I'm new to Skyrim, having played for less than 100 hours. I fell hard for this game, my first RPG ever. Been enthralled with it so far. I knew that I could get up to about Level 80 or so, and there were all those stars in the Skills menu, I thought for sure the main quest would take me through most of the game.

...then I completed the Main Quest before I'd even hit level 20! I was floored that it ended so soon. I was sure the Quest would go on for a long time, and provide me with opportunities to face greater and greater challenges as my character became more skilled. Now I'm left running around to taverns trying to find adventure, but it all seems the same: go get something for someone, or kill some monster.

I didn't want to pick sides in the war, so I haven't done that, but may do so if need be. My character is a hero, do-gooder type and I don't want to be a thief. I'd love to own a house in Solitude (such a beautiful town!). I did the Forsworn conspiracy but when I got to the jail (the mine) and realized my only option was to join the Forsworn (which I felt was not consistent with my character) I reloaded an earlier save and killed the guys who tried to arrest me.

Am I missing something? Any tips or suggestions for good, lengthy quests? I'm just so surprised that the game effectively ended so early on, I must be missing something?

you got the various Guilds to do
then you got the DLC questlines
or, just travel from town to town asking around trying to find work.. thats how some of the best quests are started

For some reason the game tries to hurry you through the main quest, but there's no reason why you would have to do so. Do one part of it, go do something else with a guild or the war, or whatever, then pick up the main quest if you want. I've got 3500 hours in this game, and I've never completed the main quest. I just finished the Dragonborn MQ yesterday...

You must be new to Bethesda's games...

The main quest is only part of the experience.

Yes, I am new to these games. What are the guild quests? Do you mean the College of Winterhold? I did that one (I'm the Arch-Mage), and I did the Bard College one (that seemed rather short - I got them to approve the festival and that seemed to be it?). Are there other guilds?

I would be grateful if you guys could point me to some great, fun quests....(just tell me where to go and who to bump into, no more details necessary!).

TIA.

Well, go to Riften, you'll find a lot to do there with the thieves guild, and of course there's the drinking contest with Sam, and Markarth has a good portion. Be sure to explore in surrounding areas, and you'll find quests scattered about in a few books too.

With most Bethesda games, the intent isn't for the player to play the main quest straight through. They want to go out an explore the world. There are hundreds of side quests. There's 4 faction quest lines (the Thieve's guild is like almost as long as the main quest). The 2 big DLC each provide a few dozen more hours of content.

I pretty consistently don't even go into Bleak Falls Barrow until a couple hundred hours into a character. If you really wanted to, you could probably burn a thousand hours on a single character without too much trouble. I've got a couple in the 500-600 hour range.

That's nothing. I finished Oblivion's main quest at level 12.

Like others have said, this is an open-world game and there are plenty of other things to do. I view Bethesda's main quests not as "The Game" itself but as a kind of guided tour that introduces us to the main features of the game.

Here is a web page listing the quests in the game if you're interested: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Quests

Thanks, everyone. I didn't realize there were other quests that were just as lengthy and detailed as the main quest. So far I've just been stumbling around doing mostly smallish quests. I think I may head off and try to join the Companions....

Yeah, there's a major lot of fun with them...