First time Morrowind player here. Which is the better way to play Morrowind today? Morroblivion or OpenMW? Or neither (just modding base game)? They both seem to be complete from what I've read. I want the best UI experience, and the friendliest combat (generally don't enjoy combat in RPGs). "Beautiful graphics" are less important. My PC can run Fallout New Vegas comfortably, but struggles with more recent games.

I'd stick to native Morrowind. OpenMW is not quite feature-complete and can't run mods which modify the game engine (like the Code Patch, MGE and others), while Morroblivion is based on the Oblivion engine, which (to my knowledge) affects gameplay, too. Mod compatibility is not guaranteed (especially mods changing the gameplay may not work with Morroblivion).
I myself have tried OpenMW, but not for a very long time, as I didn't see any real benefits over the original game, and I have never used Morroblivion - not least because I prefer the game mechanics of Morrowind over those of Oblivion.
A matter of personal tastes.

I am probably the worst person to answer this question. However, I did not enjoy Morrowind vanilla very much at my 3-4 tries in the last 20 years. I am using Linux and took a look at OpenMW and having a blast. So much fun, so much potential. All of the advised mods are working flawlessly making the game so much fun to play.

OpenMW introduces some very nice quality of life changes (all optional) like show candle time remaining, show spell effect durations, prevent merchant equiping (very annoying when you see a lady wearing only a full helmet you just sold her), toggle sneak, better screen resolutions, NPC render distance etc. Current version 0.45 just came 2 days ago.

If you're starting, the "purist version" in this post is excellent advice. These are the only modifications I've installed in my game and I'm enjoying it a lot (I have 90 + hours played and still can't get enough ...).

OpenMW adds a lot of quality-of-life features. However, it doesn't support MWSE mods, which also sport some very nice features as of the newest version. OpenMW also doesn't have as performance-friendly distant land as MGEXE (improved in 0.45 by limiting actor distance).

OpenMW loads faster, and exploring dozens of outdoor cells in quick succession doesn't lead to a crash due to memory usage. It's very stable. There is less stuttering. Not all mods are compatible.

Morroblivion, in my experience, crashed more often than OpenMW or Morrowind + Code Patch.

My favored install is still base Morrowind + Code Patch + Patch for Purists (includes a Dark Brotherhood delayer and Rumor Fix). It's much more stable (due to Code Patch) than basic Morrowind, and supports every mod out there.

But for someone who wants a truly vanilla experience, OpenMW is probably the easiest, and smoothest, way to go.

As for mods, I do *not* recommend Rebirth if it's a first playthrough. For the UI, there are many mods on the Nexus, including more modern looks, quick-looting with the Fallout-style popup, and Oblivion-style Ownership Indicator (most of these require MWSE, and therefore base Morrowind - OpenMW has Ownership Indicator included). Since you mentioned disliking combat, you may wish to pick up a mod such as Combat Experience Depth Perception, which makes you miss less (and deal more damage as you become more skilled).

If your PC can handle New Vegas, it can probably handle "Morrowind Enhanced Textures" as a base (vanilla look), with 7-12 cells of draw distance in MGEXE/turn ingame distance to 0 (or mid-to-max in default OpenMW with reduced actor distance). Any textures can be run through Ordenator to make sure they do not exceed 1k (or even 512), for performance. Running textures through Ordenator can open up a lot of options, even on an older PC.

Hi. What did you mean by that? Version 0.44 worked very smooth on my 12 year old laptop and version 0.45 introduced a slider to control the distance. With that, FPS is around 70-80. I am just trying to understand what you mean since I can be considered a baby when it comes to modding, especially Elder scroll games.

Thanks for posting, I didn't realize that this new version had become available. Does the View Distance slider increase the view distance further in 0.45? Last time I played, the view was not much further than vanilla Morrowind without making tweaks in the .cfg, whereas MGEXE could generate the entire landmass to view at once (if that was desired, though I usually limit it to keep that foggy feeling). I see there is some commentary on actors falling through terrain less, as well as an actor range setting for fps, so I'll edit relevant parts of the post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5vMfYmqOMo

First 2 minutes explain what the slider does. Maybe I understood it wrong?

Also, here you can see which mods work with OpenMW.

The list doesn't mention the Morrowind Code Patch and the Unofficial Morrowind Patch. Is this because their contents are covered by OpenMW? Or because they are considered to be insignificant?
In addition, the list doesn't mention any total conversions like Sword of The Perithia, Arktwend, Myar Arannath, Sea of Destiny, etc. All 4 provide a lot of additional content beyond Morrowind, Tribunal and Bloodmoon. Has anybody tested the compatibility of Open MW with these mods?

Morrowind Code Patch and MGE XE are engine tweaks and OpenMW has it's own engine so not compatible. Many (but not all) of their functions are native in OpenMW.

I do not know sorry. As I said earlier, I have very little experience with either Morrowind and modding.

I just tried to run Arktwend (the first total conversion of the Nehrim and Enderal guys) under OpenMW, and it does seem to work (at least I could launch the game and take the first few steps). With that said, I still don't see any visual differences between OpenMW Morrowind and native Morrowind (both run at 1680x1050). Perhaps I'll notice a few differences "under the hood" later.
As an aside: The Morrowind copy I'm using for Arktwend has the Unofficial Morrowind Patch (version 1.6.6) activated. I can't confirm that the patch works, but it's likely, as OpenMW runs fine with this esm.

Update: OpenMW is not compatible with Arktwend (at least not for my configuration): There is some occasional screen flickering, and, worse, when you enter the pub after leaving the monastery, your character, together with about half of the pub guests, flies suddenly upwards, through the ceiling to the next floor, but you see through the ceiling and watch the other people in the pub (the game doesn't hang) - and you can't get back down to the ground floor. Looks funny, but is a showstopper.

seconding Lysanafae's base of these 3. i also like OpenMW, i keep a separate installation to use with OpenMW and multiplayer. for first time players, you could go with either but i don't recommend overhauls or replacing almost everything in the game.

1. MGE XE (Graphics & Engine extender): https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/41102/?

2. MCP (Morrowind Code Patch): https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/19510/?

3. Patch for Purists: https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/45096
(already includes Tribunal Delayed, Solstheim Rumor Fix - Fixed)

Run Morrowind first after installation to generate an ini file.
Configuring MCP: https://youtu.be/c_cVBGYQVcE?t=179
Configuring MGE XE: https://youtu.be/c_cVBGYQVcE?t=285
Install Patch for Purists (you can use Mod Organizer 2 for this or install manually).
Install any other optional mods that you want.
Run mlox to sort load order.

Optional stuff from here:
Better Dialogue Font: https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/36873

Official Add-Ons (cleaned):
http://mw.modhistory.com/download-13-6169
http://download.fliggerty.com/download--1079 (mirror)

Mod Manager:
Mod Organizer 2: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/6194 (to handle downloading mods from Nexus)

Tools:
Wrye Mash - Polemos fork - 2019: https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/45439 (utility for managing/repairing mods and savegames)

mlox: https://github.com/mlox/mlox (for updating mod load order)

Graphical replacements:
https://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/Morrowind_graphics_guide

Very in depth guide or just to find some good mods:
https://github.com/Tyler799/Morrowind-2019/blob/master/Morrowind_2019.md

I'm running Morrowind with the Tamriel Rebuilt mod. So far seems to work installed it alongside the OpenMW engine replacement.
Game starts up. But I am trying to record my game time played with openmw in the GOG Galaxy.

I know I did something similar with the .info files in the original game folder installation. I have successfully diverted the original Fallout 3 GOTY on gog to record game time in the client because I was running FOSE (Fallout 3 script extender).
Is there a hack. a command line argument, renaming of something or just a copy paste thing I could do ? To make GOG Galaxy recognize openmw as the original Morrowind and record the gametime. Basically I need to start OpenMW through GOG Galaxy to achieve this, but so far changing things in that info file like I did with fallout 3 only tricks the client into believing that the morrowind folder is damaged or straight up uninstalled...


EDIT: I got it working.

How did you get it working?