General:Todd Howard: The Team

This is a developer diary for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. The diary was originally posted to the old elderscrolls.com website on 27 April 2001.

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Todd Howard, Project Leader

As you can see, the new elderscrolls.com is a significant upgrade from our site over the last year. I guess you could say the same for the Morrowind team, tiny at first, now upgraded with all the bells and whistles (don't ask me who are the bells, but unfortunately Rolston has the whistle).

What began in 1996 in a small way, and again in 1999 in a small way, has become a big thing over the past 2 years. Morrowind is a project that is vast in scope, complex in execution, and requires an eclectic balance of individuals to pull it off.

An RPG is a massive undertaking for any development team. I've heard countless compatriots in other groups bemoan the fact that they take so damn long. You have to make hard decisions when you make an RPG, since in essence an RPG is not defined by a certain feature set, but by how well you can play another role. We've been making the hard decisions to carefully choose and balance the features that will lead to the next generation of RPG.

IMHO, there are two kinds of RPGs. 1) Ones where you make a character, get quests, smack monsters, get treasure, and repeat until finished; and 2) An Elder Scrolls RPG.

An Elder Scrolls RPG is a world. It's a place where you can do what you want, when you want, and how you want.

It's big. It takes a loonnggggg time. And it takes talent and passion. Say hello to the group making it happen.