Vaarna_Aarne
Notorious Internet Vandal
I think you forgot to mention some of the more exotic options the player can devise by themselves. My chosen method of travel is an imitation of the Scroll of Icarian Flight, a short duration high-strength Jump effect spell with a long duration low-strength Slowfall effect. Covers a surprisingly large distance each hop. I should probably have named the spell "Fast Travel".I admit I haven't read the whole thread so I apologize if this was already mentioned, but one thing I really liked in Morrowind over Skyrim were the travel mechanics.
I think the addition of fast travel mechanics in TES 4 and 5 were detrimental because they made travel such a bland affair. In a system dominated by fast travel, it boils down to either clicking your way from waypoint to waypoint on the world map or putting on your "Ima gonna go explorrrrrin!" hat and trekking about on foot. One is expedient but quite boring and unrealistic, and the other is time-consuming yet also pretty boring because it entails traversing a lot of generic and mostly empty landscapes.
Travel in Morrowind was far better because you had so many tools available. Mark/Recall, Divine and Almsivi Intervention, silt striders, guild guides, boats, Propylon chambers... getting from A to B was like a mini-game unto itself. You could almost always plan a route to get within a short walk of your destination, and then you'd get to see a little bit of the countryside and perhaps even stumble across something interesting on the way. On the whole I think it made exploration and finding your way through the world a much more organic and immersive experience.
The flexibility of the magic system was one of the good parts of Morrowind (though some of the magicka math was bonkers, so you mostly ended up exploiting the fuck out of the system to get spells that were actually good).