Only unofficial fixes and that is it, experience it vanilla before you change anything significant.

I'm eagerly awaiting Open Morrowind.

i played throught this game thrice. once vanilla, once with tribunal and once with blood moon but i can't remember any crashes even though i really explored most of the map and didn't use any guides. Oh this game btw. doesn't need any mods at all to be outstanding but if you don't like the graphics, you may use the overhaul.

My advice, if it starts without problems, dont change anything, just play.

I'd say my only complaint with the MCP is that it presents a mind-boggling array of options. ;) It could be just me, but I'm pretty sure it even allowed Morrowind to use my entire screen instead of the usual inverted letterbox. As to whether or not the game needs mods to be enjoyable- allow me to ramble a little.

Some years ago I realized I'd never finish the main quest if I was always getting sidetracked by mods. So I had the brilliant idea (not!) of buying a used Xbox and a copy of Morrowind for same. Guess what? That Xbox eventually broke down, with the main quest still uncompleted. And no, to the best of my knowledge, the game's not compatible with the 360. Such a shame.

The bottom line is, you can play it with or without mods- after all, this is a single-player game that can be customised to suit one's tastes. But in some respects it's actually better when modded, such as the (in my opinion) essential revamp of the beastfolk skeletons and textures by LizTail. Not every Khajiit or Argonian is a slave- so why should they all have the poor condition to match? ;)

What does that mod do?

Please read the post I wrote September 15, 2015 (a couple of posts further up in this thread).

The one about Masterindex

It's interesting that nobody has mentioned MGE XE in this thread. As a patch mod for Morrowind, I now regard it as an essential install.
Morrowind was designed and hardcoded for the older 4:3 ratio screen resolutions that were the norm back in 2002. MGE XE makes it possible to play Morrowind on modern widescreen monitors without stretching and distorting the graphics, as well as increasing the available resolutions choices.

For the issue of dirty references, you can either find online already cleaned versions of the expansions and official DLC, or install The Elder Scrolls Advanced Mod Editor (shortened to TESAME) to clean them yourself. Becoming familiar with cleaning mods in TESAME is worth doing, as not all mod devs have cleaned their mods before uploading to the various mod hosts that have existed over the years, so even after you have a cleaned install of Morrwind, installing some of those mods could re-install the dirty references.

And lastly, there's the choice of either going with the major unofficial patch projects, the Morrowind Code Patch (MCP), or the Morrowind Patch Project (MPP).
The MCP was started in order to fix game engine level issues which could not be fixed by the MPP or its predecessor the UnOfficial Morrowind Patch (UOMP).
The MPP fixes things by installing like a mod, and needing to be activated.

I wouldn't say Morrowind actually needs anything extra to be enjoyed like Skyrim. But I guess some graphics mods and other mods won't make it worse either.