Ha, brilliant. I saw your thread yesterday and was interested in it, but hadn't seen any vampires in game yet so declined to comment.

Since then I've found one group of vampires (along with a strange shrine and statue to some entity I don't recognize) in the south near the base of the Throat of the World. They definitely use absorb health and ice spells, though the ice may not have been anything special to vampires. Could've just been regular magery and I simply didn't fight them long enough to see fire or shock spells.

Wow. So the vampires in Skyrim are the Volkihar?

Bethesda needs to explain why they stole the Cyrodiilic vampire's power!

Diablerie

So...we need to check their veins with auspex?

a Vampire masquerade joke eh? lol

I don't find being a Vampire that differcult but what i dislike is that they are more or less the same type as the cyrodiil tribe even though a book in oblivion states that the cyrodiil tribe is the only vampire that feeds on victims while they sleep and can blend in with mortal society.

I just hope that there will be a DLC that makes vampires better (increased melee damage, higher jumping and speed) and also give them a Vampire faction to join and reduce hostility in people at stage 4, i don't mind a few folks or guards attacking but everyone in skyrim doing so is ridicules. Coffins and Vampire lairs would be good to have as well, just like "The Vile Lair" from Oblivion.

Like what others have said in other forums, i too find that by not feeding, you get stronger is stupid, i would much prefer having to feed often to maintain my powers and strength, its more of a curse then as its easy to let one starve to be powerful but harder to constantly feed to keep strong.

The starving from feeding and getting stronger thing was most likely a pact made by Clavicus Vile to the Cyrodilic vampires. If they want to blend in, they must be weaker, if they want to be stronger, they must starve themselves and risk being exposed for what they are. And Immortal Blood did say that Cyrodilic vampires liked to feed on sleeping people and can blend in, now we see similar vampires in Skyrim. Yeah, coffins would be nice this time around.

In Oblivion there was a coffin you can sleep in by downloading the vile lair. its basically a Vampire dlc as the basic history about the lair is that is belonged to the vampire offshoot of The Dark Brotherhood, you even get a vampire servant.

Yeah, I know. It's called Deepscorn Hollow. I was so pissed when I found out PS3 owners could not get the coffin bed or the sleeping prisoner.

Well lets break and cross our fingers for another Vampire DLC, one that is much better and includes like three factions of vampires, with each one having different goals.
like one would want to co-exist with mortals, another just wants to stay hidden and do whatever they want and the others would be bloodthirsty monsters who want nothing more than to take towns and use the inhabitants for cattle.

You meet a 'friendly' Vampire in a certain faction that uses a dark colored hand as its symbol. However, they are not what you would expect. =P

They arn't nearly so common as in Oblivion, probobly about the same as in Morrowind minus the clan bases, but i've found catching the disease this time around is a pain in the behind.

I actually kind of like the Cyrodiliic Vampires, and was always pained that the face bug made them practically unplayable. Now I actually can use them in Skyrim. I'm planning to make the cliche Vampire-Hunting Vampire who hates what he is. Plus, nothing says awesome like a supernatural and immortal Redguard with Thu'um on acid (or dragonsouls if you prefer).

Yes, i know there is a vampire in the dark brotherhood, a werewolf too but what most of us have issue with is that barely anything is changed, while i did not like the face bug or the wrinkles, i too liked the cyrodiil vamps and the "shape" of the vamp face but starving to get stronger is awful, i did not like that. People had hoped that it would be different this time around but sadly everything is more or less the same just a tad worse, and you still can't join vampire factions and like oblivion there is only like two or more vampires you can talk to, the rest just attack you on sight.

I like the eyes of the skyrim vampires but there is more negatives than positives, it should have been balanced but its not. stage 4 vampirism makes everyone hostile to you but it can be countered by feeding but there are still a lot more negatives, they should have added more bonuses for skills like swords (vampires have super-human strength and thus should hit harder) increased running speed, higher jumping and the ability to feed on anyone and anytime and not just when they sleep. (like a finishing move or feeding on their corpses)

It's just game-play mechanics mucking the lore up. lol