Back then, the big mods were basically Balmora Expanded, Suran Underworld, and Giants creature additions. TR existed but it was just basically in outline form.
Now we have TR getting more than halfway done, a bunch of cities have been given "Epic" versions, Balmora has about 5 different expansion versions out, and then there are mods like OpenMW and MWRebirth that change the entire island.
Plus now the unofficial patch is massive enough to require a checklist to decide all the changes you want, instead of just doing some missed bug fixing that Bethesda missed. I also saw Morrowind Overhaul that seems to go beyond patching and change the mechanics of just about everything. Back when I was playing those mechanical changes were individual plugins for the specific change you wanted.
Frankly, I'm just overwhelmed at my choices available and worry about these massive mods being in conflict when I try to add content/quest mods.
Even just adding mods to the game is harder now. Back then you put in the patches, official plugins, wyre mash, added all your small mods, leveled your lists, and called it good. Now it seems you need about 4 or 5 basic utilities just to manage all these complex mods and deal with the changes from XP to Win7/8/10.
I really need some advice on choosing what big mods to get into, so to avoid conflict, and which utilities and utility mods I should go with.
In one respect, I'm really happy the game kept expanding. But due to the nature of the complexity of the CS, it seems that complexity has been taken as a given. Little was done to make mods fundamentally easier to use over the years. Making it easier to use mods and the utilities behind them would have brought more newcomers to the game. I cringe a bit thinking I'll have to learn how to load all those mods again and making them work in my Win7 machine. It wasn't easy then, so it won't be easy now.
No need to feel I'm asking about every mod out there. I'll muddle through the choosing and using all the smaller content/quest mods. I'm more concerned about the overhaul and massive island changing stuff. I'll probably skip installing TR, btw. I'll wait until they are done (maybe years from now).
I also realized I have my old mod downloads from 2005. Maybe 75-100 mods in all. Most of it was mainline content, but I had some obscure stuff too. I noted a couple mod sites closed years ago and it seems a lot of mods were lost as a result. I'm wondering if there is a place someone would like me to place a listing of those I have to see if any of these were some of the lost ones. I figure if I can ask for some advice the least I can do for the community is see if I have anything in my old toy box that can be returned to the game.
Thanks in advance. I know I'm asking for somewhat subjective opinions here. Different folks like to play the game differently. Just give it your best shot and I'll appreciate it.
