In Morrowind, blocking was done automatically, with its frequency depending on how high your Block skill was, and your block skill only raised on a successful block. Aka, raising it was stupid, and the mechanics were inferior to Oblivion's.
To be honest, I disliked the whole "Go forward to thrust, stand still to slash, go side to side to hack" thing. Mostly because, sometimes you just want to charge an enemy with a warhammer and beat the shit out of them with it. But in Morrowind, all of the sudden I found myself trying to stab with a hammer. 😐