Right, this was created by (I think) Swiftoak for the interview with zhakaron.

Quoted in total. It needs some reworking before it can be put in the handbook (it's so cheery it makes me seriously uncomfortable), and preferably some feedback from people who were around at the time.

Vision and Goals

Tamriel Rebuilt is a fan-based project which modifies The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. The goal of the project is to expand the original game in a manner consistent with the intention, style and vision of the original game designers, Bethesda Softworks.

The Elder Scrolls III was initially meant to be set in the fictional land of Morrowind, but only a portion of the province was depicted in the actual game - the central island of Vvardenfell. Tamriel Rebuilt is producing additional content to create a gameplay experience which includes the entire province (chiefly by adding and integrating the province’s mainland areas to the game).

We seek to produce a unified gameworld, without the artificial separation of vanilla content and our own. It aims to provide a seamless player experience, in the same vein the original game did. In essence, Tamriel Rebuilt is not to be seen as a separate addition or expansion of the original game, but a reimagination of it, had it included the entire landmass. This will require some measured changes to existing game content, both in terms of narrative, and implementation.
Project History – A Not-So-Brief and Not-So-Unbiased History of Tamriel Rebuilt
The Beginnings (2001-2003)

Summer 2001 – The Rebuild Tamriel Project is founded on the official Bethesda Message board, a full year before Morrowind’s initial release, when it was announced that a.) TESIII would not include all of Morrowind, but a condensed version of it, adapted to the smaller central island of Vvardenfell, and b.) that the game would be hand-crafted and ship with the TES Construction Set developer tools. The motivation behind the project was to not only handcraft the missing portion of the Morrowind landmass, but all of Tamriel in the TES3 engine. Never before has such a venture been attempted in the history of The Elder Scrolls.

2001-2003 – The Rebuild Tamriel Project finds its’ first home on m0use.net. Selected snapshots of the early boards can still be found on the Web Archive. In 2002, Morrowind is finally released. During this time, the project was largely a free-for-all, with modders contributing all sorts of things to the project, with very little central organization, or established standards. The TES community was still in its’ infancy, and people were still largely inexperienced with using the new developer tools. The project was largely a decentralized cluster of sub-projects all with their own visions and goals. TR jumps between several hosting providers during this time.
Early Morrowind Era (2003-2005)

2003 – The Rebuild Tamriel community “splits” into two groups due to creative disagreements between two of the larger projects at the time. At this point, the majority of people were concentrating their efforts on finishing Mainland Morrowind two seperate groups were working on different parts of it. The first group that would go on to become Silgrad Tower was working on the Western areas, prefering individual freedom and creativity. The second group, that would go on to become Tamriel Rebuilt, decided upon an approach that would be more lore-friendly, focusing their efforts on the Eastern areas. Initial attempts at reconciling the two halves faltered, resulting in the Silgrad Tower team forming their own project, while the Rebuild Tamriel team would eventually restructure into what is now Tamriel Rebuilt. At this time, TR finally moves to it’s own domain and forum as an independent project.

2003-2005 – TR continues work on Morrowind, focusing its’ efforts on finishing up the Northeastern Telvanni lands for an initial public release. The Morrowind workflow was to make six releases based on the numbered map system, Maps 1 & 2 being the Telvanni areas, 3 & 4 being Central Morrowind (shared by Hlaalu, Redoran, and Indoril), 5 which would be Northwestern Morrowind, and 6 which would include Southern Morrowind, the remainder of Hlaalu and Dres territory.

At this time, Oblivion was announced, and TR eventually made the decision to abandon the lofty goal of remaking Tamriel in the TES3 engine, shifting its’ strategy to “one province per game”. It was decided that our first foray into the new Elder Scrolls game would be the uncharted Hammerfell province.
The Hammerfell Era, Telvannis & Antideluvian Secrets for Morrowind (2006-2009)

2006 – Oblivion is released and work begins immediately on creating Stirk, an island west of Cyrodiil, as a demonstration of our abilities to use TES4’s developer tools, while conceptual planning would begin on the Hammerfell project. This was a relatively new way of doing things, as there was alot of lore to write, and art to make, before implementation.

On the Morrowind front, work began on giving the Telvanni areas a makeover, in preparation of an initial, quested release of Map 1: Telvannis. Exterior work continued in Maps 2, 3, and 4, while Interiors were being done for 3 and 4. Around this time, the first exterior iteration of the City of Almalexia was finished.

At this time, the project made its’ first major organizational change. For the first time in its’ history, prospective members had to undergo a Showcase process, to demonstrate their talents. This was rather controversial, though at the time, the TES community was rather chaotic, and it was meant to ensure consistent quality, and prevent the issues regarding haphazard implementation of the older work.

2007 – The first public release of Tamriel Rebuilt is made to much fanfare, when Telvannis (Map 1) reached beta. While by today’s standards, the work would be seen as rather lackluster, it was then a huge morale boost for a project that has been struggling to make waves since its’ inception. The Morrowind team decided to move onto polishing Map 2, which would go by the name Antidiluvian Secrets, for its’ first quested release.

On the Oblivion front, Stirk was released, and work began on Hammerfell in earnest, beginning with the Cities of Rihad and Taneth on the eastern grasslands, while conceptualization continued for other areas of the province. In keeping with the theme of Oblivion, plans were also made to include a small sampling of Quagmire, the realm of the Daedra Vaermina.

2008 – The Morrowind team celebrates its’ second major release, Antideluvian Secrets, which rounds out House Telvanni’s territories in the northeast. However, the project decided to scale back the original scope of Map 2, splitting off the southern portion as Map 2B, due to the uncertain status of the current implementation of the city of Necrom. During this time, the  Morrowind community had begun to die down from the chaos of the period of its initial release, and as such, progress began to slow. It would be abother four years, before Tamriel Rebuilt made another major release for Morrowind.

During this time, the Oblivion front also begins to show signs of struggle. While the project’s artistic and conceptual vision is solid, frustrations begin to emerge with the technicalities regarding implementation in TES4’s engine. Initial alphas of Rihad and Taneth are completed, albeit without interiors or NPCs. The project also struggled from the lack of modelers willing and able to make the large amount of assets to realize our vision for Hammerfell.
From Tamriel to Sacred  East, A Change of Scope & Standards (2009-2013)

2009 – Tamriel Rebuilt makes several major decisions regarding its’ scope.

On the Morrowind side, it is eventually decided to get rid of the Numbered release system in favour of making smaller releases available in a shorter time frame. The Map 1-6 system would from this point on, be retained for the sole purpose of organizing claims until a new claims system was made. Maps 1 & 2 would remain the same, as they had already been released. Map 2B and the northeastern portion of Indoril Map 3 would be reconsituted as Sacred East, which would include a redone Necrom, and detailed exteriors. The remaining portions of Map 3 would be split off into the Almalexia release, and the eastern part (containing the Thirr and Old Ebonheart) of  the Heartland relase. The eastern half of Map 4 including the city of Andothren (Stonefalls), would round out the Heartland release, while the remainder of Map 4 combined with Map 5 would be the Veloth release. Map 6 would be split along faction lines between the Narsis (Hlaalu) and Deshaan (Dres) releases. Despite this reorganization of releases, it wowuld still take another 3 years before Sacred East would finally be finished, due to the ongoing remodeling of Necrom to be more tasteful to the Dunmer aesthetic.

With regards to TR’s now-failing Oblivion effort, it was decided to end Tamriel Rebuilt’s involvement Hammerfell project, forking whatever remained off to become its’ own project (an alpha was eventually released of the Eastern Grasslands, though the project’s future remains uncertain) While the implenetation of Hammerfell in game largely faltered due to technical and developmental constraints, the project was not for naught. An immemnse amount of art and lore was created for a province that (asides from what was known from TESA: Redguard) was mostly blank cloth. It marked a remarkable achievement in TR”s artistic and narrative vision, and was a substantial success in its’ own right. To this day, the Hammerfell Artbook remains one of our proudest and most celebrated achievements within Tamriel Rebuilt. The process that led to it would one day serve as the basis of all future creative development in the Morrowind project, though it would not be another few years before this was implemented.

The shuttering of our Oblivion venture put an end to our efforts outside the boundaries of Morrowind province. At this point, it was fianlly decided that Morrowind in TES3 would be our first and only venture. It would allow the remaining team members to focus all our efforts on developing quality content for the province of Morrowind, and ensure future releases would not only match, but exceed the quality of past releases.

2010-2011 – During this time period, focus slowly begins to return to the Morrowind project. The redo of Necrom is well underway, as well as large portions of the exteriors of the Thirr River Valley, Heartland, and Veloth areas, areas that were up to now, only covered by the Silgrad Tower project. Work also begins on the second iteration of Almalexia, focused on mproving the visuals of the existing city (thoug in time it would be evident that this would not satisfactorily address the underyling narrative and characterization concerns regarding the city). Interior work is progressing in the areas of Central Morrowind now covered by the Heartland regions.

2012 – After a four-year delay, Tamriel Rebuilt makes its’ eagerly-anticipated third release, Sacred East. This is the public’s first look at Indoril areas, including the majestic City of Necrom, where the Dunmer bring and inter their dead. At this point, older content from the Telvanni areas have recieved a steady dose of updates and bugfixes. This is the first release where all existing areas of TR are in one file, moving away from the old system of having each release being a seperate ESM file. This allowed for quests to take place across different areas of the Mainland, instead of being confined to a particular release.

2013 – During the year, several incremental updates were released for Sacred East mostly containing bugfixes (a small strip of land was added on in the south). A large portion of Western Morrowind’s exteriors (Redoran/Velothi Mountains area) near completion. The second iteration of Almalexia nears completion, and a video is released to the public, anticipating the next release. However, it soon becomes evident that the current iteration, while visually impressive, remains problematic on several fronts, causing major delays in the roadmap to an Almalexa release. It was eventually decided that the release would be postponed, and work would shift onto making the Thirr River area of Heartland release-ready.

In the waning months of the year, it became clear that situations like Almalexia reflected the fact that the way the project did things wasn’t ideal. While standards of quality regarding implementation have steadily improved over the years, the project’s organization and presentation remained far behind, a legacy of nearly a decade’s worth of inconsistency and confusion due to constantly shifting membership. The project lacked a clear overall strategy when it came to the amount of planning, development, vision required to execute such a massive undertaking, and make it consistent. It was decided that the new year would be a time of massive introspection, and a time that would see some of the biggest changes to Tamriel Rebuilt in the project’s entire history…..
Sweeping Changes (2013-2015)

2014-2015 – This was a period that saw sweeping changes to the project that encompassed just about every facet of development. Implementing these changes is an ongoing process.

Project Organization – The first order of business was that we saw that the type of content we produce is not that different from that of a big-budget video game. Here, it was decided that TR would be structed less as a typical mod project, with a central core leadership, and modders below. It would need to be more fluid, and egalitarian, taking into account the need to encourage members outside the leadership to take a more active role in the project’s development. This was achieved by restructuring the membership into broad groups, that would loosely resemble that of a typical game studio. The core, which consisted of a group of members who were expert at a particular field, would be reconstituted as Lead Developers, tasked largely with developing TR’s master plan and overall development strategy. Modders would now be called Developers, and would be given more flexibility and say in the decision-making process.

This year also saw massive changes to the Showcase process, and how the project vetted new contributors. It was clear that as time went on, it would be harder to find new developers willing to work for TR. The requirement for Showcases was dropped for art, writing, and asset creation, while requirements were eased for implementation roles to focus more on conceptual integrity rather than technical perfection. This allowed a balance of quality submissions, while making development more inclusive, without discouraging new developers who were learning the ropes.

The Master Plan – One of Tamriel Rebuilt’s inherent weaknesses is the fact that due to its’ long-running nature, and constantly changing standards and membership, TR’s work has largely been a patchwork of varying quality and consistency. It was decided that we would have to adopt a strategy of conceptual planning prior to in-game implementation, something TR did in the past for Hammerfell. This meant we had to sacrifice forward-progress with implementation to form an overal vision of the story and land we want to portray. Much of the year would be spent writing concepts for the Great Houses which would factor into how their territories would look like, their characters, and eventually, their questlines. The plan would eventually be finalized in early 2016rts would look like. It was quickly realized that in order to present Morrowind in a way that is faithful to what Bethesda originally intended, TR had to lift our ages-old ban on modifying vanilla content. While to this day, this remains a controversial change, it’s one that ensures Tamriel Rebuilt presents a cohesive vision and treats the province as a single, unified gameworld, and not one that is artificially seperated between vanilla and mainland regions. This will eventually pave the way for unified faction quests, and a singular gameplay experience, that integrates the vanilla game into our project.

Website – Another major undertaking that begun around this time period was the upgrading of our web infrastructure. Tamriel Rebuilt, up to this point, had been operating on the same website and forum since 2003. It was paramount that in order to attract more people, we had to update our image, and make it more professional. To this end, the Drupal CMS alongside a major, modern redesign was initiated.The website frontend was put up almost immediately, though it would take another two years for the other aspects such as task management and our forum to begin the transition. It was also important that our workflow be updated to adhere to our Master Plan, and ensure efficient and timely development of content. This remains an ongoing project.

Content Releases – The last major change that happened this year was the phasing out of the old release system, in favour of something more organic and accessible. In the Summer of 2014, we decided to make public all unfinished content, and include it in our main release as TR_Alpha (later renamed to TR_Preview). All subsequent updates and hotfixes would be released in a quarterly rapid-release system similar to Ubuntu. This ensured TR releases would come in smaller bite-sized chunks, and allowed us to work on the province as a whole, rather than in segregated, self-contained chunks.
A New TR – The Situation Today (2016-present)

2016 – Work continues on the website overhaul, as important functions such as the claims browser continue to be transitioned and refinend, alongside the addition of new features such as the integrated dashboard and developer board, which will allow project members and the public to better track progress with all aspects of the project.

While progress in terms of release content has been slow these past few years, Tamriel Rebuilt has remained comitted to the same standards of excellence and professionalism that was present during Morrowind’s original development. There has been substantial progress behind-the-scenes, in terms of improving project organizaztion, workflow, and conceptual planning. The project has decided to put all of this to the test, by returning to implementation in a totally new area - House Dres and Southern Morrowind. A substantial amount of planning was done in January and Febuary on the House, and there will soon be an open-call for modelers to create the assets required to build the Deshaan region, and bring House Dres to life. The other Great Houses are also close to being finalized, and it will only be a matter of time before those areas are also opened up for production. While Dres exteriors are being worked on, TR will soon open up the interior work for the much-anticipated Velothis region of Western Morrowind, as well as the final polishing of the City of Old Ebonheart, and quests will soon be implemented for this region.

Although the project has returned to implementing content in-game, TR will also continue to remain committed to planning and creative pre-production, to ensure all future and existing content adheres to the same consistent standards, and that are creative vision is fully realized. Tamriel Rebuilt will one day revisit the older Telvanni and Indoril content (including the long-stalled City of Almalexia) to ensure visual consistency with the rest of the project, and update those areas to current standards. While this is a very daunting task, Tamriel Rebuilt has always proved its’ tenacity to get the job done right, no matter the cost, and however long it takes.

Tamriel Rebuilt now also looks foward to new developments, such as the fan recreation of the Morrowind engine, OpenMW. Tamriel Rebuilt is already compatible with the project, and has demonstrated great interest in furthering our ties with the project. Tamriel Rebuilt has been in constant communication with the team for some time, to discuss shared goals for a greater Morrowind. As OpenMW nears its’ 1.0 release, Tamriel Rebuilt and OpenMW are now discussing joint-strategies in commemorating Morrowind's upcoming 15th anniversary. It is the hope that OpenMW and it’s new developer tolls will open up many possibiblites, both creative and technical for the future development of Morrowind province.

Cliffnotes Version

2001 – Tamriel Rebuilt is formed on the Bethesda forum when it is announced that TES3 will not include the entire province, and that it will ship with the developer tools that will be used to make the game. It is initaly a hodgepodge of fans with diferent and radical ideas, such as the goal of creating all of  Tamriel in TES3.

2002-2003 – Morrowind is released, TR is more a central hub of different Tamriel-related mod projects rather than a project of itself. This changes in 2003 when TR parts ways with Silgrad Tower (a project with similar goals, but different vision, and the hoster of TR) and moves onto it’s current website.

2003-2005 – Early Morrowind days, haphazard implementation and lack of consistency. Decision made to scrap Tamriel for Morrowind, focusing on a province per  ES game.

2006 – Oblivion released, half of the project moves onto Obilvion, working on the island of Stirk west of Cyrodiilas a demo, while planning Hammerfell.

2007 – Telvannis is released, while work continues on Maps 2 and 3.

2008 – Northern half of Map 2 released as Antideluvian secrets, finishing Telvanni lands. The remainder would wait on Necrom being redone, and eventually be released as Sacred East, alongside parts of Map 3.

2009 – Oblivion project forked off, decision is made to focus solely on TES3 from now on. Map system abandoned in favour of 8 named releases (Telvannis, Antideluvian Secrets, Sacred East, Almalexia, Heartland, Veloth, Narsis, and Dres)

2010-2012 – Focus on  Morrowind, Veloth exteriors, reworking Almalexia, redoing Necrom, and preparing Sacred East.

2012 – Sacred East Released, Veloth (Map 4/5) exteriors near completion.

2013 – Almalexia put on the backburner due to conceptual and technical issues. Project begins an introspection.

2014-2015 – Massive changes occur in project organization, workflow, and release structure. Website is slowly updated and transitioned to new systems. Great Houses are conceptualized and planed.

2016 – House  Dres is finalized, production resumes. Concepts for Dres and Deshaan are produced, other houses close to finalization.