Morrowind talk:Slave Rebellion

Where exactly is this eggmine?

On this page, it states this eggmine is to the Northwest of Tel Branora, but on the eggmine's page, it states it is Northeast of Tel Branora. I haven't found it NW of Tel Branora, so I think it might be to the NE. BretonRock 00:15, 2 January 2008 (EST)

It is Northwest of Tel Branora but in fact the entrance is almost due north of Giron Manas' shack. It's at the north end of a large island. —Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 03:34, 2 January 2008 (EST)

add this to slavery quests

this is another slavery related quest — Unsigned comment by 74.170.17.64 (talk) on 14 January 2010

Where do you suggest this quest be added to specifically? --Timenn-<talk> 11:32, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Quest can be started at any point but not finished

I have made a small change to the wiki that will need to be confirmed. It seems only the first half of this statement is correct: "this quest can be started and completed at any time simply by entering the Abebaal Egg Mine and speaking to the rebelling slaves; you do not need to be in House Telvanni or any Great House to do so." Playing on PC, I was able to acquire the quest by speaking to the slaves in the mine. However, upon completing the next quest stage (I chose to free the slaves, so journal entry 50), there is no conversation topic to discuss with Felisa Ulessen to finish the quest. I have confirmed this with the Construction set, as the condition checks for Felisa's dialogue about "Slave Rebellion" require the player to be of "PC Faction: Telvanni". Interestingly, the topic "Abebaal Egg Mine" has no such requirement but must only appear after "Slave Rebellion" is queried. Therefore, non-Telvanni players can acquire the quest and free the slaves, but cannot complete it without updating the quest stage via the console (on PC). Thalass (talk) 19:02, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Looks pretty cut-and-dried to me. As you say, all of Felisa Ulessen's "slave rebellion" dialogue requires the player to be a member of House Telvanni, so there's no way for non-members to legitimately complete the quest. I've expanded the note to include this fact. — Wolfborn^(Howl) 21:14, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

I see you have removed the mention that this quest-breaking issue is a bug (without providing any explanation as to why). I have put it back in, since this easily flags the issue for non-Telvanni players who'd like to avoid it. Moreover, as noted on the console page included in my earlier edit, the journal command "is useful for skipping certain parts of a quest, and especially for fixing quests that have broken due to a bug or player error," which is exactly what has happened in this case. Given that Morrowind has quite a few quest-related oversights like this one, I see no grounds to dispute this quest-breaking issue as a bug. It at least is a problem--the rest is semantics. Thalass (talk) 21:24, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Apologies for not providing a rationale for the removal of the "bug" part of this note. To address the issue, the primary source for the issue not being a bug is the fact that neither the Morrowind Patch Project nor the Patch for Purists "fixes" this in any way (I checked the MPP myself in the CS, and the PfP patch notes don't record any changes for this quest aside from a minor spelling error). Given that these patches specifically address and fix bugs, the lack of a "fix" for this quest would indicate that the greater Morrowind community doesn't regard the issue as a bug.

As far as this being a "quest-breaking" issue, the fact is that this is a House Telvanni quest. House Telvanni members can complete the quest without issues. The fact that a non-faction player can't complete a faction-specific quest would only be "quest-breaking" if non-faction players were consistently allowed to complete faction-specific quests. Morrowind seems to be a mixed bag in that respect--sometimes you can, sometimes you can't; there's no consistency. Should a non-faction player be allowed to complete faction-specific quests? In that case, what's the point of joining factions if you can complete the quests and get the rewards anyway? Should the fact that a non-Telvanni can start the quest be regarded as a bug? In this case, it gives the player the option of freeing some slaves, which contributes to the "Twin Lamps" quest line. Should the fact that you're left with an open, un-close-able quest in your Journal be regarded as a bug? An annoyance, possibly, but not necessarily a bug.

In summary, neither of the two main unofficial bug-fixing patches "fixes" this, a non-faction member gets a benefit from the part of the quest they can complete, and there's no reason to argue that a non-faction member should be able to complete the quest. Hence my "not a bug" edit. — Wolfborn^(Howl) 02:47, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Cheers for the reply. I think the issue here is that bug-fix projects are not centralised authorities on what is and isn't a bug, nor are they ever feature complete. We're approaching Morrowind's 20th anniversary, yet there's still plenty of bugs and developer oversights that remain. In fact, we've seen that happen here, as no one seems to have logged this issue on the wiki before I noticed it a few days ago, and this page goes back to 2006 (15 years). Sometimes things are simply missed.

In all other instances where a player cannot complete a quest due to a dialogue check oversight or similar issue, I've seen this flagged in the notes section of the quest page as a bug. | Here's a log of the many quest-related bugs that the Morrowind Patch Project fixes, and you can find dozens of fixes for erroneous dialogue checks analogous to this one. I see no reasonable explanation for why Bethesda would've designed the quest in this manner...had it been intended non-Telvanni players could receive the Twin Lamps reputation bonuses without any further involvement, presumably an additional quest stage would've been added to finish the quest at that point rather than require reporting back to Felisa Ulessen.

If you would like me to provide additional examples of design oversights like this to build the case that this is a bug and not a feature, I can do that for you, but I think it is easier to call a spade a spade and leave the note there for non-Telvanni players who don't want to clutter up their journal (particularly if they don't have access to the console to fix it).Thalass (talk) 16:28, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I'm well aware of what the MPP fixes; I have the last version (v1.6.6_beta.esm) and run with it when I play. Heck, the MPP even introduces its own new bugs into quests sometimes. And I've both played and modded Morrowind for over 7 years and am well aware of the many design oversights present in the game. :) I guess the difference is that in some cases, I regard the oversight as a bug, and in others, I don't. This is one of those cases which I personally don't consider to be a bug. An annoyance, yes, but I don't expect my non-Telvanni character to be able to complete a Telvanni quest.

Given our different viewpoints on the matter, I don't think either of us is going to convince the other to change their mind. And at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter: you say bug, I say feature, but either way it doesn't change the fact that non-Telvanni can start the quest but not finish it. That's the important piece of information, that's what needs to be on the page (which it is), and whether it's deliberate or accidental makes no difference to the outcome. Personally, I don't see that noting it specifically as a bug makes a huge difference, but if no one else objects I'm fine to leave it the way it is. And on the bug vs. feature thing, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree and leave it at that. :) — Wolfborn^(Howl) 01:50, 24 August 2021 (UTC)