Don't let the little 1 MB size of the earliest installments of this series fool ya. These games are huge! Lot's to do, lot's to explore. It is at times a tad to overwhelming. In fallout 3 and Oblivion, the game was very helpful in showing you where to go and what to do. This game gives you a couple of clubs a dagger and some gold and says, "Good Luck!"

yeah, that's true "oldschool gaming", when gamers where adventurous enough not to feel they needed to be taken by the hand by the developers... Oh i miss that time ! ^_^

You're absolutely right. I'm playing Might and Magic 1, and the game is HUGE. It's an amazing game, I'm in love with it.
I've just visited the cave of the wizard Ranalou. There is a magic trap in the second corridor that gives you the illusion that you are going further when you are, in fact, standing in the same spot! I used a spell to check for the coordinates and noticed it. I tried to walk backwards, and could see that the turn I came across at the beginning of the corridor was still there, three steps aways, even though I had "walkked" about twenty steps! :)
I used the jump spell to jump over the magic trap and kept walking, and I came to an exit... that took me to the same spot I began! There is another magic trap that takes you to the first corridor, facing south, making you head straight for the exit! This is, indeed, the cave of a wizard that don't like any visitors. That's the kind of thing you will find in this game.