Morrowind

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, also known simply as Morrowind, is a first person (also playable in third person, and occasionally alluded to as a MSORPG, which stands for Massively Singleplayer Offline Role Playing Game, as opposed to the more common MMORPG) computer role-playing game in Bethesda Softworks' The Elder Scrolls series. Morrowind was initially released for PC on May 1, 2002 and was subsequently released for Microsoft's video game console Xbox on June 6, 2002. On September 10, 2004 Bethesda Softworks announced an addition to the TES series, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Gameplay

The game environment of Morrowind is huge and richly detailed, with real-time weather effects and a landscape in which most areas are accessible. Gameplay is exceptionally open ended, allowing the player to roam, steal, quest and explore. This includes, but is not limited to

• Making or buying custom spells and weapons with unique effects.
• Harming or killing major characters, even friendly characters (although it is possible to break the main plot of the game by doing so).
• Stealing from and breaking into houses. Also, the ability to live in a house if the owner is not there, or if the player kills the owner of that home.
• Finding random characters who assign mini-quests.
• Completely ignoring the 'main story' of the game and playing free form

This open-endedness is liberating and exciting, but shrewd players can find ways to unbalance the game and produce either weapons or abilities that can make the game's tasks easier to complete.

The storyline progresses exclusively through the decisions of the character; it is non-linear and can be discontinued at will. This type of open-ended role-playing gameplay is one of the hallmarks of the Elder Scrolls series and is the main basis of the game.

Morrowind is well known for its ability to be changed by plugins (called mods by users). These plugins are easy to install and can change almost everything in the game. For example, plugins can include new creatures, weapons, stores, and cities. Some plugins have added entirely new aspects to the game such as some stores closing and locking up at night, abolitionist and slave-trading factions warring over the area's slave trade, and ridable, breedable horses.

Along with graphical improvements, one of the most obvious differences between Morrowind and the older games is that Morrowind takes place only in the Vvardenfell district of Morrowind (a province in the land of Tamriel), whereas Arena in particular had given the player the opportunity to visit any province, at the expense of much less detail. However, the mainland town of Mournhold is accessable as a seperate area by sea transport.

The international language Esperanto made an appearance in Morrowind in the form of a book called N'Gasta! Kvata! Kvakis!.

The musical soundtrack to the game draws extensively in theme and style from The Planets by Gustav Holst.

Bethesda Softworks, the developer of Morrowind, offers gamers the ability to recreate the world with a variety of mod making tools, such as The Elder Scrolls Construction Set, which allows the modder to edit the game in an easy-to-use, nearly codeless environment.

Some of the fans have attempted to create many immense mods which change the entire game. One of the more well known mods is called Tamriel Rebuilt. The Tamriel Rebuilt project team is working to recreate the entire continent of which Morrowind is just one part.

Expansions

There have been two expansions:

• The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal (November 2002)
  • This puts the character in a self-contained walled city, and drastically increased the number and complexity of dungeons and caves (one of the criticisms of the original game was its paucity of such). The new city was not connected to the original Morrowind land mass, and you simply started the game by being transferred to the new city from Morrowind. The storyline continued the story of the Tribunal deities.
• The Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon (June 3, 2003)
  • This was a much more complete expansion than Tribunal, and actually created a large island with a sub-arctic climate that was included into the original Morrowind land area (i.e., you could seamlessly move from Morrowind to this island, by boat or other method).

In 2003, Bethesda released a Game of the Year edition for both PC and Xbox, which included the original game with both expansions. This is notable because beforehand, neither expansion was available for the Xbox. Reviewers note differences between the PC and Xbox versions.

Note: Bethesda Softworks will not release a multiplayer version for Morrowind, although many fans have asked for it. Also another game in the series, "Oblivion", has been announced.

See also: Dagoth Ur, Fargoth, Tamriel, Vvardenfell, Talking Mudcrab, Kagouti, and Morrowind Architecture

External links

• The Elder Scrolls (official site) (http://www.elderscrolls.com/)
• Morrowind Summit (http://www.rpgplanet.com/morrowind/)
• Gamers Roam (http://www.gamersroam.com/)
• Morroring (http://www.rethan-manor.net/webring/ringmaker.php) WebRing with many Morrowind-Sites
• UESP (http://www.uesp.net/morrow/espmor.shtml) Unofficial Elder Scrolls Page entry on Morrowind
• The Imperial Site (http://til.gamingsource.co.uk/) Largest Elder Scrolls lore site
• Morrowind Online (http://www.freewebs.com/evilyebrows) A fansite with links and mods.
• Unforgotten Realms (http://www.ufrealms.net) Huge site with a Morrowind section for downloads and Morrowind forum.[[Category:Windows games]

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