Just delivering an old man to an innkeeper when I decided to stay outside the inn for a bit. An Ancient Dragon begins to attack Riverwood. The citizens ran into their homes. The guards and I commence the battle. Unfortunately, I had no form of range attacks. Eventually the Dragon landed but not before it killed Alvor with its Fire Breath. He landed infront of Hilde's house where he perished from his wounds.

Hoe many people have you lost to these attacks?

Quite a few. i give them weapons to defend yhemselves from dragon attacks and vampire attacks.

I enjoy playing DiD, even with NPC's, but when stuff like this happens I usually reload. Townspeople attacking a dragon with their fists doesn't seem too immersive to me.

I've never had a dragon attack Riverwood or any other village or town for that matter.

Not sure what it is with my game but it just doesn't happen even though i've been far into the MQ before. (never actually completed it)

Alvor charged at it with a Battleaxe.

The only time I have had a dragon attack Riverwood is when I fast travel there.

Hmm well I guess that's more realistic. I'll raise a flagon for him tonight.

Riverwood is desloate, with alvor and sven dead, and missing. Lost alvor in the exact same circumstances as the OP.

It's a shame they couldn't have fixed this issue

My current character hasn't lost anybody yet to dragons or vampires after 40 hours.

I had a couple of dragon attacks in Dawnstar but my crossbow with berserker rage took them out pretty fast.

By the way that combo is insane

How funny, I kicked off the following thread today over in the spoilers section to focus on the same issue, more or less:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1458941-is-alvors-death-inevitable/

Just reload your last save.

I had vampires kill Adrianne once. A sad day that was..

That's just foolishness on Alvor's part...

Let him stay dead, and dump his body in the river. That's the punishment for charging down a Dragon with said equipment.

But back on topic: Not many. Both of my characters have excellent ranged attack capability, and I usually am able to get to the Dragon/Vampires before the townspeople get killed off. I think I've lost... 5(?) townspeople total across all of Skyrim since I've been playing (started on 11-11-11).

I personally don't have that difficult of a time with it. That said, I can easily see where some people are having trouble keeping the civilians alive. the fights get tougher and tougher as you increase level, and there's nothing stopping one of your enemies from cheap-shotting a favorite merchant. But I generally don't have too many issues with that.

Adrianne is particularly vulnerable to death-by-vampire because they spawn at the gate, just a few feet away from where she works. Twice I've exited buildings in Whiterun (Belethor's once, Temple o' Kynareth the second time) and discovered a vampire attack attack in progress. Both times I was too far away to prevent her death. I simply had to reload.

I've only had one dragon attack in a village, that happened to be Riverwood. No one died that time, though.

I've had some fly-bys by dragons on populated areas, but those dragons were all pacifists Or saw me and went "[censored] this, i'm outta here! "

I lost Alvor in a battle against a quite normal dragon :/ it was with my first character and it happened when I was level hum...7 I think? I didn't realized he was dead until a few in-game days...