Have any other Lurkers played Morrowind?

[kandrathe]

There are just too many cheap exploits of MW economy (e.g. summoning Golden Saints and killing them for loot).

They seem to be closing those loopholes over time. After patching, you can no longer loot your summons, although you can still trap thier souls. As soon as they die, they disappear. But the biggest problem in the economy, IMHO, is that it seems gold is what is scarce. Merchants carry thousands of dollars in inventory, but many have < 200 gold. This forces you to play tricks like buying a merchants entire stock so you can sell an expensive item, then go sell off all the items you bought to whomever can/will buy them. The only other "exploits" I know of still require skill and effort. Trapping souls into soul gems and selling them for a profit, or finding valuable stuff, usually contraband, and then finding someone who can/will buy it.

You are required to amass quite alot of gold for some quests(I think I spent over 4000 in bribes to get house Hlaalu to vote me Hortator, or 2000 to get the Orc sculptor to build the new temple), yet there are usually no merchants who can afford to buy even a set of Orc Armor.

The character system also sucks in some ways, especially at higher levels. Once you have enough gold (which is easy to get through economy exploits), it is just too damn easy to make your char an expert at any proficiency. The penalties for training skills that do not fit your class should be much higher.
A brilliant thief who is at the same time a powerful fighter and uber-mage - *yawn*

Of course, you do not have to use any "exploits" and can always role-play as you like. But I would still like to see them fixed. The game simply lacks challenges for high-lvl chars IMO.

This part I agree with entirely. I'm still a suxor thief (sneak, security < 30), lame fighter (only my armor and blocking are high from getting hit all the time), uber mage -- so I've much left to look forward to. :)

The only limit I have on my power as a mage (But, I guess it makes some sense now that I'm the Archmage of Vvardenval) is the money it costs for training in a skill and spell crafting. In the beginning I was trying to focus only on magics of Destruction. Later, I needed more of the utility type magics, so I found someone who could train me and raised my Illusion skill 20 points just by spending gold. I'd much rather see a system where you may qualify (from training or action) for advancement in your selected groups of skills (major at full, minor at half, zero for the rest). Once you qualify, at level up you should also choose to invest a fixed amount of skill points. Hey, that sounds familiar.

But, I also have benefited from the flexibility. I started as a Crusader, thinking I would make a "Paladin", a fighter with healing and benificant arts. But, after I joined the mages guild, my character had an epiphany (some would say to the dark side) and changed from his former life as a knight and pursued the life of a Mage. A more formal class change would have also worked, but in essence even though I've joined the Fighters guild, I've only completed the guild advancement tasks from Balmora.

I've yet to even see what Bloodmoon, or Tribunal are like (I can hope they have some adventures for higher level play). If not, then there are some mods (Giants, I've heard) for higher levels. I would think within this game system it wouldn't be too hard to make a new land across the ocean with very nasty creatures. I guess if what you are looking for is a perpetual world where you can play the same character for thousands of hours and never become the demi-god, then this is not your game. I think Morrowind only tries to master leading an adventure through one major plot, with hundreds of small side plots. In that single player, single quest scope it succeeds and gives many hundreds of hours of play. But, I too would like to see any cheap exploits fixed and some better controls over "power".