Morrowind May Modathon and Skywind Gameplay Preview

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It's the 21st anniversary of the release of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind today. If it were a person in the USA it would be old enough to buy a round of drinks to celebrate with us! While that might be a fantasy, we've got two Morrowind-themed announcements from the community to mark another year of the game that started it all here at Nexus Mods. 

The annual Morrowind May Modathon kicks off today and there's also a new sneak peek at the latest progress on the Skywind project which aims to re-create Morrowind in the more modern engine of Skyrim Special Edition.


Skywind - Necromancer in Mawia



We've covered Skywind's progress a few times over the past few years - most recently in 2020 - and it's always great to see progress being made on this enormous project. Today the team will be unveiling a 20-minute gameplay demo which shows off new environments, items, creatures, spells and even a fully voice-acted quest that follows the player from the Tribunal Temple in Molag Amur to a necromancer's secret hideout. Fans of the game should expect a pang of nostalgia while watching!



If you're interested in learning more about Skywind or would like to join the team, check out TESRSkywind.com.


Morrowind May Modathon 2023





If you've never heard of it before, the May Modathon is an annual event where old and new modders of Morrowind come together to create and share mods for this classic game. Last year was the biggest year in the history of the event with almost 300 participating mods uploaded. The event is run mostly for fun, but you can also earn a few prizes or unlock some badges for "bragging rights" by participating. Without further ado, here's a message from darkelfguy and Danae123 who are running the event.  

Morrowind was released twenty-one years ago on May 1st, 2002, and as we are, once again, coming upon the anniversary of this beloved game, I'm pleased to announce, in celebration, the return of the ninth annual Morrowind May Modathon Month Modding Competition! Over the last nine years, the Modathon has become one of the largest annual modding competitions in The Elder Scrolls community, with hundreds of participating mods made by dozens of dedicated modders.
 
As always, the Modathon will be returning on May 1st and will run throughout the entire month of May, and as always, participating modders will have a chance to win a slew of prizes and unlock a number of new achievements in a number of modding categories as they try and become the ultimate modding champions of 2023!
 
Truly, the last several years have been an exciting time for the Morrowind Modding Community. Far from slowing down, the community has only grown, with an average of 1300 new Morrowind mods getting released each year! And last year saw our biggest turnout yet for the 2022 Modathon Competition, with nearly 300 participating mods, an all-time record!
 
But of course, we're looking to beat that record again in 2023, and to that end, we once again have a host of new achievements for modders to unlock, covering everything from overhauling a town, to building a cozy player home, or creating a community resource or enhancing Morrowind's gameplay mechanics, and many more besides! 
 
In addition to achievements, we're also bringing back weekly themed challenges to run concurrently with the Modathon. Can you make a mod to match each theme each week? New themed achievements and prizes await for those who take up the challenges!
 
Participation is simple, any Morrowind mod released in May can be entered into the competition, just remember to include a tagline "Part of the May Modathon Month" (or the Modathon logo) near the top of your mod's description, or use the Modathon 2023 tag to enter your mod as part of the competition. You'll be automatically entered to potentially win one of our weekly random-drawing prizes, and of course unlock achievements!

Mod your way to fame and glory in the biggest modding event of the year, and help celebrate one of the greatest games ever made! The best games never die, so get out there, have fun, and build a ton of mods to make this great game even better than ever before!

The competition runs from May 1st (12am GMT) through to June 2nd (12pm GMT), and you can find out more about how to participate, along with a complete list of achievements, over on the official announcement thread as well as over on our Discord channel


A huge thank you to both Danae and darkelfguy for keeping the tradition alive. We hope you enjoy the event.

Are you playing Morrowind in 2023? Which location would you most like to see recreated in the Skywind project? Let us know in the comments.

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  1. Pagafyr
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    The tattered game with most of us seeing for the first time what a video game would be like if it could be made into a motion picture.  Talk about breaks, bugs, and CTD's  Oh My!  The game had such a powerful enchantment it was like a drowning man and everyone wanted to make sure that he didn't go down for the third time.

    Even I uploaded a boost for it.  The little mod I created gave it another story right there in Seyda Neen.  Like all good stories (what they called hooks in my fishing days) it took.  It gave some people good start to realize Morrowind was the magical moment gamers were dreaming of and Skyrim was the baby.  Skyrim SE was the baby finally out of diapers.

    You should have seen the number of modding websites.  The people were having mod madness.  Forums filled with discussions with the new form of artists added real art to the game too.  Their calm discussions were filled with splashes of home brew mixed with hard liquor, and any other kind of mind bending stuff.

    It was and I refresh everyone's memory IT was the Wild Wild Wild days of the Old West revisited.  Calm discussions on the Forums occasioned to have a pup enter a thought that caused some confusion and Flame Wars became another sign of Bar Room Brawl's just like in the Good Ol' Days of the land called the U. S. A..  Fights that would have brought many a country old cowboy to tears.  It was like someone offered cool aide to a man who drank Snake Eye booze from birth on.  The good ol forum owners and operators had to put them down, but at first the floor was so hot they didn't dare.

    Yeah I remember Morrowind.  Starting out thrilled by the thought it was going to be the Magic Ride and each quest would have fantastic door prizes.

    Think about it.  Morrowind made video games like they are today just as did the wheel for cars.

    Every body loved to hate it!  Until it finally started to get rolling.
    Pumaman's long drawn out paleontology, archaeology, from giants and UFOology called GIANTS  had dragons we would see, and another quest we could tame them and ride the skies of Vvarndenfell.  His modding TEAM must have been dying every minute a little bit, because their jollopy was barely moving with so many breaks and CTDs it was lucky it moved at all..  It was a stupendous trial and Error at making Morrowind a winner.

    Skyrim's team picked the bones from it.  Pumaman's mods made it even a bigger enchanting mess with crashes.  Hair pulling frustration and people screaming at the monitor in their excitement.  Thinking somehow they got ripped off.

    The introduction of the invention of the wheel didn't change anything over night EITHER.

    We should all have a round on the house.  The house owned by Todd and his team at Bethesda Softworks Inc..
    1. SnowFox35
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      I didn't know a lot of that stuff. It's very interesting to hear about Morrowind's earlier days, but I'm especially interested in the community. It sounded like it was very tightly-knit. Without many new Bethesda releases recently circulating around the forum, I'm excited for something like Starfield. Maybe it will ignite more discussion around the Forums like the game-focused Morrowind talks online you were explaining. Although it's chaotic, at least it's centered.

      I didn't know Morrowind used to be hated. I'm only used to seeing it be renowned and praised for many of its elements - 'many' meaning the exclusion of graphics. I recently read a post where somebody said Morrowind had awful combat and visuals but incredible lore, story, and secondary gameplay elements. It got me interested in the game, and reading your post about the history of Morrowind and its online impact makes it sound more interesting to me.

      Thank you for the story, Pagafyr.
    2. freakuac
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      "Do it! You will enjoy it so much!" The person before me said this to me, and now I want to pass the regret to you. The regret for not playing it.

      awful combat and visuals
      Seriously, this is a false argument. With the right set of mods (YMMV), Morrowind can provide very exciting combat and amazing visuals in today's standards. Sure, technically speaking modern games are definitely better at that, AAA rendered graphics $ motion captured animations $ voice acting & other stuff that cost lots of budgets to make. But even non-modded Morrowind can either give you heart-pounding challenges faster than later titles, or superior unique aesthetic impressions that inspired many in communities and the industry. I can't really agree with those shallow comments saying Morrowind is ugly. It's just old(er), not awful. And what if with mods covering these "weaknesses"? Time to find it out yourself. (for example, PVP & Sheogorad region)

      What makes the experience great and irreplaceable is something money cannot buy.
    3. streetyson
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      Pagafyr, you make it sound like Morrowind was the catalyst igniting the modding scene but you guys are too focused in RPG/fantasy. For it really took off some years before, in 1995-2000, thanks to things like Windows 95/98 and Netscape Navigator. And with plenty of mod communites in things like flight sims (eg, Red Baron II & 3D), and battle sims (eg, Combat Mission & Shogun Total War), to name just a few series. I suspect most Morrowind players back in the day tended to be youngsters, and would've just been a tad too young to be playing, say, flight sims or tactical wargames a few years even earlier, let alone modding them! And so when looking back now they seem to think modding for Morrowind was all a brave & exciting new world when it was merely just new & exciting for them.

      In some ways it was really easy to mod in 90s, for example graphics were often bitmaps. It was just time consuming as us modders used things like MSPaint! And even then computer modding wasn't new, for back in the 80s I'd get game coding from magazines to type into my ZX Spectrum. Computer games mags of the 80s to late-90s were sort of our internet! And their circulation was huge.
    4. ShaedraX
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      I remember and cherish the Hero's Quest series (where is the apple, how much dinar for a flying carpet, sneaking into houses and stealing silver), Kings Quest series, Space Quest series on VGA monitors. Then Thief, What stories, immersion and ...so much more. I remember endless hours puzzles in Myst...
  2. sp0ckrates
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    For using an Xbox controller, there’s an excellent mod.

    https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/28893

    Sorry if it has already been mentioned. Don’t have the time to read all the comments right now.
  3. Nabuda
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    Wowowo wait.... I mean yeah it takes them a huge chunk of time to build these Total Conversions of course, but to say that they will never release these cause they never did something alike is not true, see Morroblivion for example or Enderal. Not to forget Skyblivion had an announcment for 2025. These People are mostly volunteers and hop from one project to another and in between they are studying and go to work or whatever like hm working on mods for skyrim and this flows back into other projects.. Just think of SSE Engine Fixes or Adress Library and alike those did a lot for the modding community enhancing possiblility's on what is doable. 

    Beside's you talk like you did buy a car and it was junk but you didn't spend a coin...
  4. RedingRU
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    That's good to see, but as a player I want to actually to play not to watch. At least these big mod developers team could release beta version of their work for those who want to play their mod in current state. I'm absolutly fine with that and people who prefer to see final product will just avoid it.
    1. KajurN
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      ^This. With all these teaser videos and not even a pre-alpha release (and i would never mind if it's being broken or incomplete), it feels like the team is enjoying teasing people with the cool toy they made and also being the only ones who can play around with it. That is not cool and now Skywind has been 'in development' for longer than the timeframe between Morrowind and Skyrim, which says a lot.

      I consider this vaporware and don't expect to ever get the chance to play it.
    2. tedbash
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      Well, its the same for just about any "mod" trying to recreate a previous title. Hard to tell if they will ever see the light of the day.
      I think Enderal was the only single mod on that scale ever reached the point of a release
  5. WhoCaresomg74
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    This project is pointless since they aren't staying true to Morrowind's combat system and thus feel of progression from weakling struggling to kill scribs to a god running around super fast floating in the sky. 
    1. Throatofhell
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      who cares
    2. Dragadur
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      The point of skywind was to fuse the games together where it needed it. 

      Botom line, as much as I love it Morrowind combat is a headache. 
    3. brakenbones5121
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      If you want morrowind combat with the morrowind story then you should....you know....play morrowind...this is a recreation of the game in skyrim so of course it's going to have skyrim combat.  If you want to struggle perhaps you should stop playing on adept.  There are plenty of mods to make skyrim more difficult....oh wait...they're combat mods so you wouldn't like that. 
    4. tedbash
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      i second this: Play morrowind then?

      Its like saying thats its pointless because they dont stay true to morrowind graphics...
      Both, combat and graphic sucked for morrowind, subjectively speaking. And i love what they do with it, giving us the opporturnity to play the story onec again with a more polished combat and graphics
  6. Liffory
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    shits older than me (joke) 
  7. Kinsman1369
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    Very good, I'm waiting 

    ^_^
  8. NicotineCaffeine
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    1. CaloNord
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      You forgot the Morrowind 'To get to Balimund go east out of town, following the road until you see a river. Turn south and follow the river until you see two unicorns and a tree with 3 red apples in the shape of the big dipper on a branch three from the top on the right hand side, then you'll know you need to go south again until the sun is between the two mountain ridges on your 9 o'clock as long as it's around 11am.'

      xD 
    2. Gabe785
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      Too real XD 
    3. streetyson
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      A bit longwinded for TES VI - it will just have arrows pointing you to obviously glowing salt, with the points reward flashing above it.
    4. NicotineCaffeine
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      Yeah i post it just becouse i've already seen an article which stated that Howard said that he want to simplify more the next tes. So i thought "Simplier than skyrim is super mario bros1 lol."
    5. streetyson
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      Aye, Mario will inspire gameplay mechanics but here's my scoop on the rest of it: TES 6's world will be to start you as a prisoner! Lol. As for the rest, it'll have a Game of Thrones-Lite style factions political plot, but with an even more naff finale than Game of Thrones. That's because it will also be an open-ended co-op base-builder and the main goal will be to keep magicking money from your wallet.
    6. SnowFox35
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      I love this meme so much.
    7. NicotineCaffeine
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      Me too, although i REALLY hope it won't become true.
    8. streetyson
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      Yes, but NicotineCaffeine, either way, you've entertained (at least me and some others), and for your efforts I've sent a kudos.
  9. Belegost
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    If it were a person in the USA it would be old enough to buy a round of drinks to celebrate with us.


    If it were a person in Central or Eastern Europe, it would already be an alcoholic.
  10. seaniselectric
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    I was working at a place building PC's, about 17/18 I think so about 20 years ago.  Graphics cards back then always used to come with a load of free games, sometimes pretty decent ones as well.   But if we were building a PC and used one of these GFX cards, I'd have the games haha.  And one of them was Morrowind which I'd never heard of, never played an RPG, did even know what was on the disc really.

    And as they say, the rest is history!