Bethesda Softworks has never been a company that could be accused of thinking small. Their flagship property, The Elder Scrolls series of RPGs, have always been known for their vastness and wide-open feeling. Long before anyone ever came up with the idea for an MMO, Bethesda was hard at work creating enormous artificial worlds inside the PC in which one could get lost. Their last game, however, Morrowind (along with its two expansion packs, Tribunal and Bloodmoon), went far beyond what even the company's most die-hard fans could have expected.

Morrowind was literally a world in which you could do anything you set your mind to. Want to go on the main quest of the story? Go ahead. Want to forget the quest and just become the wealthiest merchant in the land? The game could handle it. Perhaps you'd like to join a tribe of werewolves and bring pain and death down on the human inhabitants of Tamriel. The game could handle that too. Morrowind offered the huge worlds of exploration and adventure that make MMOs so compelling, but the experience was personalized for the player, something impossible in an MMO.