First-time setup

Before you start

A 64-bit Windows PC.
Your own copy of Morrowind, Tribunal and Bloodmoon — the GOTY edition on Steam or GOG covers all three. English or Russian only; the German and French releases have translations baked into the data files and the server will refuse them.
The server join password. It isn't written on this site — ask whoever pointed you here.

You never launch Morrowind itself. Morrowind only needs to be installed, so our client can read its data files. Everything you actually play happens through CommunityMP.

Walkthrough

01 Install Morrowind

Install it from Steam or GOG and let it finish. If it's already installed, skip ahead — just know roughly where it lives, because you'll point at that folder in step 3. A typical Steam path looks like:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Morrowind

02 Install the Aria client

Download it from the server page and run the installer, accepting the defaults. The file is called OpenMW-0.52.0-Windows-x64.exe — that's expected; CommunityMP is a modified OpenMW 0.52, and it keeps OpenMW's naming.

When it finishes you'll have an OpenMW Launcher and a CommunityMP Client entry in your Start Menu. You want the Launcher first.

Use this build, not an official OpenMW or CommunityMP one. The server checks the network protocol version on connect and refuses anything that doesn't match.

03 Point it at your Morrowind files

Start OpenMW Launcher from the Start Menu. On its very first run it offers:

Welcome to OpenMW!
It is recommended to run the Installation Wizard.

Click Run Installation Wizard, choose select an existing installation, and browse to your Morrowind folder from step 1 — the one containing Data Files. Let it finish and you'll land back in the Launcher.

If you clicked Skip by accident, you can start the wizard again from the Launcher's Data Files tab.

04 Install Tamriel Rebuilt

Two separate downloads from tamriel-rebuilt.org. Both are required, and both get unpacked into your Morrowind Data Files folder:

Tamriel_Data: The shared asset pack. A dependency, not optional — the mainland won't load without it.
Tamriel Rebuilt: The mainland itself.

We all need the same release. Until we pin exact file versions on the server, ask before updating Tamriel Rebuilt — a mismatch between players is a confusing way to find out.

05 Set your load order

In the Launcher's Data Files tab, tick exactly these six and put them in exactly this order. The server enforces both the list and the sequence; anything missing, extra, or out of order and your join is refused.

Morrowind.esm
Tribunal.esm
Bloodmoon.esm
Tamriel_Data.esm
TR_Mainland.esm
TR_Factions.esp

You may also enable Tamriel_Data.omwscripts and tamrielrebuilt.omwscripts — the 0.52 engine supports OpenMW Lua. They aren't part of the enforced list, so they neither help nor hinder the handshake.

06 Press Play, and sign in

Hit Play in the Launcher. Instead of the usual main menu you'll get the CommunityMP sign-in screen. It has four things on it:

Server	Read-only. It should already say `mw.prokopto.dev:25566`. If it says `localhost`, see the troubleshooting note below.
Account username	You invent this. There is no registration page and no account to make in advance — the first time you sign in, the server creates the account from whatever you type here.
Account password	You invent this too, on that same first sign-in. Write it down. There is no reset — recovering it means asking an admin to delete the account and starting over.
Server join password	The shared password for the server. Not the same thing as your account password. Ask for it if you don't have it.

Tick Remember me if you like, then Sign In. You have 60 seconds from connecting to get signed in before the server kicks you — no drama if it happens, just launch again.

Choose a username nobody else here is using. If you try to sign in with a username that already exists and you don't have its password, the server treats it as someone trying to take over the account and bans your IP. Coordinate names in chat first — it's a five-second conversation that saves an unban request.

07 Make a character

Once the account is accepted you'll get a character list — empty, on a first sign-in. Create a new character and go through Morrowind's normal character creation. Your account can hold several characters; your account identity and your character identity are separate things.

Then you're in. Say hello in chat with Y.

If something goes wrong

The sign-in screen says localhost:25565

You have an installer from before 2026-09-05, which shipped pointing at nobody. Easiest fix is to uninstall and reinstall from the current download. If you'd rather not, find your install folder (right-click the Start Menu shortcut → Open file location) and delete config\communitymp-client.cfg — it gets rebuilt from the correct defaults on next launch. Or launch with the address on the command line:

communitymp-client.exe --connect=mw.prokopto.dev:25566

“Could not find openmw.exe” when pressing Play

An installer from before 2026-09-05. Uninstall, reinstall from the current download.

“Incorrect password!”

That's the account password, not the join password. If you're sure it's right, the username may belong to someone else — pick a different one.

Kicked about a minute after connecting

The 60-second sign-in timer ran out. Just reconnect.

Refused over data files

Your load order doesn't match step 5 exactly — wrong order counts, and so does one extra mod. Compare the list again, carefully.

Anything else

Tell us. This is a young engine fork that we build ourselves, and odd behaviour is useful information rather than a nuisance.