Exactly,
I ended up uninstalling Dawnguard because it was ridiculous. They started attacking people and killing off quest givers in towns at level 7 and you can't get the Dawnguard quest till level 10 and they don't stop random attacks till it is finished. Half the cities would be dead before I was done FFS!!!

Random thing about vampire attacks, completely off topic, but after dawnguard whenever an attack happens in a town, say it's a dragon attack or a random NPC attack, everyone yells "Vampire!!!"

I don't think people mistake dragons for vampires, unless the dragons are infected in which case that'd be interesting.

dawnguard mainquest? or the vanilla mainquest...

i heard about this way before we got pc release and have point blank been avoiding towns altogether since i installed dawguard...

i completed the questline of the expansion... is it safe to start going back into towns again?

1. I wouldn't hate it so much if there were replacements for the merchants who are killed. The merchant in WInterhold got killed, leaving me no way to sell stuff the mages won't buy when I'm there.
2. I've had one wilderness werewolf attack. He seemed to be an ordinary hunter until I got close to him....

Nope, they still attack. At least for me. However, I kill them before they do any damage and out of the 30 hours of play with Dawnguard installed I've had one person die, a beggar. I go into town all the time too.

Well replacing the merchants because you failed to protect them, would sort of negate the point of the feature. You are meant to be at least a bit disadvantaged for letting them get killed. Not much, there are plenty of merchants in Skyrim, some even get replaced. But you move around more and continue to ignore the DLC, it gives those vampires even more of a chance to wipe out more merchants. You cannot lose all the merchants in Skyrim, but maybe you lose enough you might start to suspect you are doing something wrong. It is a game, you can always try again if you ended up not happy with the result.

Where's mah high-res Dawnguard pack GStaff? Huh? You're holding out on us!

Do vampires still attack cities if you side with them?

Well I did the avoid cities at night and no fast-travel to small towns and it almost worked. I did get one daylight attack in Whiterun and I had to reload about four times because Adrianne kept getting killed. NOTE, if she didn't keep trying to fist fight with a Master Vampire this would have never happened. Guards all around she could have just ran away or cowered so the enemies ignore her.

This is whats wrong with the DLC, not that the NPC's die, it's that they die stupidly. They do the same when dragons attack also. If the NPC's would just let the guards do their jobs all would be good. The guards to attack the vamps and dragons so they are doing their part.

At this point I just turn off the DLC until I am ready to run a character straight through it. It's about the only way to get around the dumb AI of the NPC's during the vamp attacks.

Note, I did have one random vampire attack in the wilderness long after I beat the DG MQ. It's the one where they killed off some Vigilant and took their clothes. I haven't had any attacks in a city or town since, but they still appear in the wilds apparently.

Could not agree more with you my friend

Yes they do. The vampires attacking are not your allies, they are thin bloods or feral vampires.

Seriously true. I get mad when Belethor runs out of his shop at night and starts smacking the master vampire while the guards go around swinging randomly, then I shoot an arrow and someone runs in front of it stupidly, and the guards say OH NO HE HAS A BOUNTY! Then every guard attacks me and Belethor sits their attacking the vampire by himself...

Belethor should not be smacking vampires! lol

When an attack happens guards should attack, and civilians should run into their homes. Some do, but random freaking ones that you really like to use just sit outside and fight.

The key problem is that it's a bad design decision. They dropped potentially hostile superhigh level vampires right in the middle of towns filled with non-respawning non-levelscaling NPCs with no sense of self-preservation, many of which are quest givers or vendors.

If it were capped to be lower level ones that the guards could cut down in short order, it wouldn't be a problem. But it's not. And towns are becoming ghost towns because of it.

PC players, use this mod if you want to not end up with ghost towns: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/21615