Level 19 in under 20 hours... That seems rather fast?

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not

lol leveling is not even that hard.I could get to 30-40 quite fast if I rushed for levels but I take my time gathering tons of ingredients,making potions,huntings animals and so on lol

I might just try that. I'm on the quest elder knowledge now and I'm struggling with some of the enemies maybe cuz my level or skills aren't good enough so I might slow down and do some more side quest to level up/get better gear. I'm still wearing steel armor lol.

I have a playtime closing in on 30 hours and i have only been to whiterun and solitude and i've been abusing fast travel a fair bit to get quests done...

For me, with the TES games, a lot of the gameplay value comes in making NEW characters. I deliberately leave some questlines, guilds, areas etc undone with each char, so I can enjoy new content with the next one. That way you don't have the tedium of being maxed on perk points and so on And you get to experience the race/gender specific type content too.

WHat? exploring caverns boring? One cave I found was hidden behind a bookhelf...in a HOUSE! It has it's own little mini story. The cave was owned by a bandit who was treated poorly as a child by her father who said "all your good for is beating things". So she decided ti kidnap merchant caravans and steal their good while breaking down their carts for wood. She was also crazy about her treasure, and had a treasure room guarded by traps all set up..Not to mention I found a gem that I;m sure will open a new quest. I learned all this just by reading journals, notes, and letters I found in the cave. You just REALLY have to explore. Not just go in kill and loot to kill and loot. Look around. Read. Kids these days need to learn to read anyway lol. I'm as far as you are in gameplay hours and only just killed my first dragon and Now offto riften to see what that side of the world is like. I've only even seen like one city. Although I did get drunk with a man named sam and ended up in another city 100's of miles away in a temple that I had to clean up after fondling a statue...I don't count that.

Lets put it this way. My first character play through in Oblivion, I got to about 250 hours. I still had over half the map unexplores, and didn't do the fighters guild, mages guild, thieves guild, and many other side quests.

Each faction should be around a third the length of the main quest. There are probably around as many side quests as main quests and faction quests combined. There are a ton of cities and settlements full of quests. Some side quests are really awesome, and the faction quests are probably all incredible. Add to that everything you can do from exploring to crafting.

that's not bad but is each faction worth joining?

@What's there to do after the main quest?

. . . . Everything else??????

Exactly. I was in a Barrows somewhere and happened on a book. Just a random book, completely inconspicuous, 9 times out of 10 I'd probably have walked straight past it, but this time I picked it up and read it.

3 hours later I finished the quest chain the book started, and went back to doing what I was supposed to be doing in the first place.

I'm sorry to be a bit harsh here OP, but if you even have to ask this question, then you will never understand the full value of a TES game.

Well for starters theres also the guilds, those are like the main quest, even sometimes longer, then there are lots of quests to do in each town, then there are hundreds of dungeons to explore, the content in elder scrolls games is endless.

Theoretically, the Radiant AI could give you a infinite amount of things to do

I've played for 12 hours and I've only encountered one city.

I'm 10 hours in. Did 2 missions of the main quest. Doing Imperial Legion guild quest and a few side ones.

I haven't even opened up half of the map and haven't even finished a quarter of this game. I have no idea how people feel like they run out of things to do early.

I have just now started just the first part of the main quest, just so I can get the damn Dragons, to unlock because I have a crap load of shouts now.. I am doing the darkbrother hood, and whatever other crap I stumble upon, I do not ride a horse either btw...

Why would I be sarcastic? I've played more and I'm a lower level, and the ratio is quite significant.

This, but replace "10" with "25" and "cities" with "holds."

Let's put it this way:

Main Quest: 20-30 hours
Companions: 10-15 hours
College of Winterhold: 10-15 hours
Thieves Guild: 10-15 hours
Dark Brotherhood: 10-15 hours
Civil War factions: 9-12 hours
Searching for Shouts: 8-10 hours
Sidequests: 60-100 hours
Cave diving, exploring:
Miscellaneous tomfoolery:

Depending on your pace and attention to detail, there should be a good 150-200 hours of content in this game BEFORE you get to the more general exploration aspects (which should be just as fun/enriching as the scripted stuff). So you've beaten the main quest? Congrats, now it's time to actually start playing the game. You've just barely begun to scratch the surface of this game's potential.