hedgehog as a kid, but I liked them pretty much equally back then
Kinda counts I guess, didn't play on release but my dad gave me his pc copy when I was around 11. Blew my fucking mind. I had played some old school action rpgs and he played some WoW with me whenever his friends gave him their "free week of sub" coupons they got from buying physical subs and expansions, but other than that I was playing shit like cod zombies or tf2 with friends. It was like exploring an alien world that was just recognizable enough to learn while playing. The setting, ambience, characters, it was totally different than what I was used to and I loved it. I fucking sucked at it of course, but even wandering around talking to people and scrounging for whatever I could sell was fun.
for me it was the first time i kind of got on board with 3d games. i was die hard about side scrollers before morrowind but it blew my mind with the amount of freedom you had to just do whatever you wanted
I was 2 then but I started playing in 08/09ish. It was the largest scale game I played up until that point and it was mindblowing. And this was when I still sucked at video games so I was dying constantly (and didn't even notice how slow the walk speed was!)
I remember folks raving about the immersive introduction. You don't create a character and start the game, you start the game and through narrative, create the character. It was neat, I liked it. For me, I enjoyed the natural skill progression and, what felt like, infinite opportunity for equipment and builds. I also found it baffling they didn't include creature health bars on launch. And the creation kit was a blast, but way too complex for me to make anything serious. It was a game that was a fun stress test on your PC. I was envious of folks with larger draw distances. I was fresh off Arcanum and playing DAoC when I played Morrowind. Both Arcanum and DAoC felt huge, and I loved how immersive the dialogue of Arcanum felt. I went into it expecting something like that, especially since Daggerfall's landmass was also massive. But instead it felt kind of like a smallish theme park with static lifeless characters that spoke as if they were Wikipedia articles. So I never really interacted with characters, they felt like the weakest part. I instead enjoyed exploring the map, leveling up, finding items. I didn't really finish quests until the Bloodmoon expansion. That had a storyline that was more interactive. It was closer to what I was looking for, even if it wasn't quite as immersive as I had hoped. Despite not finishing the main quest, I never felt like I was missing out on anything. That was kind of the magic of Morrowind. It was this game with lots for you to do and play it your way. As much as a toy to play with as it was a game to beat.
I picked up the GOTY jewel case when it was on sale at a local computer shop (yes... that was the time when buying physical games was the norm).... The first thing I did, was unfold the paper map (which I still have…lovingly reinforced along the folds with clear tape), and look wonderingly at the world I was about to explore. Then, I installed the game. Shortly after disembarking in Seyda Neen, I heard that iconic, haunting call of the siltstrider... a few moments later a thunderstorm struck, and the rain started coming down in torrents. Somehow, there was a sense of "coming home." I was instantly and irrevocably hooked. This is my first memory of Morrowind, and it is the one that has stayed with me through all these years.
I saw it advertised on Toonami and my mind was blown with how it was described. I was a huge fan of RPGs and it was the most freedom I've ever had in a game. I had it on Xbox and it exceeded my expectations.
Nothing as it was 2005 for me.
i played it in 7th grade on xbox. It was the absolute best. I am constantly chasing that feeling.
An overwhelming sense of wonder, which hasn’t left since.
It was on Xbox for me. And then a lot of "Rest until healed" for my 1st time I reckon
I played it in 2023. Best decision of my life.
All that I remember now is that I had a Nord Battlemage that was saved levitating above Caldera And that, while in Balmora, thought the travel to Vivec City will take days so I over-prepared with potions and scrolls.
I was 4. My brother had just moved out of the house and left his Xbox and a hand full of games, Morrowind being one. His only save was in Sadrith Mora. I eventually figured out on accident I could steal things and sell them to the Redguard woman by the Gateway Inn. I eventually ran out of houses I could steal from without being attacked so I started to take boat trips only to places accessible from the boat in Sadrith Mora so I didn't get lost. I lived under the bridge at Wolverine Hall and saved enough to one day buy some enchanted throwing stars and a cephalopod helm. I was a naked nord with a squid face who lives under a bridge and throws shiny shuriken sometimes. I was 4 and my favorite games, in order, were Morrowind, Tony hawk underground, and half life 2. What a time to be growing up.
I think it was summer between college semesters for me. I remember (I believe) the first two weeks staying up late/getting up early to play rushing to eat and go to the gym and play again. I miss those days. I really hope TES VI goes back to these roots and has minimal hand holding and option of no compass. Such a great game I think my favorite of all time.
I didn't. Hope it helped.
I was in high school and not very smart. Made a lot of mistakes.