I think that you're missing the point. It's not a KOTOR-style or even BG style game. It's much more open-ended, and requires a different approach (and mindset) to play. I tried KOTOR right after Morrowind, and KOTOR drove me crazy with it's lack of freedom (though I plan to give it another try). KOTOR is much more restricted and heavily scripted, which can help create a strong sense of story, but also severely limits your play.
Morrowind had an enormous amount of material of all varieties, but also padded the world to try to give it a sense of vastness, and to avoid making it feel empty. Personally I felt it worked, though the NPCs could start feeling nameless and faceless after a while. You really had to explore to appreciate it. If you didn't, then you were missing out on a lot of the value, and surprises of the game. This meant that you had to wander off the path following the main quest, and that's not for everybody. Fine, but the material was there.
Unfortunately (in some ways), you also had to get off the main quest to get all of the backstory, and this is what made the ending and the story satisfying. They certainly had a lot of developments to make it feel epic, but if you rushed through, maybe you missed it. The pace, especially in the beginning, was slow.
Also, there were mods that really made the game better. Some of the mods, such as Rhedd's heads, were absolutely essential. Others such as Twin Lamps quests, vampire clan expansions, combat/spell/everything else tweaks, really added to the game. It took a couple of years from the release to really grow into it's own, but it ended as a community effort that was bigger and better than you could ever get from a small group of developers.
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I think that you're missing the point. It's not a KOTOR-style or even BG style game. It's much more open-ended, and requires a different approach (and mindset) to play. I tried KOTOR right after Morrowind, and KOTOR drove me crazy with it's lack of freedom (though I plan to give it another try). KOTOR is much more restricted and heavily scripted, which can help create a strong sense of story, but also severely limits your play.
Morrowind had an enormous amount of material of all varieties, but also padded the world to try to give it a sense of vastness, and to avoid making it feel empty. Personally I felt it worked, though the NPCs could start feeling nameless and faceless after a while. You really had to explore to appreciate it. If you didn't, then you were missing out on a lot of the value, and surprises of the game. This meant that you had to wander off the path following the main quest, and that's not for everybody. Fine, but the material was there.
Unfortunately (in some ways), you also had to get off the main quest to get all of the backstory, and this is what made the ending and the story satisfying. They certainly had a lot of developments to make it feel epic, but if you rushed through, maybe you missed it. The pace, especially in the beginning, was slow.
Also, there were mods that really made the game better. Some of the mods, such as Rhedd's heads, were absolutely essential. Others such as Twin Lamps quests, vampire clan expansions, combat/spell/everything else tweaks, really added to the game. It took a couple of years from the release to really grow into it's own, but it ended as a community effort that was bigger and better than you could ever get from a small group of developers.