A game well past its prime...
I first tried out the game with just a bunch of graphics mods - they help, but the game still looks pretty awful in the character department. I did play it far enough to get a sense of the gameplay; in short, it's horrendous. You can't hit anything since it's all number-based, the menus are obtuse at best, there's no fast travel and no quest markers. Now, some people might think of this as a good thing, but in an open-world game with hundreds of NPC's and locations, having some sense of direction is a must. The quests themselves do describe what you need to to reasonably well so that you can figure out what you need to do and where to go most of the time, but in other instances, you are basically playing "Where's Waldo" in Morrowind.
Anyway, I decided that the game was not for me due to the antiquated gameplay, and left it in my game shelf for a long time. But then one magical day, I found out about a mod called Morroblivion, which recreated the entire game in Oblivion's engine. Oh joy, I thought!
It would not last.
I started out with Oblivion back in 2007, and absolutely loved it, and while playing it now felt rather dated compared to Skyrim, it was still decent. So, I figured it was time to discover the joys of the much heard-of Morrowind in a decent engine, finally!
First impressions were great. It was all there, everything I had seen in my first playthrough of Morrowind, and seeing it updated was a lot of fun. Until I actually started progressing through the story and world more, that is.
I've read people say that the story of Oblivion and Skyrim really pales in comparison to that of Morrowind, so I was quite eager to see if they were right. Well, having played though 1/3 of it, I can't say I am. It's just fetch quest after fetch quest after fetch quest. And before you can really start out on your main fetch quest, you must do some side fetch quests to build up your reputation. Great. Seriously, I must have gone through 12 quests where all I have done is talked to a guy, been told to talk to another guy who tells me to do him a favour (fetch quest) in order to get some papers to give to the first guy. Rinse and repeat. And that's it! I don't know if the story will catch up later, but when 1/3 of your game is pretty much sh*t, I wouldn't hold my breath.
The background is pretty much this; you get an intro cinematic with texts telling you that you are the chosen one. After you have done a bunch of fetch quests you are indeed told that you look like the chosen one (who saw that coming?!), and you must now go out and prove to some people who believe in the chosen one that you are the chosen one. My guess is, you are actually the chosen one, who will save the world in the end. How is this better than Oblivion and Skyrim?!
As for the world itself, it's boring. It's a bunch of large mushrooms and insect like cottages everywhere, and that's pretty much it. The land is mostly barren and deserted, and exploring really isn't much fun, and not just because of the dated graphics. There's like not atmosphere anywhere, all NPC's feel like mannequins who all say the same thing (whenever they might say anything at all, since most of the game isn't voice acted).
In short: the quests are boring filler, the atmosphere is weak, the gameplay in the original is awful and the story is barely there. If you have played Morrowind and you liked it - fine, keep on liking it. If you are new to it, stick with Oblivion and Skyrim. They may be dumbed down a lot, but they are also actually enjoyable to play today.