StingingVelvet: I simply use MGE to make it widescreen and expand the view distance. I never use anything else, and I've put 400 hours into Morrowind. The idea of needing to mod it or fan patch it is mostly fallacy.

Do what makes you happy.

Elmofongo: Only MGE than, does the Morrowind game have to be a fresh install with no saves already for that mod to work, I want what you wanted in Morrowind but I am gonna miss the better graphics (The Water is beautiful) animations, and sound.

Psyringe: Right ... ;)

Psyringe: Explanation: One modder released a mod that was called LGNPC and that gave every NPC in Seyda Neen unique dialog. It was a great idea, but the implementation was quite crude. I still remember how Eldafire (a high elven woman) was given some completely inappropriate dialogue about priests abusing her as a child. Apart from not fitting into the game world at all, this is definitely nothing that one would tell a complete stranger in the first conversation ... and if an author touches on such a sensitive topic, he really needs to elaborate more and not use it in such a careless manner.

In any case, the mod was crude, but the idea got traction. Many modders got together and wrote individual dialog for all NPCs in certain areas, which was based on the world's lore and written under the premise to read similar to things that Bethesda might have written if they had had more time during development. And they really succeeded with that. The author of the original LGNPC mod was never involved in that project, and his mod got redacted after a while and now fits much much better.

Morrowind Comes Alive introduces lots of NPCs with no dialog at all. The companions are pretty good though. But the main problem of this mod is that from version 5 onwards, it adds enemies even to areas which are usually safe (like the center of Seyda Neen), and these are pretty strong. For someone who just starts out with Morrowind and isn't already used to the chance-based combat, this creates an awkward experience: You enter the world, walk a few steps, and get inevitably killed by a seemingly overpowered enemy, in the middle of a town, while the guards twiddle their thumbs, and your own attacks never hit although it looks like they would. Are you sure that you want to recommend this to first-time players? ;) Which version of MCA did you play?

Psyringe: Make sure to apply the Unofficial Code Patch by Hrnchamd. We worked several weeks doing practically nothing else but studying the ways in which Morrowind corrupted savegames when mods where switched. Hrnchamd had a brilliant idea on how to fix it, and I managed to create several mods that worked as testbeds, and with which we could test, analyze, and debug the new code in all the various ways how Morrowind treats its objects and references. (Making a mistake there would have meant that we were responsible for people's broken savegames, so we spent a LOT of time with tests.) Of course we were also building on previous analyses by wizards like Wrye, and without the knowledge already accumulated by the community we probably wouldn't ever have made it. But in the end, we had a patch that really solved the save corruption. With the code patch installed, you can safely remove even large and complicated mods, and add mods at any part of the load order.

HGiles: * Installing 3 different mods that impacted the same area
* I'd hit the limit of mods allowed and combined a bunch of them with self-made patches
* installed Wizards Island and then gotten rid of it
* swapped models and textures around a bunch too
* I think the final straw was me accidentally installing 2 versions of the same mod

Psyringe: Well ... recommending to play Morrowind without at least unofficial patches (code patch and UOP) means sending people into broken quests and potential savegame corruption for no apparent gain that I can see.

Also, while I understand the notion of "playing vanilla first" (and usually do this as well for other games), Morrowind is really a special case. It had an extremely active modding community for years, with literally thousands of people involved, creating more than 15,000 mods last time I checked. While many of the mods _do_ change the gameplay in ways that I wouldn't recommend for a first playthrough, or are just plain bad, there are lots of high-quality mods which substantially enhance the game while still meshing extremely well with it.

As an example: Imagine you're entering a world that is as vast as Morrowind, which you can play for hundreds of hours while still discovering new content. You have the option to either play with very generic NPCs that all say the same depending on their affiliation, or with lovingly handcrafted individual NPCs which all have their own dialog, which perfectly fits into the world and its lore. Would you really recommend to choose the first option just for the sake of "vanilla first"?

(Edit: I see that the LGNPC mod, which I'm talking about in the above paragraph, has just been mentioned. ;) )