I've sunk about seven hours each into two different characters, with (I thought) minor objectives for each. Spoilers follow.

My first was meant to complete the Companions quest line before starting anything else, and she got as far as the final quest (starting with attending the funeral) before Euorland decided not to attend, thus stalling the quest indefinitely. I've even looked around the town for him, but he appears to have vanished. Of course, not sensing that anything was wrong, I quicksaved and went into the underforge. By the time I realized something had failed to trigger, I had no saves that were less than three hours old, and a suspended quest. I've looked around for some console command that might fix it, but it seems many people have a problem and nobody has the answer. I would like a solution that doesn't involve needing to restart that character.

Deciding that I could wait for a solution, however, I made a new character. I decided to focus him on the main quest and joining the Stormcloaks, but importantly, he would need a home to store his goods. I decided to play until I could buy whatever house was available in Windhelm. During the quest Blood on the Ice I saw what was undoubtedly the house that would be up for sale, when I went to find the evidence in the empty house, I found one journal, and assumed after my quest updated that that was all there was to find there, and pressed onward. Well, now the court mage is in jail, the quest has been completed, and I've been out of the town several times for over a day each. According to the walkthrough on UESP there should be another crime scene, but I'm pretty sure that, since I skipped finding the amulet and speaking to the curio museum owner, that quest has too suspended itself. I don't care terribly about completing the quest itself, but I wanted that house, and the Stewart doesn't seem interested in talking about houses for sale.

I've invested at least fourteen hours into this game, for this. If anyone knows of solutions to these, I'd appreciate, but otherwise, I can't stand this low level of QA. If you can't weed out at least most of the game-breaking bugs (and these are just the ones I've encountered), don't make this complicated of a game.