Umm, mages in every elder scrolls game had some sort of weapon, usually a staff, dagger, or mace for when they ran out of magicka. you call yourself a TES fan, but all the stuff you are complaining about not being there is from Skyrim (and even then, it is ignoring the mechanics of the game). None of the Elder scrolls games was it in any way optimal to use ONLY magic and absolutely nothing else. Heck, it was not even optimal to wear only robes in at least the last 3 Elder scrolls games, Light and Heavy armor were in every way superior (And in Morrowind you could have both, making the argument invalid). It is only in an MMO do we see how completely borked TES class system really is with Balance.

You COULD not equip a weapon in any of the TES games, but doing so was not optimal at all.

And yeah, Morrowind had a completely abusable Spell-crafting system. Right off the boat, you could easily make a spell that could one-shot most of the game without trying.