The game tells you these things though. You have to pay attention.

It’s an RPG before it is an action game. The mechanics align with that - you just might not like traditional CRPGs - which is fine, most don’t which is why Bethesda basically dropped the pretense of their games being RPGs by Skyrim.

Edit: if you want the easiest time in Morrowind - a Redguard. Adrenaline Rush will get you through tough spots. If you’re impatient and willing to sacrifice optimization for speed (which isn’t really that much a big deal), take the Steed as your sign. The Lady is better for optimization and will save you money on bribes.

If you want cheese: steal the lime ware plate on the shelves in the Census and Excise office right as you start the game. Drop it before the guard confronts you, pick it back up after he chews you out. Sell to Arrille, buy equipment matching your best armor skill/weapon skill. Hop over to Addamasartus, clear out, grab the moon sugar, sell to Ravirr in Balmora for one of his “Daedric weapons.”

But really the purpose of the game is that you should be a low level dweeb for a while. Pacing is slower - if you’re going to do the Mage’s Guild - you should be capable of magic. Lots of those early quests are no combat/easy.

It’s an experience about immersion. The gameplay and mechanics are built to facilitate this. You’re supposed to suck at first - that’s why Caius basically tells you to fuck off at the beginning of the game. You do end up with your god power fantasies at the end - by the time you’ve killed two gods and a pretender, you do get to run around one shotting everything. (Better than Sheogorath him-fucking-self getting ganked by a troll because its health pool is in the triple digits.)

Don’t run everywhere (keep fatigue bar at least half full). Don’t use weapon skills that are less than 40 (train them - there aren’t restrictions like in the later games).

It’s closer to D&D than an action RPG. Your swing is like a “to hit” roll. The game cares about your character’s skill - not yours.

I like Morrowind a lot mechanically - I like that the game will happily allow you to kill anyone you want (and with Taunt - you can do it legally!) You can complete the main quest after slaughtering everyone on Vvardenfell bar one person (the thread of prophecy might be broken - but a larger theme in ES lore is that we make prophecies happen).

I like that the game is designed around the lack of fast travel. When I complain about fast travel in Oblivion and Skyrim, I hear “just don’t use it” but it isn’t really feasible (playing a Survival run in Skyrim and life just sucks if I have to go to Morthal).

Morrowind’s world is just real and thought out in a way that I haven’t seen in a game since. The towns are designed around food sources, there’s a lot of thought into to the economies of plantation slavery, and it’s all used to enhance the world building.

Scaling in Morrowind wasn’t really a problem because almost every enemy was hand placed. You don’t have hordes of generic “Bandits” (in glass fucking armor at end game) - you have Tunipy Sharmirbasour, who has a reason for being where she is and a set level. Barring like guards and some of the humanoid enemies in Tribunal and Bloodmoon - everyone has a name.

Leveling only really comes into play when it comes to some of the generic loot that can be rolled, what some shopkeepers might have, and generic creature enemies. Even then, the scaling isn’t ridiculous - going from rats to Kagouti doesn’t feel uneven. Unlike Oblivion, you also will continue to see lower level enemies generated.

Oblivion even levels the quest rewards - so your Daedric artifacts and faction completion rewards will be useless once you level.

Leveling in Oblivion also affects enemy stats, and a lot of time it’s a flat bonus. Late game ogres and Minotaurs are not fun to fight, because they’re just massive health pools.

Morrowind has the same “inefficient” leveling problem (like, endurance is something you want to upgrade as early as possible, because it effects how much health you get every level up) - but in Morrowind you aren’t permanently fucked because you spent your first ten levels training acrobatics and speech craft or something.

I don’t see Bethesda has doing anything about this project.

Like TESNexus did take down my Morroblivion main quest implementation back in 2010 (although someone else had already uploaded a half done version which was allowed to stay up? maybe they had sucked Arthmoor off or something.) I just moved to the Morroblivion forums after, nbd.

But you’ve been able to complete basically all of Morrowind in Oblivion for more than ten years, and I don’t think Bethesda has done anything. I think they threatened/scared the French guy who made the executable that converted everything, but backed off and never really bothered again.

Tbh, I could see them giving Morrowind away for free at some point - just like Daggerfall and Arena.

The way they might fuck people over is the endless Skyrim and Fallout updates I guess that break fucking everything. But not legally I don’t think. This gets people to buy more copies of Skyrim (and we know the modern gamer isn’t patient enough for Morrowind proper)

Doordash fucks over its drivers. The gig economy shifts the responsibility for wear and tear on the vehicle, insurance… It’s also algorithmically driven to fuck them over, to offer them as little pay as they think will get them to take the deal (eg, we know Uber profiles people - people who are poor and desperate get the worse jobs) If you’re going to use the service, tip well. It’s not the drivers fault that it’s expensive.

Funnily enough, the Sims 2 shipped with SecureROM which really pissed the community off then. A literal root kit which could interfere with legitimate software. I get a desire for anti piracy measures - but the game was offered for free officially for like 5+ years.

I distantly remember a guy who was dying of cancer, but kept up an absolute tirade against EA. There was so much ill will then, it would be funny if they made the same mistake.

The Sims series is itself a story of how fucking shit EA is. Killing Maxis, driving off the original creators… even in Sims 2 days you had the IKEA and H&M expansion packs - ads that you paid for (even if tbh the furniture and clothes are good). Sims 3 had features stripped and added back in expansion packs. Getting all of the expansions is ridiculously expensive and running all of them at the same time will wreck your game. Sims 3 also started putting micro transaction ads into your fucking build/buy mode.

Sims 4 shipped without toddlers and every expansion pack seems to have made the game actively worse. The base game is so bare that it isn’t worth playing, but the expansions and stuff are often released entirely broken, and then never fixed. “Wedding Stories” was so disastrous even the Pollyanna YouTubers were pissed.

And now - folks realizing that there is nothing to be had in the new garbage game, that the Sims 5/Project Renee is never going to come out (or be some kind of mobile shit) - they try an easy cash grab of rereleasing two games with zero improvements and even more broken. When the Sims 2 had been legally available for free for the better part of a decade and you could download and install a Sims 1 iso in less time than I’ve spent writing this comment.

The release is broken. There are several complaints that folks aren’t even able to get the game to launch. Considering that it isn’t a remaster or remake, just the same game with a copyright update, that’s ridiculous.

The Sims 2 + all expansions was available for free on Origin for years until it was removed. Most fans already have that version, and most modding guides are going to assume that version. One wonders if the community launcher will even work with the new releases - or mod compatibility. The Sims 1 has been considered abandonware for a while and I imagine most who want to play it already acquired a copy online.