Once I get my PC built and start playing Skyrim again, I'm thinking about just blowing right through the main story. I want to know if dragons disappear permanently after you complete the main quest. Although dragons can be annoying, I still think it's pretty cool seeing/fighting them from time to time. If completing the main quests gets rid of the beauts... then that's probably the last thing I'll ever do in the game

Nope, they keep spawning. Actually, they get to be a bit of a nuisance...

they still come to test them selves before the dovakiin, they still lose their life to his fury

to answer the question dragons still attack...mostly in cities when you just want to sell you crap and leave

This. I swear there is a sudden mass spawning after the MQ. Now about 20 levels after I finished the MQ they are starting to become rare encounters again. For a while there after the MQ, i couldn't leave a town without having to fight a dragon.

Another stupid broken thing.

ItIt's not broken :/

The main story arc pertains only to the tracking and slaying of one very specific dragon (and the events surrounding his and his kin's return). Contrary to Hollywood, killing the "boss monster" of a race doesn't result in the entire race surrendering/keeling over/vanishing in a puff of illogic

Except Alduin was the one reviving the dragons, and after you defeat him dragons stop being reborn, so there should continue to be fewer and fewer dragons

Remember, this is Alduin, the offspring of the time-god Akatosh we're talking about. He's bound to pick up time-shattering abilities from his father and be able to revive multiple dragons at the same time...

That and he's been reviving dragons ever since Helgen. Thats a lot of potential gametime wherein Alduin could have revived many many MANY dragons.

Lets not forget, all you really need is a dragon skeleton and a dragon soul and Alduin to revive a dragon. Sure you svck away the soul from a dead dragon, but what about the bones left behind? Alduin could potentially have legions of dragon souls at his beck and call ready to take the bones and bring forth a new dragon into Skyrim...

The best way to sum it up:

Exploiting the restoriation potion to make a god like weapn to us aginst them once they become annoying tends to become a normal task of usage after the main quest.

If you're on PC, it's even easier. The console command that turns off random dragon encounters (it won't do anything about the ones at word walls or burial mounds, or ones that have already spawned, though) is "set mq106turnoffrandomdragons to 1" (no quotes, of course).