Morrowind... possibly my favourite game of all time. Playing this game feels like home, I love it and keep coming back to it.

The thing that is so appealing to me specifically about The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is how alien it is compared to the relatively vanilla settings of Arena, Daggerfall, Oblivion and Skyrim. It's an extremely unique setting with a ton of made-up plants, foods, creatures, traditions, even planes of existence. The cultural practices, architecture and fashion of some of the groups and ruling houses in the game are stylistically more-or-less-heavily influenced by different real life, mostly Middle- and East Asian, cultures - including ancient Mesopotamian, Buddhist, Hindu and Egyptian. Then right next to that you have Steampunk and influences from Lovecraftian horror... It's not hard to see why Morrowind's fantasy world stands out as surreal and exotic compared to many other western RPGs, and that's why I find it so awesome.

The main story, in my opinion, is phenomenal, and it is still surrounded by a lot of intrigue and fan theories. There are so many interesting and even downright mind****y stories in this game. The writing in this game, in dialogues and its ingame books, is borderline mad sometimes. It is pure creative genius. (thank you, daddy Kirkbride)

Another thing that I love about Morrowind is the freedom you have. I never feel pushed into the main questline; in fact, I may have only finished it about two times in my well over 1000 hours of playing it, and that's not just on Steam. I always end up pursuing faction quests or other side quests, which I have never finished 100% either. Morrowind has 24 factions, around 17 of which are joinable!! It feels like every playthrough I manage to find something or do a questline that I've never even seen before.

This game never fails to give me something to do; the number of quests and sheer content in it is just incredible. Morrowind has more skills, weapons, armour, artifacts and unique items than any other TES game (bar Daggerfall on the number of skills). You can literally walk into a random dungeon or ancestral tomb and just so happen to find one of the most powerful items in the game - which makes me actually excited to explore! Speaking of exploration, there is limited fast travel in the game, for example by way of teleportation or paying for passage aboard a boat or silt-strider (which is a giant flea that makes whale sounds - how cool is that?) Furthermore, there are no map markers at all, only directions written in your journal. So while walking around following clues to your destination, you are bound to encounter some interesting characters, things and events - starting with a strange encounter right from the very first main quest you do, on the way to the first city. The world map itself is not even that big, but the mountainous terrain, the view distance, and the initial slow movement speed (lol), paired with a world brimming with so much content, still make it seem gigantic every time I start playing.

As for the Morrowind modding community, it’s still going strong - fans are constantly adding new stuff to the game or modernising the game with better graphics. The game has been ported to a fan-made, open-source engine called OpenMW, which extended the capabilities and fixed a lot of bugs of Morrowind's original Gamebryo engine. I fully recommend playing Morrowind on the OpenMW engine for a more playable experience, with native support of higher resolutions than 1600x1200, several optional shaders, loading of distant terrain, and more. Not to mention, the team that made OpenMW has another project called TES3MP adding multiplayer functionality to Morrowind on the OpenMW engine!
Other noteworthy big projects are Tamriel Rebuilt, building all the mainland of Morrowind, adding dozens of hours of quests, exploration and playtime to the game, and the TESRenewal Project, rebuilding all of Morrowind and bringing the game to the newer TES game engines of Oblivion and Skyrim with Morroblivion and Skywind, respectively.

I absolutely love how the community is keeping this old game alive. Apart from the incredible modding community, the Morrowind fandom is rich with beautiful fan art, cosplays, musical covers and original music, role-playing communities, stories and memes. I adore this game and everything about it - it's an absolute masterpiece. <3