RIP Captain Lonely Gail he was killed yesterday by a vampire attack. Windhelm is getting empty. Also missing a Dunmer Elf woman not seen her for a while either.
Yeah the cities in my Vamp play-through are basically ghost towns with just guards and essential NPC's walking around. I don't think I'm going to bother even trying to go any further with it. I'll just retire my vamp lord and assume he lives forever in the castle (or whatever it is that undead do, if living isn't correct).
Starting a new character and keeping DG turned off. This character is a rogue who will be doing the thieves guild only so I probably won't even turn DG on. If I ever turn DG on again it will only be when my character is ready to run straight through the DG MQ without stopping. I hate that I'll miss the other things that DG adds, but it can't be helped.
In retrospect I will say that I have never seen a DLC screw up the vanilla game so bad. Tribunal, Bloodmoon, Shivering Isles, none of them ever screwed up the vanilla game. I really am at a lost at what Bethesda was thinking. The idea is cool I guess to have the DLC affect the vanilla game, but the collateral damage is just way too high.