The problem is that this project will be completed in a time when Skyrim's engine will be really dated. Skywind will be a more modern experience than Morrowind but time also moves on.
I think people would be okay with this. The problem with Morrowind, in respect to the whole series, is it's the middle ground between the earlier games dice roll gameplay and later games realtime gameplay and I think this is the current obstacle for people to like the game. If you told players that swinging their weapons and using their shields to block, in first-person, had a
chance of being successful, that's probably a hard ask of them. It's what makes going back to the older games so hard, even when the first two games have modern open-source versions and the games themselves are free. Mechnically, just on gameplay alone, Morrowind probably needs something like Skywind to capture the audience of current Elder Scrolls fans, perhaps more than Oblivion. Skyblivion, by contrast, looks to be Oblivion but with less of the overworld feeling like it was procedurally generated.
remember when people threw a complete shitfit over the idea of [optionally] paid mods
probably would have led to more things like this, from people normally unable to devote the time to it
One of the guys leading Skyblivion has implied it's better for projects like this to not be paid for, as team members come and go so frequently, the questions of who gets paid for what become a confusing issue, and get in the way of production. What Bethesda is doing with the Creation Club, getting smaller sized projects and backing them, is probably the best of all worlds because it assures smaller mods get a higher level of polish.
The one positive is it would probably mean team members stay around longer, but then it moves from a passion project to the drudgery of a job. But then consider the cost that every asset is new, over 2,500 NPCs are being voiced for the first time, all of the armors from the original game have to be remade and made to be modular, and this is still just the base game: unless I am mistaken, they haven't even started any serious production on any of the expansions. Not only is this a timesink, but can easily add up to being costly, especially considering the people involved don't live and work in the same area.
