Morrowind begins with paperwork. The player arrives by boat as a released prisoner and is led to a census office, where filling in the forms is the character creation. Then the door opens. “You are set free to do as you please,” Computer Gaming World’s Ron Dulin wrote in 2002. “The world of Morrowind is your oyster.” The world was an island, Vvardenfell, where people travel on the backs of giant insects, mushrooms grow as tall as houses and ash storms sweep the land. Bethesda built every part of it by hand, then gave players the tool it had built it with.
Fast facts
- Developer: Bethesda Softworks.
- Project leader: Todd Howard. Lead designer: Ken Rolston.
- Released: May 2002 for Windows PCs; June 2002 for the Xbox. Published by Bethesda in America and by Ubi Soft in Europe.
- Setting: the island of Vvardenfell, in the province of Morrowind, homeland of the Dunmer or dark elves.
- Expansions: Tribunal (2002), set in the city of Mournhold; Bloodmoon (2003), on the island of Solstheim.
- Editor: the Construction Set, shipped with the PC game.
Six years to Vvardenfell
The game took a long time to arrive. Retro Gamer’s history of the series explains that work began after Daggerfall (1996) alongside two smaller Elder Scrolls games, but Morrowind was too big for the technology of the day and was put on hold in 1997. The team came back to it at the end of 1998 with a smaller map and a different method. Daggerfall’s world had been generated by the computer, huge and, critics said, empty. Morrowind’s would cover only Vvardenfell, but every part would be made by hand. Retro Gamer put the cost at “a staggering 100 man-years”, and reported that Bethesda tripled its staff and spent a year building the editor.
Todd Howard, the project leader, told the German magazine PC Player in 2000 that the reaction to Daggerfall had praised its character system but called its world monotonous and empty. The answer was a smaller, fuller world, and an editor at its centre: early on, he said (in the magazine’s German), the team decided to create “an actual role-playing operating system, instead of simply a game”. Computer Gaming World’s preview in 2002 summed up the change in numbers: about 30 towns, against the 300 of Daggerfall.
An island of insects and ash
The preview pictures showed what was different. Silt striders, “giant bugs that have been captured and are used for fast travel throughout the huge world of Morrowind, like insectoid yellow cabs”. Guards in bonemold armour made of nine separate pieces. Weather with “fog, rain, and ash storms, as well as day and night cycles”. Every object in the world, down to the wares on a market stall, could be picked up, moved, bought or sold. There were boats too, paid teleportation between towns, and spells such as Recall, which one PC Gamer reader used to return to the Mages’ Guild.
The main story casts the player as the possible reincarnation of Nerevar, an ancient hero of the Dunmer, prophesied to save Morrowind from the immortal Dagoth Ur. The game did little to push players towards it. “There are so many tasks, so many people to help and hunt that you’ll be hard-pressed to stick to any single goal for very long,” Computer Gaming World found. Guilds, religious factions and political factions all had work to offer, and the player could join any combination of them or none.
There were no experience points in the usual sense. Skills improved by being used, and the character’s level rose with them. Wireframe recalled the habit this created years later: “Need to get better at jumping? Jump everywhere, all the time, always.” Players remembered the cliff racers too; Computer Gaming World warned that “you will learn to hate the abundant cliff racers, which swoop out of the sky with a high-pitched squeal”.
Freedom and its rough edges
Reviews were mixed. Computer Gaming World found the combat “a bit too basic”, the characters “often generic and lifeless”, the journal “an anal-retentive nightmare of confusion” and the crash bugs real. It still called Morrowind “the definitive open-ended RPG epic”, describing moments such as “reaching the summit of a mountain and seeing the ruins of a buried city sprawled out beyond the mist below you”. The British PC Gamer gave it 83%. Edge gave it six out of ten, complaining that “despite the promise of utter freedom, play is still constrained by cumbersome menus, shoddy AI and an extremely unrefined and banal combat system”, and that the world was “largely composed of different variations of brown”.
Readers had their own stories. A reader’s review in PC Gamer told how a simple errand for the Mages’ Guild, to fetch herbs from a lake, turned into a walk down a volcanic cleft, a haul of clams and “unbelievably, a pearl”, and a promotion to Journeyman, with five skills improving on the way “all without even looking at a statistic”. “Morrowind is a role-player’s dream,” the reader concluded.
Tribunal and Bloodmoon
Bethesda added two expansions. Tribunal, advertised for November 2002, sent the player away from Vvardenfell to Mournhold, a city of political trouble between a new king and the temple, with sewers full of undead. Computer Gaming World liked its side quests and its improved journal but found it “so confining” after the open island. Bloodmoon (2003) added the island of Solstheim, north-west of Vvardenfell, with its native Skaal, an empire trying to colonise it, hostile wildlife and werewolves.
The Construction Set and the mods
The editor turned Morrowind into something players kept building on. Computer Gaming World’s review noted that it shipped with “a relatively easy-to-use editor”, and that “mods and plug-ins of all varieties have already started to appear”: “Too easy? Make it harder. Can’t sell stuff? Give the merchants more gold.” Edge noted that plug-ins with new features were already available on Bethesda’s website.
The largest fan project began before the game was even out. Tamriel Rebuilt started in 2001 as an idea posted on the Elder Scrolls forums, by fans disappointed that the game would cover one island rather than the whole of Tamriel. It settled on building the mainland of Morrowind. Its first release came in 2006, and it was still releasing new regions in 2026. OpenMW, a free, open-source re-implementation of the game’s engine, runs the original game on modern systems for players who own it; Wireframe marvelled in 2020 that it would even run Morrowind on a Nintendo Switch.
Sources
- Computer Gaming World issue 217, August 2002, pp. 68–69: Ron Dulin, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind review (the prison and the census office; “your oyster”; freedom and factions; skills; enchanting; combat, NPCs, journal and crash bugs; the editor and mods; the buried city; cliff racers; “the definitive open-ended RPG epic”).
- Computer Gaming World issue 212, March 2002, pp. 30–31: preview (30 towns against 300; silt striders; bonemold armour; weather and ash storms; objects).
- Retro Gamer issue 15, 2005, pp. 20–22: “Retro Revival”, history of the Elder Scrolls series (the shelved project and its revival; hand-built Vvardenfell; “100 man-years”; staff tripled; a year on the editor; Tribunal and Bloodmoon; Nerevar and Dagoth Ur; first- and third-person views and weather).
- PC Player (Germany), August 2000, pp. 34–35: preview with Todd Howard as project leader (Daggerfall’s world; the “role-playing operating system”; the TES3 Construction Set).
- Edge issue 227, May 2011, p. 37: Ken Rolston and Mark Nelson as Bethesda designers who worked on Morrowind.
- Edge issue 112, July 2002: Morrowind review (menus, AI and combat; “different variations of brown”; transport; plug-ins on the developer’s website). Edge issue 113, August 2002, p. 15: review scores, Morrowind (PC/Xbox, Ubi Soft, Bethesda Softworks) six.
- PC Gamer (UK) issue 113, September 2002, p. 117: “Uncensored” reader review (Morrowind, publisher Ubi Soft, PCG 110, 83%; the Mages’ Guild errand; “a role-player’s dream”).
- Computer Gaming World issue 222, January 2003: Tribunal advertisement (“Coming November 2002”).
- Computer Gaming World issue 224, March 2003, p. 96: Ron Dulin, Tribunal review (Mournhold; the king and the temple; the journal).
- Computer Gaming World issue 230, September 2003, p. 96: Ron Dulin, Bloodmoon review (Solstheim; the Skaal; colonisation; werewolves).
- Wireframe issue 46, December 2020, pp. 112–113: “Killer Feature: The Elder Scrolls” (learning by doing; house-sized mushrooms).
- Wireframe issue 33, February 2020, p. 65: OpenMW.
- OpenMW, “FAQ” (web): a free, open-source engine that re-implements Morrowind’s, under the GNU General Public License version 3, needing a legally owned copy of the game. https://openmw.org/faq/
- “Tamriel Rebuilt”, Wikipedia, and “Tamriel Rebuilt: Main Page”, UESP (web, secondary): founded in 2001 from a forum post by a fan known as Ender; the mainland of Morrowind as its goal; first release, Telvannis, on 23 September 2006; Poison Song on 23 August 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamriel_Rebuilt and https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Tamriel_Rebuilt:Main_Page
- “The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): release dates; Todd Howard as director; Ken Rolston as lead designer; Ubisoft as European publisher from January 2002; “close to 100 man-years”; travel by silt strider, boat and paid teleportation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_III:_Morrowind