Morrowind

[mongycore]

It's so unusual to come on these boards and finding no buzz or mention of the recent release of Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Some of the people who bought the thing at EB Games mentioned it's a buggy pile. (Which can later be patched for the patient and wise.)

Has anyone out there played this sucker...or all we still basking in recent gaming delights like Spiderman, Dungeon Siege, and Resident Evil GC.

Edited because Gabriel Garcia Marquez was going to punch me in the face....then write a beautiful story about it.

[Jacob Singer]

Haven't picked up a copy yet, but I intend to. Still having fun with Jedi Outcast, Dungeon Siege, and my three consoles.

I wish they'd release a demo...

[mongycore]

dito on Dungeon Siege and Jedi Knight 2. Finding time to enjoy these games is hard. Let alone trying to find more time for a third game.

The collectors edition kind of looks nifty, makes me wonder how the soundtrack cd is...especially since the same cat who did it made the music for Icewind Dale.

[Xymog (Mike Toot)]

I played TES: Arena, for about ten minutes, until my PC blew up. And kept blowing up, at the same spot. Never could get it to work right. Finally gave up in disgust, and haven't played any TES games since. Morrowind could be cool, but if the current release is buggy I'll wait until one of my friends plays it and gives me a report. (He and his wife are kinda busy right now with Dark Age of Camelot, but that's another story.)

I'm waiting with baited breath for Neverwinter Nights, mostly cause I want to play with the toolset and see about setting up a server for our D&D group.

Too many games, not enough time.

[Michael Rabattino]

The game looks great, but I probably can't run it with much success since it looks like a lot of it is outdoor environments. My system CHUGS with anything outdoor where a lot of stuff has to be rendered.

[Richard Dickson]

My system beats the minimum requirements for Morrowind and I'm getting frame rate of below ten while playing it at the lowest possible graphics settings. This on a system that runs Jedi Outcast and Dungeon Siege with no problems at medium graphic settings. And I've read on some of the support boards there are people with higher-end systems than mine who say the game runs "okay" with most of the video options cranked down. Why not just put a big sticker on the box saying that if you don't own HAL or plan to buy it for the XBox, don't bother?

[Michael Rabattino]

I just hate the newer games that are being made that almost require you to be running an Alienware to even modestly play them.

It's ridiculous. I long for the good old days.

[mongycore]

hmm, this kind of sounds bad...along the lines of Battle Cruiser 3000, Ultima Ascension, and that Jurrasic Park game where you ran around looking at the lead characters' breasts.

[Michael Rabattino]

Ultima would have been one of the best games ever if it wasn't unplayable. It seemed like so much fun...I own it but never played it much since it crashed a lot. But it was so cool exploring the Avatar's house in the beginning of the game.

[You can't call Guyute a mook]

I dunno about all this Pc crashing, but I just obtained the game this evening, and after some heavy drinking, have decided to give it a crack.

It fucking rocks. About 20 min,. in, but I love it.

BTW, I have a 900 Athlon, 768 MB RAM, and a 32 DDR All-in Wonder Radeon and it runs perfectly at the default settings. What do ya'll have>?

[Jacob Singer]

I'm running it on a GeForce 3 equipped AMD Athlon 600 mhz with 384 megs of ram, in 1024x768 with dynamic shadows off and draw distance reduced, but everything else maxed. The game has a lot ov visual tweaks for gf3 owners, like MUCH better water effects and bump mapping.

By the way, I LOVE this game. I'm running a Nordic Knight in one game, and a Briton Witchhunter in another. I just answered the guys questions to get my class, I didn't pick them off of the list...

[CTDeLude]

I will have a 2.53 ghz P4 128mb geforce4 with 512 mbs....well see what games I can play with that.

[Richard Dickson]

So the good people at Best Buy were kind/foolish enough to give me an $1800 credit line, so I am now on a 1.8Ghz Pentium 4 processor with a GeForce 2 32mb video card and 256Mb of RAM -- and this game runs like an absolute dream. There was a moment when I walked over a hill as the sun was setting, and the way the light refracted over the top of the hill as I crested it -- breath-taking. This game wasn't the reason I upgraded, but damn if it isn't one hell of a fringe benefit.

[Michael Rabattino]

Man, this game looks SO pretty. If I had the means to run it, i'd be all over it.

Is it really as open-ended as they say it is?

[Jacob Singer]

There are so many "Holy SHIT" moments in this game I can't believe it, and I'm not even very far into it. The depth is incredible. LOVE the ash storms and thunderstorms.

[Hollow_Point_Massacre]

Yeah, this game is FANTASTIC. I'm currently only a level 8 thief (class obtained by answering the 20 questions), but I am having a great deal of fun playing him. Great graphics, and (so far)only one crash to the desktop. The best aspect is that it's totally non-linear, allowing me to explore to my heart's content while traveling from town to town (by foot, fuck those stilt riders) trying to complete quests. Highly recommended for anyone even slightly interested in RPG's.

[Pariah81]

I was expecting Morrowind to be good, but wow.

The level of detail in the game is unbelievable, especially given the size of the game world. I'm putting a sick amount of hours into it and I still don't even have half of the map colored in. As I trek back and forth across the continent murdering for the Morag Tong, I keep finding new ruins, cities, dungeons, etc.

I'm currently playing an Assassin, somewhere around level 30 I think, and I'm finally getting to the point where I can kick the ass of anything that walks. I got some real nice toys, too, including a full set of glass armor(stolen) and some +20 Str +20 Agi gauntlets I found in a random dungeon.

A few things in the game are kind of pissing me off though. Cliff Racers are the most annoying enemy of any game in recent memory, and because I usually go over mountains instead of sticking to the roads I see a lot of these. Bastards. Also, the indexes for those Propylon teleporters are hard as hell to find.

Overall, though, its a great game. Great atmosphere, unreal level design, some good monsters, and a sick amount of things to do. I think I'm gonna run around inside the Ghost Fence and see if I can't become a vampire...

[Buffalo Wildfire]

sounds like the type of game i bought this puter for i will have to try it after ive finished with Baldurs Gate

[Jacob Singer]

I've just got my knight up to level 13, and finally joined one of the Great Houses. I love pretty much everything about this game, and the detail is just astounding.

[CTDeLude]

Playing some of it as of late and yes this game rocks!!!

Can't believe how open ended the game is.

Right now I am doing stufffor the Imperial Legion but wondered how you can go to work for a Great House?

Maybe I should start by leaving the Bitter Coast huh?

I haven't gone anywhere near the rest of the continent.

Oh and I am a lvl 3 Adventurer(created own class. the guy swings a long blade) should I be higher?

[Pariah81]

You can join the houses in their respective home cities. Disregarding spelling, Hlaalu is in Balmora, Redoran is in Alduruhn, and Telvanni is in Shadrith Mora. Be careful which one you join though, because you can't be in two at the same time.

I'm in Hlaalu, which sucks because the Telvanni are much cooler and sell all the good spells. Plus the reactions you get from the Telvanni wizards are awful if you aren't in their faction, which makes it tough to convince them to make you Orator unless you have some serious scratch, a lot of speech skill, or access to a charm spell.

[CTDeLude]

What do I do if I am more warrior type?

Magic has never been my thing(unless it was that one D&D arcade game where if you were the wizard you could always kill the bosses and take points from the people who did all the work when you cast a spell) and so I have been chugging away trying to get better stuff. At the moment I am having trouble getting money and all i have is adequate generic armous and weaponry. Need to get better stuff.

[mongycore]

I cannot believe I let myself not buy this game any sooner. Managed to pick this up and the expansion Tribunal the other night. Looked around at some plug-ins to get too, but stayed away from any that cheated the gaming experience.

I think though, I could've held off on buying Tribunal but they were both on sale (2-for-1 almost), so I couldn't resist.

Spent about 5 hours this afternoon just wandering (and jumping) around exploring just the first town and the outskirts. Character creation was pretty neat, but not as gratifying (as poxy mentioned about the sun/hill experience) as seeing rain drops falling on my head...followed by the thunderstorm. Beautiful is what it was.

I'll have to read the manual a bit more and learn about what I can do with this game...it's just so open ended. That after solving the murder of the taxman, I kind of adopted the killers house as my own after slaying him.

After my third hour I think I finally left town and checked out the smugglers cave...Now I'm headed down the path to Balmora. I read a bit about using skills to up their levels...so I'm practically running and jumping there. Only a level 2 redgaurd adventurer type.

I don't know when I can put that kind of time in playing this game without abandoning the wife or our baldur's gate dark alliance sessions, but I'll try and find a balance.

[Gruber]

I have the game, but everytime I tell myself I'll play through it, I get 10 minutes in, and just go, "Damn, this world is too big."

[mongycore]

which is probably one of the reasons I bought into it. To see what's in there. I do hope though the terrain/worlds don't start all looking the same after several days of playing (as the way diablo 2 lost its steam (for me) after the second act started up.

As long as I just stick to doing/finding quests...that's all I need.

And to answer ct's question (although pretty late). I've found that as recommended by some online faq's...using a redgaurd race and having the long sword as a major skill...it really helps if your playing style is more hack-n-slash orientated rather than traditional rpg thieving/sorcery.

[Gruber]

I don't actually think its the size of the world that turned me off, its just that Morrowind isn't a really established "franchise" so I didn't know the storyline, and I couldn't get into it. Knights of the Old Republic is supposed to be a big game like Morrowind, and I think I could handle that, since I like Star Wars.

[mongycore]

ah. I see.

I don't know much about the storyline right now at all. Other than delivering some package to a guy with a weirdly spelled name...and that assasination attempt by a dark brotherhood guy (tribunals quest opener). So, yeah, story isn't a real focus unless you choose it to be.

As for Knights...finally read a preview, and if anything, I want an x-box more than ever...but that would be crazy to spread myself so thin gaming wise. Still holding off for zelda in march, and splinter cell to hit the shelves sometime this week.

It wouldn't be a bad idea to stop upgrading my computer and just enjoy the games that have come out in the past year...upgrade sometime next year and enjoy what's come out between here and then.

That strategy has worked for me in the past when playing old favorites like deus ex, nolf, and freespace 2 years ago. That or just settle with a console.

[BruceL]

No reason for a new thread that I'm guessing will not get much attention, but hooray for the second upcoming Morrowind expansion, Bloodmoon. I shall become a werewolf in that as soon as possible.

[mongycore]

mheh, another expansion to an already insanely huge game.

I think I wasted precious time for those first five hours wandering around that port town and the surrounding villages. After going back to Sheeda Nein(?) I decided to hop on the floating bug thing and ride on to balmora. Now there are just too many opportunites to do anything...I've just joined the mages/fighter guilds and am doing some mundane collect this-n-that missions. Did that for awhile. Now I've found Casius and began work on the main quest that has to do with the Blades.

So what does the new expansion offer anyways...got any details on that?

[BruceL]

A whole new landmass, 1/5th the size of the island that Morrowind takes place on. I.e., really big. It will be a snow-and-ice covered forested island.

New creatures: frost trolls, ice minions, bears, spriggans, and wolves. And werewolves.

You can become a werewolf. "You get bonuses to your strength, agility, and speed. You'll gain a new ability called Eye of the Wolf. You do not use weapons or spells, but attack with your claws. Insane dreams will haunt you each night - dreams that urge you to fulfill maddening werewolf quests."

New weather types: snow and blizzards.

You get to direct the construction of a mining colony (similar to building your strongholds in MW).

<a href="http://www.elderscrolls.com/index.php?url=/art/bm_screenshots_01.htm&bg=04" target="_blank">Screenshots</a>

I've played a lot of games, for a very long time, and I've never seen ANYTHING like Morrowind. I'm completely hooked. I can understand how people might be overwhelmed, especially when starting out. The game becomes very different once you've leveled a bit and can actually survive the wildernes... once you start pilfering tombs, it's game over. So cool.

[CTDeLude]

So what are the good little add on files out there. The Castlevania one I know was impressive and such but are there others?

And also has anyone gone to the caves just south of where you start?

And finally I couldn't believe how interconnected the world is. In fact after some major exploring you realize that certain boundaries really don't keep certain elements in like they should.

Babble babble babble.

[You can't call Guyute a mook]

I had this for the PC, played for a bit over the summer, but never really got into it (too much time to get started). Well, after I got my XBOX, this was one of the first games I picked up. I am hooked. This game is like crack, moreso than any other game that I have ever played. I love it, and I am only just beginning. Incredible.

[Saiyan Prince]

I play Morrowind between bouts of Splinter Cell, and I have had it for almost 7 months and haven't even put a dent in it, that's how big Morrowind is.
Right now I'm the head of the Fighter's Guild, and I'm like a 42nd level Breton with magic and fighting skills. I trained myself in markmanship, killed a creature at some Dwarven ruins and got a Dwemer Crossbow.

I also downloaded the mod for the proximity arrows and bolts from the one shop in Vivec, and they work nicely.

All in all I have a few buggy spots and crashes, but it's a good game, and long too, and it seems to have some up and coming competition from a newcomer called Arx Fatalis.

[BruceL]

The only plugin I've installed is the NPCReplace one, that gives NPCs some much, much better head models and skins. I've downloaded a few of the official ones, but will probably only add the Firemoth one since it adds new land. There are a metric assload of plugins though, I'm sure some of them are great. I haven't seen any sites dedicated to reviewing them, which would be helpful.

If I had more free time I would have gotten and played Arx; that game had an awesome demo. But as it is I just barely finished the main MW quest after who the hell knows how long, and expect that I might just barely finish the main Tribunal quest by the time Bloodmoon comes out. Currently level 58, which is about as high as I'll bother trying to get.

[Jampry]

Yeah , my roomate has this game , he can run it just fine. The graphics and gameplay are tight , but I can't play because I have Windows XP running on a K6-2 with you know 3D Now! But seriously I would play this game if I had the machine and the time. College does not permit that though...

[mongycore]

<a href="http://www.morrowindfiles.com/" target="_blank">Morrowind Files</a> does review some of the submitted mods. They've been kind to include the top 10 downloaded mods as well. If you click further into their site, you'll also find they've categorized the mods into npc's, buildings, quests, creatures, etc.

A great place to start for some new mods. For the most part they're keen on not cheating the experience...but rather improving it.

[Saiyan Prince]

I got most of my levels by paying to have my attributes go up, and the weapons held by the Dremora and the Golden Saints helped a lot with money.

There's also a trick: if you have lots of money to spend on training, it will add to the amount of gold held by the merchant, so say a merchant with 8,000 gold who has someone pay him 4,000 for training, will have 12,000, and if your bartering and mercantile skills are high enough, you can effectively sell any special weapons you have for the whole lot and buy the merchant out and get your asking price of 12,000.

Cool huh?

[BruceL]

There is a new <a href="http://www.homelanfed.com/index.php?id=12654" target="_blank">interview</a> up for the second Morrowind expansion pack. Same screens, but some interesting new details on monsters and game locations.

May cannot get here soon enough.

[mongycore]

Anyone else encounter some funky ass bugs with this game?

For me, it applies to a Mages guild quest. I'm suppose to track down this guy and either persuade him to join the guild or die. Whenever I reach his front door though, my health starts decreasing and my guy dies. At first I thought it was a trap but it happens when I don't even activate the door. I've looked around too for any beasts that might be attacking from behind but that is not it either. I also thought that because I journeyed through the ashlands that it was the blight disease that was killing me but I stocked up on potions to counter it. After all those options were investigated, I de-selected the mods/plugins to see if they were doing screwy stuff with that situation but it wasn't the plug-in's either.

Hulk smash.

Ignoring the quest though is my only solution. I don't seem to be mysteriously dying anywhere else.

[cabal]

I've had the game since last June on Xbox and have put over 300 hours into it. I really enjoy performing the infinite summons trick and recreating scenes from Army of Darkness. Well... having no less than 40 skeleton warriors follow me around the country side. It's truly amazing to be able to walk down the line of soldiers and see them all standing there in formation, looking at you, waiting for your next move to obey by.

I once went into a tavern in Balmora with a gang of ten skeletons. I pulled out a daedric dagger and attacked the nearest bar patron. As soon as that happened ALL of my skeleton gang instantly began attacking and killing EVERYONE in the tavern. It was really fun to just stand around and watch all the chaos happening around me! The funny part is after all the humans, lizard people, etc die, all my remaining skeletons run back up to me and stare at me, waiting for my next move.

It's also entirely possible to pit dozens of summoned monsters against each other in an all out war across the country side. This isn't something your supposed to be able to do in the game, but due to the glitch in the Xbox version you can make it happen.

Anyway I'm really pissed about how Bethesda has apparently abandoned the Xbox fans and has neglected to make any form of additional content for the Xbox version of Morrowind while constantly adding new content on to the PC version.

[BruceL]

That does suck that the Xbox users don't get the mission packs. The only thing I can think of is maybe the majority of the original game's sales were for PC, meaning there was no commercial benefit to making Tribunal and Bloodmoon for the console.

Well, maybe it also wasn't technically feasible to add the additional content to the existing Morrowind code and art... I don't know much about the Xbox's storage and upgrade ability.

Fortunately I'm an owner of the PC version, so not only do I get the two mission packs and the handful of official plugins, there are also several thousand user plugins out there too. Plus I don't have to play the game at 640x480, w00t.

[Gruber]

Well for Xbox, the game is now 19 dollars on the Xbox platinum dealy.

[cabal]

I'm at 350 hours and haven't joined any vampire cults, done any of the morang tong missions OR theif guild missions. Not to mention I've only finished 3/4 of the main quest SO... I'm guessing this game's going to be at least 400 hours before I'm done with it.

With that said If I'd spent 20 dollars on it, I'd have gotten over 20 hours of solid fun entertaining gameplay per dollar spent on the game. Now that's some serious bang for the buck.