Greetings, creators and contributors of Tamriel Rebuilt!
I am here for a single putpose, which I'll get to shortly. But first, some backstory...
Recently I re-installed Morrowind after so many years and indulged in some sweet sweet nostalgia. I remembered about the richest, most immersive lore I've ever seen in any game, book, movie or anxty poem. I watched the entire Season 1 and Season 2 of The Elder Scrolls Lore Series from ShoddyCast and read up on some major lore on uesp.net. I proceeded to create the most perfect character possible, with careful choice of every aspect of it, power-leveling, no journal entries, no leveled chest access. I even took time to write a description to my custom Perfectionist class worded in a TES-y way. Now, when my character (level 78, all attributes at 100, including luck, all skills except three at 100) is almost perfect, I stood on the top of the world with a daedric katana, a daedric shield and a full set of supremely overpowered custom-enchanted exquisite clothing with not a single journal entry since day one, I thought to myself: How, for the love of Azura, am I going to get my conjuration, security and speechcraft to 100? You see, the problem is that the master trainers of all three of those skills are faction-only trainers and I have vowed to not get a single journal entry until my character is 100% perfect. The only way to do this without cheating or grinding (perfection demands elegant solutions, not mindless grinding) is to learn any Fortify Skill spell, make a custom Fortify Conjuration, Fortify Security and Fortify Speechcraft spells, cast them on the second-best trainer of the respective skills and train that way. The only people that teach Fortify Skill spells are in Mournhold and Solstheim and as it turns out, getting to them (or getting them to talk to me at all) requires questing, which is forbidden. So, when I was about to give up and get my journal dirty, I thought to myself: wasn't there a huge and ambitious mod that attempted to recreate the entire province and already added large portions of mainland to the game? If so, I may be able to just walk to Mournhold ("one does not simply walk into Mournhold"), since I can't teleport there without questing. Technically, I'd be jumping across the sky with my homemade Shoes Of Skyward Leaping with jump 100 points for 2 seconds on use, so it would't take much time at all, since its' way faster a travel method than full levitation or the highly overrated Boots Of Blinding Speed. So, I dug a bit on uesp.net to see if it's currently possible with this mod and what I found was something much more ("if you're seeking trouble, you'll find more than you bargained for").
... fast forward to now.
What I found by reading up about the project and its goals filled my heart with warmth the likes of which I haven't felt in a while! This is not just a mod, this is the fruit of labor of love form people with passion for the rich lore of The Elder Scrolls. You guys have put in so much time and effort to undertake such a huge project and give it away for the good of humanity! I have developed the utmost respect and admiration for you! You make me feel deeply happy for knowing that there are people on this planet that genuinely want to bring joy to the rest of humanity. I want to hug you guys!
I wish you guys to start accepting donations, get smacked with a huge stream of donators, accumulate a large budget and just work on this full-time.
Warmest regards,
Technogen.
2015-08-10 20:50
4 days 52 min ago
Thanks for the kind words! As far as donations are concerned, we've certainly considered it before, and have taken donations on at least one occasion. However, on that occasion there was a clear goal for the donations; they were to cover the operating costs of the website. The general consensus is, beyond those short-term and clear-cut situations, involving money in TR will just create a lot of unwanted complications.
That said, continued interest and enthusiasm for TR is always nice to see, and for our part we're going to keep on pushing out new content, if sometimes rather gradually.
2017-12-05 23:25
6 years 11 months ago
I hope, in time, the potential complications of incoming money will be taken care of and donations can be used to hire full-time professionals to work on the project to speed it up. This is too huge of a project to just casually work on an hour a day by volunteers in any reasonable time. You guys need some serious help and some serious reward. I'd give you my overpowered custom-enchanted daedric katana, but, I'm afraid, it's worthless in real world
. So, before I can contribute with my hands, I'd like to be able to contribute with my wallet. 
On another note,
I'm a software engineer with almost a decade of experiece and I'd love to contribute in any way. I've found posts here on the forums from at least one guy that is a junior engineer that also offered to contribute, but he was told that purely scripting tasks are very few and far between here. I'm a pretty creative person and I think, given the right direction for learning, I could get into writing and modeling and texturing. I'm a quick learner and I wanted to get into visual design or writing anyway, to help me deliver well-rounded software solutons beyond just coding anyway. Can you advise me about any specific types of craft I could learn to be able contribute in a significant way? What is the most in-demand type of work for the project?
2016-01-19 19:35
4 weeks 3 hours ago
Paying our modders would open up a full can of worms. Namely, what do we do about all the modders who have already worked on the project? The name of fairness would be tracking down every single one of them and giving out the, er, pennies that would probably be left over from splitting all those donations.
Other issues are finding a trustworthy person to parcel out the money (I believe one time we tried with website donations in the past, the guy took it and ran), but also that this is where a lot of gaming and modding enthusiasts come to cut their teeth. I'd rather help new modders learn than ropes and put something awesome on their resume, than pay people who are just going to see it as income, rather than a hobby and labor of love. In a backwards kind of way, being paid to do the work cheapens it. There's also the logistic issue of Tamriel_Data--if we pay people who have contributed to that package of assets, does using that download suddenly become something everyone has to pay for? Where does that in turn leave modders who want to put a little pizzazz into their mod without needing the modeling skills or money to go with it?
The thought is nice, but the implementation of it is unfortunately an ethical nightmare.
Anyway! That debate aside, yes, there are a lot of things you could do! For modeling and texturing, we have a number of projects that need some help. Head on over to the asset browser and see if anything catches your eye.
As for writing, we are currently suffering from a lack of quest implementors in particular, or the people that take quest ideas (whether from the claims section or their own creations) and put them into the game. To start working on the quest claims, we would need you to do a showcase, which is basically make a quest in the Construction Set that can be played through. You can find a couple tutorials here: http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/content/tutorial-questing-and-dialogue-tutorials
Youc an also take a gander at this page and its links, which go into more depth on what skills and contributions we could use: http://tamriel-rebuilt.org/content/join
Hope to see you around more! My griping about paid modders notwithstanding, it's always good to have some new faces. :)
2017-12-05 23:25
6 years 11 months ago
Yeah, I understand the problem with paying the modders. I guess for that to work, Tamriel Rebuilt would need to become a non-profit organization with a registered legal entity and a CEO, which is an entire ordeal.
I'll check out all the tutorials and guides I can find (aside from the ones you linked to) on the topic of modding Morrowind, then I'll try implementing something relevant to demonstrate. I'll get back to you once I have something worth the light of day.
I'm going to focus on writing (quests, books, notes, ...) and scripting, since I have no experience in modeling or texturing. I don't even know what tools to use for the latter two. Any help in getting me started on those would be greatly appreciated!