Guild Wars 2

Only post once in this thread
Include the names of any affected characters on your account
Include the story step you were on before you skipped content or were put on a different story branch. There are three points where your story can skip or be changed:
lv 30 story: at the point where you choose an organization (Vigil, Durmand Priory, Order of Whispers.
lv 40 story: at the point when you choose a race to help (Quaggan, Skritt, Hylek, Grawl, Ogres).
lv 70 story: at the point when you choose your greatest fear (leave a friend to suffer; be responsible for the death of an innocent; fail at something and lose the respect of my comrades).
Do not post in this thread to ask for updates or make unrelated comments.

Account: Ohmydhaliwal
Quest: level 62 Human (After killing the dragon reset her to 26)

Character name: Phoebe Venatrix
Level story before changing: 76 “Ossuary of Unquiet Dead”
Changed back to level 26 quest “The Ravenous”

Character Name: Zeeza Anrohjen (EDIT: Charr Elementalist)
Issue: Story Mission “Estate of Decay (75)” is bugged with same issue of Sir Richter Belmont.
I progress into the first indoor room of which this “Kitah” person is on a stage adressing his guests, he and his associates leave despite his servants and my NPC group, and we are trapped in the small room of which the door is unable to open.

I have the same problem as Zeeza. The problem seems to be with the second door. It no longer makes the mission progress so you get stuck.

Character name: Moist Walrus
Issue: exact same as Zeeza. I’ve tried restarting many times and nothing has worked.

Same issues as above with Estate of Decay.

Kutt Ofyourjib
Sanctum of Rall

I have already submitted a bug report, I have been at a dead stop with my story for almost a week.

Same issues above with Estate of Decay.
Have a human guardian which has this problem.

Already submitted 2 bug reports.
First bug report about no progress.

Then 2 days later I had some progress. But still the second door cannot be opened, so I submitted my 2nd bug report.

Please fix this issue asap, cannot finish storyline with human guardian…

Edit Jeffrey thank you for the reply, since you mentioned that post about the known issue and its work around it worked.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Story-Skipped-or-Changed-merged/354830
11 days have passed since this post, still no “post in a separate thread”, still no updates about this problem.

I chose Order of Whispers with my husband’s Sylvari Ranger Kyar Shadowthorn (he entered first so he initiated the instance and I went along with his decision to select order of whispers) on his quest chain in the instance it had me as selected to speak with Cai. We logged for the night and the next evening when we went to go play it had me on the Vigil quest to talk to Branthyn. My husband’s character was not affected.

Character: Dewkiss Mizzrym (Sylvari Mesmer)
Server: Sanctum of Rall
lv 30 story: at the point where you choose an organization (Whispers)
Current “changed” story quest: Flower of Death

I would like to chose order of whispers. Thank you.

Jason King.2647:

Hi everyone,

We’ve been going through the reports of personal story getting skipped or changed and are thoroughly investigating the issue. To help us investigate further, we would appreciate it if you could post in this thread the name of your affected character(s).

Rules

• Only post once in this thread
• Include the names of any affected characters on your account
• Include the story step you were on before you skipped content or were put on a different story branch. There are three points where your story can skip or be changed:
  • lv 30 story: at the point where you choose an organization (Vigil, Durmand Priory, Order of Whispers.
  • lv 40 story: at the point when you choose a race to help (Quaggan, Skritt, Hylek, Grawl, Ogres).
  • lv 70 story: at the point when you choose your greatest fear (leave a friend to suffer; be responsible for the death of an innocent; fail at something and lose the respect of my comrades).
• Do not post in this thread to ask for updates or make unrelated comments.

Thanks for your help everyone!

My story changed
Character: Riannien
Step: level 30 story, group member chose Priory, I was shunted to Vigil, I want Priory

Character Name: Shinku Kazega
Story Before: Forging the Pact (level 62, I believe)
Story After: Striking Off the Chains (level 64)

More Info: My fiance and I have been follow the same story line ever since we had the chance to. I have progressed with him all the way to this point. It gave him Tower Down where as it gave me the Striking Off the Chains. It’s acting as though I chose the path of making another suffer when we both chose letting an innocent die.

• Caydyn Battleborn

• The Battle for Claw Island (sided with the Vigil )

• After completing the quest, the next quest i was given was, Reconnaissance, an Order of Whisper storyline quest. I seem to be stuck on OoW quest now, even though i picked the Vigil.
  on the bright side i have access to both the vigil and OoW HQ’s and gear now. Wonder how long that will last for

Affected character: Fhade (human warrior 80)
Organization: The order of whispers
Skipped from The battle of claw island
Skipped to: level 30 story

This happend about a month agoo

Name: “Heals Everyone”
lv 30 story: While playing with a group, we decided on Priory, but 3 of the 4 players were assigned Vigil instead.

Name: Lilith Natasha
lv 30 story: While playing with a group, we decided on Priory, but 3 of the 4 players were assigned Vigil instead.

Affected Character: Talia Whisperleaf
Story Branch: lv 30 story
Problem: Our group all joined Durmand Priory, and all but one of us were put in the Vigil
(I’m w/ mishmush)

Affected Character: Ryx Thornewood (Sylvari Thief 28)
Story Branch: lv 30 story

My wife and I just played “Trouble at the Roots” together. At the end, we selected the Priory option. She got the Priory quest, but I was given the Vigil quest (“Flower of Death”). I’d like the Priory branch please.

Is the final answer from ArenaNet that they will not fix players impacted by this bug? 12 pages of unhappy customers and the response appears to be “Sorry, delete and level to 30 (or 70!!!) again”?

Character Name: Layneae
Story Step: Level 30 – Pick an organization (We picked Whispers, I was assigned Vigil, my friend the right one)
Quest: Given “Flower of Death”, was supposed to get “A Tangle of Vines”

Hello folks,

A helpful fellow player sent me this link: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/BUG-Party-members-getting-sent-to-wrong-faction-when-sharing-their-Personal-Story/463999

I am extremely disappointed in this answer. Our group of 4 built our characters together and have carefully made decisions as a group to maximize our experience together. I don’t understand how this is impossible to fix. I realize that you may lack the ability to fix individual characters now, but clearly there is a need to do so and I believe Arena.net has the talent and skill to correct this. I’d happily wait, my character unplayed, until you re-set our story lines if you require more time.

You mention not being able to tell if the choice of organization was due to the bug or a personal decision you regret. I understand that. But, those of us who have documented our characters here have made it quite plain that this was a bug. If the fix has been implemented then just help those of us who have documented things properly as a bug when it was a known but unresolved issue.

UPDATE: Our group members have discussed this issue, we decided to just continue with our bugged characters. After reading the posts on this topic, we have no faith that the issue will be corrected, and we’ve decided to move on as a group.

This is a major disappointment after so much time spent planning and playing to avoid just this type of situation, but so be it.

MishMush.9823, Nalia.8975 and Jaden.8127

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/BUG-Party-members-getting-sent-to-wrong-faction-when-sharing-their-Personal-Story/first#post462642

We have record of Jeffrey Vaughn saying two days ago that the bug had been squashed, but it just affected me one day ago. And another poster has reported the problem since me. Kind of hard to “move on” if we can’t be sure the problem is actually fixed.

For future posters: if you can, please include the date and time that the bug affected you, so we can verify if it is indeed still alive.

Jeffrey, wouldn’t it be a great idea to put a message up on login informing users that the game is bugged and you guys have no intention of fixing the bugged players…so they dont play grouped with anyone unless they want to lose control of the path their character takes.

Character Name: Nis Enixel
Missions Affected: Did someone else’s progression quest called The Lost Chieftain’s Return while partying after completing the entire Pets and Walls Make Stronger Kraals mission under my progression. After being able to choose whether or not I wanted to complete this mission or stay in my previous mission, I said complete. This then gave me the Forewarned is Forearmed mission, which switched my affiliation from The Order of Whispers to The Vigil.

Just completed [Forging the Pact] in a group of three, but in my storyline.
Each of us had chosen their own fear during [A Light in the Darkness], but after we completed [Forging the Pact] it seems that everyone else was forced on my path, which is something none of us wanted and which was not indicated by accepting the out come of [Forging the Pact], as the decision was made in an entirely different mission. We had also accepted mission outcomes before without any effect on our own storyline, if said mission was available to everyone and was not linked to individual story paths, as should be the case with [Forging the Pact] (everyone passes that mission eventually, regardless of choice).

Gilbert Nolan
My character, was on the “leave a friend to suffer” story branch and continues there as he should.

Matevz Aed Azret
A friend who had chosen the fear to fail at something and lose the respect of comrades, but was forced onto my story path mentioned above after completion of [Forging the Pact].

Faedence Denoire
My girlfriend, who chose the fear of being responsible for the death of an innocent and is now also forced onto my path, despite her own decision she made in [A Light in the Darkness].

I know we are not supposed to post here to ask for updates, but it would be great to know if this is actually considered a bug, if we should wait with our stories in hopes of a fix or if we, or rather they, have to live with it and keep on playing because it won’t be fixed and there is no way to fix it.

Character Name: Vidkun Frostclaw
Organization: Durmond Priory

Story Step: The Lost Chieftain’s Return
Changed to: Suspicious Activity (Whispers)

Note: Upon completion of my wife’s instance of The Lost Chieftain’s Return, I was given the option to progress to Suspicious Activity, only to find out that it was a Whispers quest, not a Priory quest.

World: Anvil Rock
Affected character’s name : Borigan
Order: Durmand priory
Quaggans selected.
Mission: Evacuation
Did not receive any reward or given any xp. Upon zoning out of the instance I heard the sound you usually hear when getting a reward but no pop-up allowing me to choose.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

The fix won’t hit the live servers until the 10/22 content update.

Nope. Just logged on after the update and I am still on the wrong quest chain. I’m tired of getting jerked around on this issue. I’ve been sitting on this character for almost a month now and ANet keeps going back and forth on whether they will/can fix it. All I want is a straight answer… is this going to be fixed!?

Here is my issue again for reference…

“Character: Verdan Von Boom
Server: Ehmry Bay
Story: (lvl 30) Chose Priory, was placed in Vigil
Details: Was in a party with my wife (Rubyofdeath.4583 on Isabel Rosebud) during the quest to choose an order (Sylvari). It was her instance and she chose Priory. When she exited the instance I was given the usual option to choose to accept her choices and move on or reject. I chose to accept because I wanted the same order. Now I realize that I have been place in the Vigil instead. My wife was placed in the quest “Dead of Winter” which I assume is the Priory Quest."

same as Ombar. really disappointed and sad. I’ve wrote the bug here, in game, sand a ticket and still nothing. I know you probably have lots of similar bugs reported but still it’s 20 days now that I do not play my main. And now who knows how much longer.

Mr. Vaughn,
You have said that the build for the 22nd was going to fix the bug causing people to be mis-assigned at the level 28 mission step, but nothing was mentioned in the patch notes.
I am wondering what the means for the bug regarding people getting re-assigned after the secondary race chapter. Has that bug also been silently fixed? If not when will it be, and will there be a retroactive update to characters affected by it?

Thank you for your time.

To clarify, my understanding is that the bug where two people doing the mission to initially choose an order can end up in different orders is the one you were referencing and which was supposed to be fixed in the 22nd update (ref https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Story-Skipped-or-Changed-merged/472748).
I was hoping for information regarding the bug two chapters later where two characters in different orders completing one of the “help a minor race” missions together can end up in the same order (ref https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Story-Skipped-or-Changed-merged/496514).
If I misunderstood and both bugs are fixed and neither scenario will receive a retroactive fix then that answers my question. However your post was not clear about the second case, especially since it seems (perhaps naively, knowing nothing of your database schema), that it would be possible to search for characters that have suddenly changed orders. Either way nothing was mentioned in the patch notes about either case and so it would be nice to have some assurance that either or both bugs have been or when they will be fixed.

Thanks.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I’ve said it before, we’ve fixed the bug to prevent it from affecting new players, but we CANNOT fix characters that have already been affected. There is NO differencetween a character that was sent to the Vigil because of the bug, and one that chose the Vigil, so there is no way to do any automatic fix. CS does NOT have the ability to change a character’s active story steps, so this is not something that can be dealt with on a case by case basis if you petition them. I wish I had better news, but I’m just being brutally honest.

Where was this ever stated? Here is every red post that has been posted since we got you to resticky this issue several weeks ago. I’ve added emphasis to Gail’s quote that gave us all hope this would be fixed for us. Put shortly, your customer service and communication on this issue has been a huge disappointment…

Gaile Gray.6028:

Now, we are aware that there are a couple of other bugs related to story steps.

1. The first involves a split in parties paths upon selection of one’s Order. I’ll update a separate thread about that and you’ll be happy to know that this one has been repro’d and a fix tentatively developed. Upon successful testing, it will be rolled to live.
2. The second involves a similar kind of split when the party chooses their greatest fear (at level 70). This fix is under review by QA and the details are not yet fully known. It will be addressed as soon as we are able to replicate and then develop a fix.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Edge.4180:

Would appreciate more information on this and how to best avoid running into problems.

Short answer: if you’re playing a Sylvari, don’t group with someone when they choose their order. The issue I’m aware of happens to secondary players who choose to advance their story past the “choose your order” story step, but never actually chose an order. (The player who “owned” the story step will be fine.)

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

As noted earlier, if you have a character who was jumped forward in their story (a while ago), you were reset back to the L26 step where you choose an order, so you won’t miss any content.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

How did you do the quest twice? Did your friend NOT accept progress the first time?

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

At what point did your next quest change? Did it suddenly go from “Tower Down” to “Shell Shock”? What was your next listed step when you finished “Forging the Pact”? Just looking at the journal there’s no apparent issue, it looks like it would for any character that chose that story branch.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Note that the “Estate of Decay” bug has nothing to do with this thread topic.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/story/Estate-of-Decay-Enter-and-find-the-Scouting-Party/374430

TL;DR Known issue, jumping on TOP of the door will allow you to interact with it.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

The fix won’t hit the live servers until the 10/22 content update.

Ombar,
The relevant post is actually in another thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/BUG-Party-members-getting-sent-to-wrong-faction-when-sharing-their-Personal-Story/first#post354852

I agree the communication about this has been less clear than it could have been. For what it’s worth the part of Gaile Gray’s post you highlighted just indicates a fix for the bug causing the issue rather than a retroactive fix for affected characters.

I’m not trying to be an apologist, just save you some time waiting for an official response.

Gaile Gray.6028:

Now, we are aware that there are a couple of other bugs related to story steps.

1. The first involves a split in parties paths upon selection of one’s Order. I’ll update a separate thread about that and you’ll be happy to know that this one has been repro’d and a fix tentatively developed. Upon successful testing, it will be rolled to live.
2. The second involves a similar kind of split when the party chooses their greatest fear (at level 70). This fix is under review by QA and the details are not yet fully known. It will be addressed as soon as we are able to replicate and then develop a fix.

It would be interesting to know if there is any progress regarding the second issue, which me and my friends and also a lot of other players seem to have experienced.
I know we are not supposed to ask for updates and I’m sure you guys are doing your best and probably have had more than enough headaches from certain issues and posts, but so far all the updates I have read only focused on the first issue (choosing orders at lvl 30).

According to the post from Gaile, there is a fix for the issue with loosing your chosen fear storyline, which at that time was still under review. Is that still the case? It would be great to know if players, like my friends, should actually wait to get their choices back. While I could progress my story, I don’t want to move on without them and if they join me I fear it might have further consequences for their originally chosen storyline and a possible fix. Long story short, we are not sure what to do at this point…

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I’ve said it before, we’ve fixed the bug to prevent it from affecting new players, but we CANNOT fix characters that have already been affected. There is NO differencetween a character that was sent to the Vigil because of the bug, and one that chose the Vigil, so there is no way to do any automatic fix. CS does NOT have the ability to change a character’s active story steps, so this is not something that can be dealt with on a case by case basis if you petition them. I wish I had better news, but I’m just being brutally honest.

Indeed, this is disappointing news.

Firstly: how can players enjoy a “personal story” knowing that any of their decisions might be ignored by the server, with no way to correct the error? This particular bug might have been fixed, but there may be others hidden in the code with similar consequences. The sense of agency I have over my character’s destiny alongside the interplay of projective and virtual identities are fundamental to my enjoyment of role-playing games. These senses have now been compromised and I feel as if the ‘magic circle’ has just collapsed around me.

Secondly, coming from a programming background: I must say I am completely astonished by the notion that, in this case, the relevant stakeholders lacked the foresight to ensure that the functionality neccessary for altering character states was exposed the to the customer support team. So much so, that I am not convinced that such a reputable developer would succumb to such a pitfall. Unless my conception of how the game servers and their related databases operate is completely wrong, such functionality must have existed at some point during development and testing. Is this a case of administrative considerations?

I saw this in another thread:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

The problem is that there is literally no difference between a character who intentionally picked the Vigil and one who got sent there by the bug, so there’s simply no way to automatically fix affected characters. Our CS team does not have the ability to change your current quest or order, either, so it’s not something that we can manually fix on a case by case basis, either.

Please feel free to correct me, but as I understand it: while the customer support team does not have the ability to modify player states, the engineering team does. This has been evidenced by their retroactive repair of those players who have been experiencing skipped quests. Unfortunately, it is likely that the engineers are few in number and very busy, consequently being unable to deal with problems on a case-by-case basis.

So the core issue preventing a fix is the automated identification of those affected.

Correct?

It was possible for the engineers to identify those accounts affected by the ‘skipping quests’ bug because there were some obvious artefacts in their character data. Since these artefacts are based on completing/not completing quests, I would assume that such a checking function exists. A script was then written, whereby these accounts were singled out automatically and then repaired as appropriate.

However, I would argue there are some criteria that would identify many (if not most) of the accounts affected by the order choice issue. Have you considered a potential query along the lines of: " ‘race:sylvari’ AND ‘order:vigil’ AND !questComplete(‘quest_vigil_1’) " and possibly also checking data/time for active quest started/previous quest completed if such data exists?

Jason King.2647:

Hey everyone, I’ve updated the OP with the status of the bugs which caused your story to skip or be changed, and posted the current, outstanding bugs that you may still encounter if you run complete a story mission as part of a group.

Thank you. May I also suggest that a link to that post be stickied as the top-most thing on the client login feed? It can only help limit the number of people affected by the bugs. Because honestly, how many players visit or keep up with the bug forums unless they’ve been affected and want to report or check on the status of it? Especially when dealing with an apparently irreparable issue it seems important to make sure people know to avoid it. You might have also saved a lot of upset players in this thread if this had been done two months ago when it became clear there were issues in the first place. I also hope that any future permanent, irreparable bugs are made known as quickly and publicly as possible.

(edit: snip a bunch of passive-aggressive crankiness – typing it was cathartic but it really wasn’t quite appropriate)

I noticed the updated OP no longer includes the issue where a player’s greatest fear choice is mismatched in the Battle for Fort Trinity and onwards.

I still have Liberating Apatia when I should have the one about Engineer Tonn.

Is a fix for this still in the pipeline, or should I give up and just do the quest?

Bethryn.4087:

I noticed the updated OP no longer includes the issue where a player’s greatest fear choice is mismatched in the Battle for Fort Trinity and onwards.

I still have Liberating Apatia when I should have the one about Engineer Tonn.

Is a fix for this still in the pipeline, or should I give up and just do the quest?

This isn’t clear enough?

Jason King.2647:

I’m not a programmer, so I can’t speak to the specific of the system, but it’s been made clear to me that there are no differentiating “artifacts” in the currently affected players’ character data. In other words, while we would reset players if it were possible, we cannot make any further retroactive fixes.

As Jeffrey stated, we’re come to a point where we want to make this clear so that players who have been waiting for a retroactive fix know what the status of this issue is. Thank you for your understanding on this matter.

Silvermink.1456:

This isn’t clear enough?

Jason King.2647:

I’m not a programmer, so I can’t speak to the specific of the system, but it’s been made clear to me that there are no differentiating “artifacts” in the currently affected players’ character data. In other words, while we would reset players if it were possible, we cannot make any further retroactive fixes.

As Jeffrey stated, we’re come to a point where we want to make this clear so that players who have been waiting for a retroactive fix know what the status of this issue is. Thank you for your understanding on this matter.

This is in reference to having your order changed because of playing in a group isn’t it?

I – and many others – had our greatest fear mucked up without ever playing in a group.

To any Arenanet employee reading, may I suggest a separate fix? If you can’t fix a chain that has been broken in this way, could we simply ask you to reset us back to the beginning of the Greatest Fear choice in our quest line? That way, assuming you’ve fixed the issue now, we can pick the same fear again and this time progress without bugs.

Bethryn.4087:

If you can’t fix a chain that has been broken in this way, could we simply ask you to reset us back to the beginning of the Greatest Fear choice in our quest line?

Unfortunately they’ve been pretty adamant that they are unwilling to do any retroactive storyline fixing where the detection step can’t be completely automated. So skipping 18 levels worth of missions they can detect and fix, but a choice being mis-recorded they can’t search the database for so no fixing.

Takeko.8735:

Unfortunately they’ve been pretty adamant that they are unwilling to do any retroactive storyline fixing where the detection step can’t be completely automated. So skipping 18 levels worth of missions they can detect and fix, but a choice being mis-recorded they can’t search the database for so no fixing.

That’s for when their order gets switched within a quest.

That’s not what happened here.

I did all three quests with Engineer Tonn. There is a history of this in my Personal Story tab, which is obviously stored in a database somewhere.

Now I have the quest Liberating Apatia. That’s very easy to check against my Greatest Fear selection.

My issue is that this issue was considered recognised beforehand in this thread, and now it’s not even included in the updated OP.

My apologies. I’m not that far in the storyline, I hadn’t realized there was a common mission in the middle of that chain. But just looked closer at the storyline flowchart on the wiki and there you go.

Good luck, I hope you can get it fixed.

I think the fix wouldn’t even have to go as far as resetting those affected all the way back to choosing the fear, which took place during [A Light in the Darkness].

As mentioned before, the trouble for my friends started when they completed [Forging the Pact] with me and accepted progress as none of us expected that their storyline decision from way back would just be overwritten. But it happened. So the fix in this case would be to simply reset this mission for them, so they can redo it themselves. This is the reason we have not yet touched our personal stories again and are still at the same spot after finishing [Forging the Pact] and before starting the first fear step, which would now be [Striking off the Chains] for all of us, even though they did not make the choice. I can understand they do not want to reset entire chapters, but perhaps it is possible in such cases, where people literally stopped in their tracks and waited because they were afraid to break even more or prevent a fix if they moved on?

Not sure if the same approach of taking one step back would work for Bethryn and others with similar problems. I find it really awkward that you could at first play your fear storyline and now are stuck with the wrong finale even though you never teamed up with anyone. If that is in fact the case, I guess simply redoing the last step – I believe that would be the [Battle for Fort Trinity] – wouldn’t help. You did that one and all of the fear storyline before that solo, but still ended up with the wrong finale?

And yes, I also agree with you that the state of our issue is rather confusing at the moment, as it was treated separately from the order selection bug, but all updates we heard of so far were only related to that very issue. Which is why we are not sure right now if the other issue, the fear storyline, is still being worked on, has been forgotten or is also beyond hope and not fixable.

at least you could have give some kind of compensation to the players that have been affected by this bug. I skipped all the cinematics after the bug, cos i’m really not interested in the story that is not “my story”.

Jason King.2647:

I’m not a programmer, so I can’t speak to the specific of the system, but it’s been made clear to me that there are no differentiating “artifacts” in the currently affected players’ character data. In other words, while we would reset players if it were possible, we cannot make any further retroactive fixes.

As Jeffrey stated, we’re come to a point where we want to make this clear so that players who have been waiting for a retroactive fix know what the status of this issue is. Thank you for your understanding on this matter.

Thank you for your clarification Jason.

I believe that, if the system were designed appropriately, a retroactive fix would have been possible. Artifacts should exist, based on the conditions required to reproduce the bug, by the behaviour of the players affected by it, and other data collected for the purpose of design analytics. However, I understand your position. This is a discussion to be had with the programming team if I ever meet them at a conference in the future.

There is a lesson that should be learned here.