Old Box Version of Morrowind Steam Activation?

[Aelien]

ManyYears ago i bought the Ubisoft Exclusive Morrowind Game of the Year Edition compelete with Bloodmoon and Tribunal. I still own the the DVD but i want to have it in my Steam library for convenience reasons and to profit from the workshop modding possibilities.
There is no key in the Box and i actually think i bought it back before Steam existed. Is there the possibility that i can somehow activate the game in steam and recieve my copie or do i have to buy it again on Steam?

[BarbarianHeart]

Morrowind has no steam workshop and no steam achievements so there is no reason to have the steam version except that if you have it on steam you won't have to insert the disk everytime you want to play.

Morrowind can still be modded even if it is a non-steam copy. My favorite site is Morrowind Nexus, but there are other sites, and all of the best ones are free to use and safe.

[Nadlug]

If you feel like wasting your time you coud ask for a steam copy and provide proof of ownership of the hard copy though i highly doubt that you will get it.
Otherwise just buy it again it's only 20 bucks. I've bought the game twice, once on the xbox and then on steam and its well worth the combined full retail prices i paid at the time.

[Emperor Zombie]

I bought the Original 2002 and the Game of the Year Edition and then a copy on Steam after ironically joining Steam to play Skyrim. This game is easly worth $20 but I got it on sale for $7 so you could always wait for a sale too.

My Original 2002 copy has an advertisement for "Sea Dogs II" an amazing game too but renamed "Pirates of the Caribbean." My copy of "Pirates of the Caribbean" is for the Original Xbox... this is off topic but any ideas of were to get a copy for the PC.

[Emma]

I had an incredibly difficult time getting the 1.6 patch to work on my retail copy of Morrowind. It just didn't want to install and I had to do a few tricks to get it to work every time. It was annoying whenever I needed a clean install. The Steam version eliminated that problem and also removed the need to insert a disk to play, which was very annoying because my disk drive is incredibly loud. It probably is worth just buying the Steam version. Much less of a headache than the retail version.

[Nadlug]

Originally posted by Frozen Nord:

I had an incredibly difficult time getting the 1.6 patch to work on my retail copy of Morrowind. It just didn't want to install and I had to do a few tricks to get it to work every time. It was annoying whenever I needed a clean install. The Steam version eliminated that problem and also removed the need to insert a disk to play, which was very annoying because my disk drive is incredibly loud. It probably is worth just buying the Steam version. Much less of a headache than the retail version.

Yet some people who have tons of steam games still complain that its riddled with steams DRM and ignore the fact that its only there to protect your account and the games youve purchased on it.

[EgoMaster]

Originally posted by Nadlug:

Yet some people who have tons of steam games still complain that its riddled with steams DRM and ignore the fact that its only there to protect your account and the games youve purchased on it.

DRM means "Digital Rights Management". The "rights" in questions are NOT yours. They're the publisher's rights. And the more rights they have, the less you have. What protects your account and games doesn't have the word "rights" in it (for a reason). It's called Steam Guard.

As for the answer to the original question, you can't activate disc version of Morrowind in Steam unless you bought it with TES Anthology.

[Aelien]

Thanks for the answers. Yeah i think just for the easy patching and convenience reasons (i dont even have a disc drive connected atm) it is already worth to buy it on steam. Workshop support would be awesome though, i love that simple way of modding.

[EgoMaster]

Originally posted by Ev0clipse:

Workshop support would be awesome though, i love that simple way of modding.

Unfortunately, it's not suited for TES and Fallout games (Reasons). So lack of workshop is actually a good thing.

[[SNP]Rancor]

Originally posted by EgoMaster:

Unfortunately, it's not suited for TES and Fallout games (Reasons). So lack of workshop is actually a good thing.

The reasons given in that thread are pretty much all invalid, apart for one which if true would be the reason why there can not be workshop - Lack of code to edit Construction set.

Other reasons, could ALL be applied to Skyrim, and I didn't see people having any problem with it. Steamworkshop downloaded mods are no different than manualy downloaded ones, they work exactly the same no matter how you put them in your gamedata folder.

[EgoMaster]

Originally posted by SNPRancor:

Other reasons, could ALL be applied to Skyrim, and I didn't see people having any problem with it.

Undeniable truth is invalid because of a subjective point of view? How persuasive.

Originally posted by SNPRancor:

Steamworkshop downloaded mods are no different than manualy downloaded ones, they work exactly the same no matter how you put them in your gamedata folder.

You're contradicting yourself. Same mods, same method of installation means same requirements (like mod ordering, merging, ini edits etc). If you download and manually install all the mods from Nexus but neglect these, you'll have problems. If it's valid for Nexus, why is it invalid for Workshop? Workshop is convenient and great for "install and forget" type of modding but too crude for Bethesda games.

[Erg]

I agree with EgoMaster. The Steam Workshop is not suitable for games like Morrowind and It would only cause problems.

Among other things, the Workshop can't

1) sort load order (with the Steam version you can't even install a simple texture replacement mod without having to redate the bsa files)
2) merge levelled lists
3) clean mods from dirty references
4) detect and handle conflicts between mods
5) detect missing resources in badly packaged mods, e.g. missing icons, meshes, textures, sounds, etc.

And on top of that, even if you manage to get away with the above without experiencing problems (unlikely, but still possible I guess, depending on which mods are installed) as soon as one of the installed mods is updated by the author, the automatic update feature would inevitably mess your modded game.

Also for Skyrim the Workshop is less than ideal, as you can read in a very insightful post by a Skyrim modder at the following link: http://deadlystream.com/forum/topic/3421-why-its-not-okay-to-upload-someone-elses-mods/page-8#entry35944

Of the post linked above, I especially like this part:

Uhuru N'Uru says: "Skyrim Nexus, the real Hub of modding (Skyrim) is where all the new modders ended up when they realise how useless the workshop is, a two-edged sword as only new users, the idiots and those banned from Nexus now use Steam."