Any point playing this from a lore/setting perspective?

[GimmeVegetables]

I now have a clear idea of the gameplay of Arena, and while it's not terrible, it's not especially interesting to me like Morrowind and Daggerfall were. I could stick with it if there were the possibility of learning about Tamriel, but other than that, I'd rather spend my very limited time on something else, like Daggerfall for example.

In a similar thread which is just slightly too old to post in, there is the following quote:

There isn't a lot of story, but there's a ton of good 'ol lore. You'll find out a lot more about the ancient artifacts and the historic ES personas that recur in the later games.

What exactly is this lore? Is it just the short descriptions that I can quickly find on the UESP wiki? And the personas? Are they just brief, uninteresting appearances that don't provide much of interest?

[Pilaf The Defiler]

It really depends on your point of view. The lore of Arena was really under-developed. Many of the concepts from Arena and Daggerfall have been abandoned or retconned into something much less generic at this point. As far as personas, I find the people in the games from Daggerfall on up to be more interesting than the ones here.

On the other hand, there's some surprisingly colorful and useful little phrases that might help you in your own headcanon or worldbuilding for Tamriel. There are unique little phrases for all of the cities, stuff like that. "Welcome to Rihad, home of the Sacred Rage." Quirky little things like that, which could in theory have a deeper story behind them and which IMO shouldn't be completely forgotten or abandoned by the fandom or Bethesda. If you're looking for something complex or profound Arena ain't it, though.