Dyre Straits

I played Morrowind, Tribunal, and Bloodmoon. I probably spent close to five years on and off with the game. There are definitely some things from Morrowind that I miss dearly in Oblivion: Levitate, ability to summon more than one creature at a time, etc.

Some things I haven't missed at all: CLIFFRACERS, for one!

But, I've thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere, the quests, and ESPECIALLY the side quests.

Now, in Shivering Isles, it's just mostly FUN...and FUNNY! I've laughed myself silly a few times at the dialogue and antics some of these characters do.

What exactly, in your opinion, makes Morrowind that much superior? and enjoyable?

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Unixlord

Morrowind is so superior I wouldn't know where to begin.

Out of the 100s of reasons here are a few:
If you disagree with any of the following you have
1)Atleast the cities are not in retarded isolated cells.
2)Enchant was lamerized in oblivion.
3)Lack of levitation in oblivion.
4)Exploring is total bullshit in oblivion if every chest is going to give some rubbish gold based on your level and the monsters will never be above your level.
5)The dull map markers and all the major cities being marked in advance.(oblivion)
6)Great houses (Redoran, Telvanni, Hlaalu)
7)The power of alchemy (morrowind)
8)Dark elf voice. In morrowind it rocked. In oblivion it's ***.
9)Blight storms!
10)Storyline. nuff said.

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IQ, when aggregated, follows Ohm's law.

Arklon

I went and got SI anyway, because I'm sure mods will come out using its assets.
The storyline's lore rape (just like pretty much everything in vanilla Oblivion). Daedric Prince of Order? That's just Wrong with a capital Wrong.

1) Not being a god at level 1 in Morrowind. In Oblivion, you're Inter-Galactic Hero at level 1. And when you're level 20, you're Weak As Hell Warrior.
2)The lore, courtesy of MK, Ken Rolston, Kurt Khulmann, Ted Peterson, and others. MK's lore was what I liked the most. And they completely raped his lore in Oblivion.
3) Having choices. For example, in Ahemmusa Nerevarine quest, you could talk to the priestess of Sheogorath in multiple ways to either avoid combat or to provoke it. That's just a minor example, really. If that quest were made Oblivion-style, you wouldn't get such choices, you'd have to fight.
4) Wide variety of creatures. And none of them magically disappeared when levelling up. Oh, and you could only kill few creatures at level 1-3. Unlike in Oblivion.
5) Storyline.
6) The landscape was actually interesting, as was exploration.
7) Loot, unique artifacts found in dungeons.
8) Only a very light amount of level scaling. It just made you have a chance at finding slightly better loot at higher levels and make new creatures show up as random creatures. But you could find pretty much all of the creatures as static ones (which there were plenty of) at even level 1.
9) Soul gems show what creature's soul it holds.
10) Dialogue.
11) Dunmer voices.
12) Vampirism in Oblivion really just seems like a disease, since (most?) skills and attributes are capped at 100 (if they're beyond that, they won't have any extra effect).
13) Non-lame enchanting.
14) Because Morrowind had no dialogue voice acting, it wasn't a gigantic obstacle for modders.
15) Can actually handle mods that modify the same cell (or level, if you prefer). In Oblivion, the newest mod changing a cell takes preference, the other(s) won't have any affect in the cell.
16) More interesting dungeon variety. In Morrowind, you had mines, bandit caves, Dwemer ruins, Dunmer strongholds, Daedric ruins, and Velothi towers. In Oblivion, you have... caves, Ayleid ruins, forts, and Oblivion.
17) No Daedric armor-bearing bandits. There was only one set of Daedric armor (well, there's the Daedric gloves Aryon's helper has, and the set Divayth Fyr has, but they're both pretty essential characters) in Morrowind, each piece scattered in various dungeons, and it was fun to hunt for it.
18) Being able to kill essential characters.
19) Lots of towns and cities, and none of them isolated behind huge, ugly walls.
20) The Great Houses.

I could go on forever, but I think it's starting to get a bit long.

squall_leonhart

theres a Vvardenfell TCmod for Oblivion in development. (Vvardenfell = morrowind)

Dyre Straits

Arklon,

You've got a very good and interesting list. Many of those things I can very heartilly agree with.

However, the way I look at Oblivion vs. Morrowind (Which, as I've said many times, I played for over 5 years) is that I don't see Oblivion as a "continuation" of Morrowind. In many, many ways, I don't see Oblivion even as a "sequel" to Morrowind. That's because I don't believe it is, nor that it was developed to be one.

It's a totally new "Chapter" in the ever-evolving Elder Scrolls series. In fact, it's not even "located" in Morrowind. The location is Cyrodiil...a totally different land and environment.

I've also said there were many features of Morrowind that I really miss in Oblivion, too. That said, I've still VERY much enjoyed Oblivion and have continued to play it off and on with other games.

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squall_leonhart

Morrowind and Oblivion apparently occur at the same time, if you read through many of the books in Morrowind regarding the Unrest in Tamriel and Cyrodil

Unixlord

Interesting

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IQ, when aggregated, follows Ohm's law.

squall_leonhart

hey i need to know something
in morrowind, alot of people comment on events occuring in Cyrodil
could this be perhaps related to the murder of the emporor?
because i remember someone in the Tribunal expansion commenting on the emporor being dead and not having any heirs

Arklon

No, Oblivion is 6 years after Morrowind.
What was supposed to be happening with the Emperor back in TES3 was that he was ill and his heirs were likely just morphed Daedra placed there by Jagar Tharn during the Imperial Simulacrum, and all the Counts and Generals were greedy and were waiting to claim their shares of Tamriel, and Provinces would start seceding from the Empire. Then the Daedra would pop out of nowhere just for fun, and Mankar Camoran would use the Wheel (that is, White-Gold Tower) within the Wheel (that is, the universe) to break the Wheel, thus sending existence back into the nonlinear Dawn Era.

Arklon

Though Oblivion is not "Morrowind II", they're still part of the same series. Now, TES1, Arena, wasn't really much at all. TES2: Daggerfall was pretty damn revolutionary. The world was twice the size of the real world size of England, had immense roleplaying depth, and was made in a single year-long crunch period. Morrowind was great, but certainly could've used some of the formula from Daggerfall and implemented some features that didn't make it into TES2, though at least it was still a RPG (and, by RPG, I don't mean "adventure with stats", go research the origin of the CRPG genre if you don't get what I'm talking about). Oblivion is several steps back toward Arena, and it's an action "RPG"-lite game. With an extreme emphasis on the combat and everything else being rather insignificant.
Oh, did you know that, if Bethesda didn't botch MK's lore when making TES4, Cyrodiil's environment would be like Byzantine Empire in a steamy tropical jungle, and the Ancestor Moth priests would be far more mysterious and significant? And there'd probably be way less generic fantasy creatures and items. And no Elven/Alyeid weapons that were pretty much stolen from LOTR (look at the Elven Shortsword, don't try telling me that's not a cheap ripoff of an elven weapon in the LOTR movies). Speaking of Ayleids, they'd still be around, too, but hiding ("Ayleid" means "hiding one").