Sleepy: There are several Morrowind mods that are near 100 MB and there's at least one that I know of that is around 1gb, and no that's not a typo. They are all free. Some of the mods have literally been worked on by teams of people for months or in some cases years and I know of at least 3 people who have modded for the Morrowind community that also work as professionals in the gaming industry. Again, all the stuff is free. No one has ever asked for a penny, not even donations.
Not
entirely true. One of the bigger 'new' MW hosting sites recently threw out the begging bowl, after dying in controversial circumstances and having everyone and their next door neighbour crying 'No! Where do we put our mods now?'
The whole episode made me rant something chronic, as I'd been asking for help just to run the site (hell, I'm out contracting 45 hours a week, spend another 15 hours doing other business activities - plus two new projects on the boil. Morrowind used to take up a good 20 hours of my time testing and reviewing mods alone) as I was about to burn out. For three months, I asked, and it took this other site (and a couple of others) to fall over (for about the third time) before anyone with the skills I asked (not uncommon skills, I might add) to offer help. Of the three who finally did, two have all but vanished.
But back to the point in hand. Some of the mods (such as The Underground by Qarl) are tremendous in their scope and sheer technical brilliance. They make many Sims mods look amateurish and simple by comparison (and I offer no apologies here, even though some of the 'hacks' - I prefer the term 'mods' personally - are great). People such as Aerelorn and Shanjaq have done things everyone said couldn't be done (changing the fundamentals of the combat system, creating writable books and journals, creating a 'multiplayer' variant). Not one of those mod authors gained a single penny from their work. Many would have spent a lot of money on software such as 3DS Max to create such work in the first place.
Like I've said before, and can't emphasise enough - EA/Maxis have set a dangerous precedent by allowing this practice to go on. It should have been stamped out before it ever began. Now the floodgates are open for any old Tom, Dick or Harry to rattle off a pay site in the mould of TSR (hmmm... case in point... isn't that a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, Inc?) and make money of unsuspecting mugs^H^H^H^Hnew users...
Regards,
Pauly
Ranting again :rant:
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