bender
What time is it?
But it's clearly not because of the consoles specifically because both Morrowind and Oblivion were designed with consoles in mind. The increasing focus on more accessible games has been happening for years and it's happened regardless of platforms. Just take a look at classic WoW vs WoW now. WoW in 2004 only had quest markers and you had to figure out everything else by the quest text.
Now look at WoW now: Your map shows you every quest location and also shows you exactly where you need to go. A game that has never even touched a console.
Morrowind interface was designed for a keyboard and shoehorned onto the Xbox. Oblivion's interface and systems were streamlined for a controller and to appeal to a larger audience. And depending how you want to look at it, that's not a bad thing. Skyrim has been released dozens of times and has countless sales. Sticking with Morrowinds more complex systems and interface wouldn't have garnered Bethesda nearly the success.
It's been a long time since WoW Vanilla but I don't think the maps gave you all that information back in the day. I seem to recall a lot of trips to thotbot to figure out what mobs dropped what and where they were located on the various zones. WoW is also the perfect example of streamlining. Remember having multiple ranks of every spell and then calculating which ones were most mana efficient? I do.
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