I played the shit out of Morrowind, modded the shit out of it and played all the expansions.
Skyrim is much better.
- - The magic is tons better. Magic blew goats in Morrowind, a typical experience I recall was firing off a single damaging spell before pegging it to the door so you could transition outside to sleep so your mana recharged. Meanwhile potions were broken in the other direction in that it was pretty evident that you could game your way into invincibility by stacking effects. Then there was that 'ethereal' invisibility that allowed you to attack while remaining invisible, great idea guys. I broke the game for myself accidentally at one point by finding a ring that did that constantly.
- - The melee combat/archery is miles and miles ahead. The archery improved a lot in Oblivion but that is maintained in Skyrim. In Morrowind all this stuff was total disconnected dice roll managed balls.
- - The world of Skyrim is more interesting. Yep, I said it. Morrowind's world was only actually interesting on paper and in the mind of the player as the game wasn't going to do much to help you along. Remember the tedious database conversation system? The lack of any 'personalities' outside the one or two in the main quest? Remember the featureless deserts and grey volcanic boredom zones? In fact the best part of Morrowind was the super cool Bloodmoon expansion and Skyrim is like more of that.
- - The quests are light years beyond the drek that passed for objectives in Morrowind. Even after all that playtime I can barely recall anything that went on in the plot beyond the fact I was the Neverine and had to kill a big old bad in the volcano.
- - All kinds of terrible secondary systems are gone/improved - what was lockpicking like in Morrowind? undoubtably it sucked. I recall the trading though which was a ridiculous dance of swapping for things you didn't want, waiting and guessing how much extra you could ask above the default for your useless pile of crap and it was crap. Most of the loot in Morrowind sucked, nothing more disappointing in getting to the end of the dungeon and finding in the 'sword of does barely any damage' or more commonly nothing at all.
- - Then there were the terrible dungeons themselves. They usually had to compensate for their utter awfulness by being completely pitch black. Good luck if you didn't bring a stack of torches!
I could probably go on, but the point is that there is a huge amount of Morrowind nostalgia that likes to recall only the good parts like the city inside a giant crab, mushroom houses, levitating and the silt striders and forget all the rest of the shit that surrounded it. A lot of it was more acceptable at the time, especially in the context of the the stuff the game did that you couldn't get anywhere else, but it's not better than Skyrim today.
If someone had never played an Elder Scrolls game you wouldn't want to start them on Morrowind today they'd think you were an idiot for making them play such rubbish.
