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Original post by Bad Maniac Quote: Original post by nilkn If you feel the world was lacking in content, then well that's your problem, because it's simply not true. You probably didn't pay near as much attention as you think you did. If the world had so much content you really wouldn't have to pay attention to it to notice right? If you go out on the road during rush hour you don't have to look very hard to find cars...

That's the problem. Much of the content wasn't immediately obvious or visible. It required close observation, exploration, or the strategy guide to uncover it.

Anyway, I've had my fair shair of impact on this thread, so I think it's best I be quiet now. [smile]

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Rich, detailed, yet dull? Those don't go together very well.

You can have the most accurately rendered rock in the world, but in the end it's still just a rock.

I for one never said the world wasn't meticulously crafted. It just wasn't very... interesting.

Content is not gameplay.

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Original post by Telastyn Quote: Rich, detailed, yet dull? Those don't go together very well. You can have the most accurately rendered rock in the world, but in the end it's still just a rock. I for one never said the world wasn't meticulously crafted. It just wasn't very... interesting. Content is not gameplay.

Alright, alright, I rest my case.

But one last thing [smile]

Nearly all the content in Morrowind had gameplay signficance (not necessarily story signficance). For example, most flowers could be picked, the contents later used for alchemy or what have you. So in this case, the content usually was gameplay, at least in the case of the hundreds of dungeons, caves, shrines, and grottos.

Anyway, I'm done with this thread. It's just asking for flames.

When I played Daggerfall I was so obsessed. I would play that game like crazy.

I bought Morrowind the very day it came out. But I really didn't play it that much. I got bored very fast.

I think that the reason is they fixed Daggerfall's problem of repeditive random quests with making scripted quests. This made things more interesting, but didn't fix the problem of a static uninteractive world.

That's what I was really looking for in the game. But it appears that Oblivion will fix that with their Radiant AI system. So I'm looking forward to it.


Wavinator, just a question:
What does the term "sandbox" mean?

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Original post by Nazrix What does the term "sandbox" mean?

It's used in terms of a video game to mean that it's yours to do what you will with it.

Grand Theft Auto
Sim(Anything)

Games like that, where you can spend lots of time doing what you want to do, without a goal, or goals of your own.

You could decide that you are an insane wizard, and you are only pretending to help the empire(so you could get out of jail) and that really, all you want to do is travel the world, steal a spoon from every house, and kill anyone who's name starts with the letter 'j'. :)

Kinda like in SimCity, how you could build a town just to destroy it, or do whatever you wanted. It's like an electronic toy.

Vampyre, that's kinda what I thought it meant...just was making sure

thanks :)

Morrowind is getting more bashing than I expected. I've played thousands of RPGs, ever since my first game of Final Fantasy 1. In my opinion, Morrowind is one of the best. It's right up there with Fallout and Shadowrun. It had countless flaws. But any RPG fan who regards the game as empty or dull just didn't play it long enough to prove themselves wrong. Sorry, but it is that simple. You missed out.

One of the major issues highlighted in this thread is what I'm calling the "trainspotter" issue:

Two people each spend the day sitting at opposite ends of a railway platform. One of them says afterwards: "It was a terrible day. All I did was sit and watch train after train go by - talk about repetitive!"; the other: "It was a fantastic day. I saw a 502, two 971's, a 576b, a ... - so much variety!" (Note: I don't know enough about train spotting to know what various trains are called, so what I've said is probably complete nonsense)

The point is that each of them is correct: they did spend the entire day looking at nothing but trains, which is not a lot of different content if you don't distinguish between trains. On the other hand, (almost) every train was different, so there was a lot of unique content if you do distinguish between them...


Never having played Morrowind myself, I can't comment on how much of an anorak you'd need to be to notice the differences, but it does sound like a lot of the heat in this thread is coming from a difference in granularity of perception.

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Original post by Jiia any RPG fan who regards the game as empty or dull just didn't play it long enough to prove themselves wrong.

I think that is the main problem most people had with it. The fact that the during the time they played they found very little. If I have to invest 10 hours into a game before I can start find substance in the game world then there is something wrong with the game. But I have to agree that the game was rather empty. Its been said that there is lots of things to discover, but the problem is that game world is so large that those things can be easily missed. The game would have been far better if it was the quarter of the size then there would have been a better content to space ratio.


My other problems with it where:

Travel time - it took forever to walk anywhere, making travel outside the fast travel points tedious.

The skill grind - Improving skills was extremly annoying, I got wrist pains from improving my speech skill. Some skills where also very difficult to improve through use, forcing you to spend your time and money on trainers.

Alchemy - I tried playing as a kind hearted, alchmeist, con artist thief. Only to discover that trying to perform alchemy was the most tedious activity in the game.

Unhelpful journal - I'd have liked a list of quests I've undertaken based on the person who assigned them, and whether they've been completed, failed, or in progress.

My main problem with Morrowind was travel time. Instant travel between cities is nice but not sufficient enough when you get a quest to a dungeon which is like 15 mins away at feet. So my main regret is the lack of.. mounts (even a simple horse would do the trick).

Closely related to travel time was random encounters with monsters that you can pretty much kill instantaneously.. but that are agressive and will follow you. It simply makes you loose time when you travel.

Other than that, i do agree that the game is very rich. I played the game both as an adventurer/explorer, and trying to follow the main quest. I enjoyed the game in both cases, but after like 30 hours of game, i got bored of travelling.

I also thought the world design was pretty poor. It is very "Guild Wars" like: outdoor areas look like a maze of corridors (/canyons), rather than a real world with plains, mountains, valleys, rivers, hills, etc..

Y.