I'm not sure why you think I'm not serious. I have had excellent relations with Beth's tech support people. In Daggerfall, I had various problems which caused the game to be virtually unplayable (including a couple of quest issues that were pretty major); a couple of calls to tech support fixed me right up. Morrowind, only one thing with a quest, but again tech support was very helpful. Now, if there's no longer a tech support line, that's different. I don't know, because other than one minor thing I'm not having any problems with the game.

Another interesting thing that I noted. The quest only advances stages when you level up IF you level up outside of Solitude. You must be a good measure away from there, Katla's Farm won't cut it. After you do get the quest stage advance because you leveled up, then and only then can you advance the quest via the setstage command.

I still haven't found any triggers beside leveling up though, which is quite unfortunate to be truthful.