The water, like, moved. They tried to make it look like real water. And for it's time I was blown away. Not to mention the giant bugs you could ride around on. The fucking god just kind of hovering there in the main city, the mushrooms. The fact that you could GROW YOUR OWN MISHROOM TO LIVE IN And the cliff racers. Oh my God the cliff racers. All the cliff racers you could ever want. Everywhere. Just asking to be punched in their faces. Every game before and since really needs to look at morrowind and take bite, because if I'm not getting pecked in the face at least every 30 seconds I'm playing by a cliff racers then YOUR GAME IS DHIT. FIX IT.
There's also just SO MANY random and interesting encounters that you could entirely miss. There's the person who lost a ring in a pond, but when you jump down to get it, they assault you. There's the Nord that has been stripped naked and frozen in place by a witch. There's the boots of blinding speed (I loved throwing these on and using the mini-map to navigate the roads).
I also loved the way you had to utilize multiple forms of fast travel to get around. "Okay, if I take the silt strider to Balmora, there's a Mage's Guild that will take me to-". It was a fun world to live in.
And the factions forced you to choose between them. You couldn't do it all with one character, because that wouldn't make sense!
Maybe I'll go get OpenMW and play for a bit again...
DLC adds the Elder Scrolls planet. You travel there to pick up some lost artifact part and have to fight your way through dragons and vampires and shit. It's so easy that you decide to build an outpost and retire there.
Elder Scrolls 6 starts off with an alien invader (Starfield you) stealing some ancient power which keeps evil at bay or whatever. You gain allies from the factions if you want and perform a heist from the evil alien thing. Fuck you, buy the game.
Like you're guarding one of the last untouched Elder Scrolls. An alarm goes off "some is breaking into the vault". You and your squad are the first to arrive just to see some oddly shaped humanoid flip you the bird as the weirdly foggy drawbridge closes.