as someone who has played both Skyrim and morrowind long after both came out, I can say with certainty that there are certain aspects of their preference that are just true. Morrowind fundamentally caters to the "weird nerd tinkerer" kind of player way more, with seemingly purposely broken mechanics that are designed to be fully solved through exploring them. Kind of a toolkit of random toys to play with combined with an overarching story.

Whereas Skyrim does have those toys, they were significantly shifted towards being a supporting aspect of the game with the plot and quests taking center stage. This isn't a bad thing, but it stopped catering to people who play with systems as much and started catering towards people who enjoy (multiple concurrent) linear stories more. If you're the kind of person who either roleplays a character that doesn't make sense with the stricter plot, or if you just want to generally fuck around, Morrowind is genuinely a better game (if you can stomach the absurdly out of date graphics). I would describe Morrowind as more of a full on RPG and Skyrim as more of a single-player MMORPG with less predatory monetization (well, when it was originally released at least). One is about giving a player the tools to basically make a story from whole cloth (which does kind of make the existing main story in Morrowind kind of a detractor sometimes), and another is about giving the player far more fleshed out linear narratives to take them on. Both are fun but for very different moods or preferences.