I think I'll have to stop playing Skyrim until at least 1.3. I travelled to Winterhold and had the same freezing problem I've had in Riverwood & Whiterun when I tried talking to the guy that runs the inn there.

After experiencing so many quest bugs, I am starting to come around to this way of thinking. I loved playing Skyrim even whilst trying to sidestep all the texture issues and quest bugs. Whats everyone else going to play while Skyrim is being fixed?

I want to be able to complete the Main Quest on my main level 30...
I can't, since A Cornered Rat vanished from my journal and nothing is bringing it back (360 here) So...I can't talk to Esbern. Leaving me stuck.

I'm just praying 1.2 fixes that. If not? Well...ech.

Yes, says me. And not from anecdotal evidence but from first hand experience. If I witness it firsthand, it's not conjecture. I have personally experienced several bugs that were in fact specifically due to playing through quests in a specific order (Helm of Winterhold quest is a good example. If you clear out the dungeon getting the helm before the Purity of Revenge quest killing the "boss", the Purity of Revenge quest has a flaw whereby the Companions questline is broken). I have verified first hand that this is the case by restoring a previous saved game and playing through in the designer's "expected" sequence and predictably, the bug does not occur on that code path. There are plenty of reports of others doing the same with the same result. This is the type of bug I was referring to.

Judging by the reports all over the internet, it is clear there are indeed "many" of this class of bug. Note I didn't say "most", "all", "thousands" or other exaggerated label. "Many" is clearly accurate as there are numerous such occurances. These aren't random glitches. You play through it in the right sequence and it breaks EVERYTIME. This class of bug is most certainly consistent. Go give one of them a try and see for yourself.

As for ignorance of game development, I've worked as a professional software developer my entire life and spent nearly 10 years of that as a game developer. I am quite familiar with the process and challenges involved. Indeed there are people out there playing an enjoying it. They should consider themselves lucky they haven't run into issues that have broken their game and caused them to restore an earlier save losing many hours of character development. Many of them probably have and don't even know it, not having a strategy guide to tell them which quests are missing, or simply not caring. I thoroughly enjoyed it as well until that happened to me several times by just simply "playing the game". You can defend them all you want, but when a software product breaks the user's time investment for as many people that as this has, the most any software developers would agree that it shipped prematurely. Another 3-6 months of testing and it probably would have been a pretty solid release, but they rushed for the holiday and people such as myself and many others were left with a broken game experience as a result.

I never once said that you were making up your claims, or that you over embellishing your claims. I simply said that people need to remember that the "vocal" gaming community is a minority of the gaming community, and assuming that an experienced issue (even one shared by a number of the minority) is in fact a global issue is a mistaken line of thinking. In regards to identifying such fixes, if your backstory is in fact true, then you are well aware that a bug fix (especially fixes of the magnitude that Skyrim requires) are not simple i.e. fast or easily conjured.


As I said above, many relative to what? "Many" in a minority may amount to relatively none on the grand scope, there is just no way to be sure without more feedback. That was what I was getting at.


I have a hard time buying your backstory if you feel that a game this large and complex (due to it's open ended nature) could have truely benefit from just a few months more of controlled play-testing. There are too many situational triggers to identify for the various bugs that are being reported to catch in such small exposure. Now if the extended play-testing involved a much larger group than typical play-testing before ZBR, then I would agree with you. But while it may make sense to get to immediate work on a consistently occuring bug with a set circumstance like the one you are talking about, it doesn't make much sense to release patches for each one of these instances. If Bethesda had no intention of doing anything about it, I would better understan your attitude, but there is really no indication that that is the case.

The last thing i'd like to point out is that I am not defending Bethesda, nor am I telling people they have nothing to be frustrateda about. I think they are absolutely to be held accountable for these glitches, and I feel they need to do a better job of keeping the community updated with progress and intentions. But with that said, the reactions of some on these boards is just laughable, and yes, they display an ignorance of game development. I'm not trying to insult anyone personally, I am trying to get people to think a little more rationally.

I hope not .... I still have uncompleted quests due to glitches like collecting words of power and others that I've completed but won't vanish from my quest log .....

I can complete the game ... I got the war story line done, dragon story line cleared, and dark brotherhood cleared .... Now for College of Winterhold story and Thieves Guild story ....

I didnt realize there were so many quest glitches. Damn...I havent seen a single one yet thankfully. Unfortunately this means they wont be able to work on real needed changes like menus/followers/horseriding for a long time.



If ever.

Honestly Gunner54 lets get real here...This company at the end of the day as always fixes stuff here and there but they don't fix anything be years before that happens...just look at Fallout New Vegas..at least ur version works go play it for ps3 its a broken horrible mess..and post patch now it looks horrible and plays horrible I think am gonna trade mine in also...am sick of this company taking our money and never fixing anything...I give them credit for what they attempt but having been making these games for so long now you would think they figure it out by now

Yes, that's indeed true. The number of people that will go online and post about issues is many orders magnitude fewer than those who do not. I was speaking in terms of absolute numbers, not relative percentages and there appear to be significant absolute numbers of individuals with issues. Some would argue that it's not the percentage of users with issues that matter (as in "casualties of scale") but the absolute number of impacted individuals. And yes, of course bug fixes take time. My issue is not that they haven't rushed out patches, my position is that I believe more of these bugs can and should have been resolved prior to accepting customers' money for the product.


I agree, "many" is a non-specific term. When I was talking about "many" bugs of a common class, I was essentially referring to how a casual observer would describe a list of bugs of that class in say a bug database listing. Some? A bunch? Lots? Many? Basically, it just means more than "a few" in the context I had intended.


No need to buy the backstory, this is all just opinion, and back story true or not (though it is), it is still just an opinion. Experience may contribute to a more informed opinion but it doesn't make it inherently more valid just because of that. Every organisation, every project and its requirements, and every timeline is different. I don't purport to be an expert on the development cycle of Skyrim, I was just rebutting your claims of complete ignorance of the general practice. But unless you feel that QA had reached their limits and had no more power to find a single significant bug, then I would disagree that it could not have benefited from further testing, and by further testing, I didn't necessarily mean "just more of what you have been doing" I meant meaningful results oriented testing. What that would require depends on what was going on in QA. If they were resourced constrained and needed broader testing coverage, then more players is what was needed. If they were simply time constrained by a late code freeze, then simply more calendar time would have been all that was needed. It just depends, since they had stated they expect to gross nearly a half billion dollars in sales, they could have brought more resources to bear if that's what it took to reduce critical bugs at release.


Has Bethesda said anything about a timeline for resolving the quest bugs? Have they even acknowledged them? In the absence of any sort of formal acknowledgement or reassurance that specific fixes will be forthcoming in a reasonable period of time (granted this is a subjective term, but so long as it was not Q2 2012, I expect most people would be put at ease) I think you can understand why some people might be feeling uneasy about their broken game progress. What they are working on and when they hope it will arrive is very ambiguous. For all I know, the next 3 patches could be nothing more than more texture fixes and UI tweaks.

Errrr having read today's posts regarding the loss of resistence due to a buggy patch 1.2, I'm not sure what to do.

I may clear everything offf my hard drive / usb and then reinstall everything and start a new game and see how it goes.


If everything is as buggy as reported I'll sell the game. I'm not going to wait for another potentially game breaking patch.

Reading this yesterday I was saying hells no but after the joke on us today I really don't know what to do.
Some info/feedback from Bethesda might help us out?

Feedback from Bethesda? Is it April 1st already? I must have slept through Christmas...

Will disconnect my xbox from Live before playing now to avoid downloading this game breaking patch.


I just got to hope that patch 1.1 doesn't get deleted from my cache somehow or I wont be able to play the game at all.

I hope bethesda pull this patch off xbox live so that I don't have to worry about forgetting to unplug my ethernet cable before playing.

Bethesda........I have had it with your game that does not work.......1.2 has made my game unplayable i still have texture problem's playing from DISK & HARDDRIVE i have no resistance's to anything i still have broken quest's i have seen dragon's fiying backward's sometime's i fall through the mountain's so that i am under the ground .What a waste of my money ....i wont b buying any game's from you......EVER .....and i'll bet you are hard at work on your next game instead of fixing this really good but seriously flawed game..... pifttttt

At this point, assuming the 1.3 patch will fix things rather than make them worse is a bit too optimistic.

Just remember the rule: check these forums before applying any new patch to your game.

You don't need to run off and patch the game at the first chance. Better to be patient - maybe play some other game that's actually working - and only apply a patch after it's been confirmed not to break the game by other brave players that have gone before.

It was working fine for about an hour then it just got messed up....i'll prob keep the game till they fix it.......I'm still real pis##d off tho.
Gonna dump the patch n try it again....boooo