Odd, never happened to me. But then again I was playing it on PS3.

I had something similar happen to me while playing through the thieves guild quest line. It was the second from last mission and for some reason the man who you receive the quests from isn't in the spot he's supposed to be. I eventually gave up because I'm sure I'd have to start a new game just to get passed the bug.

It's fortunate that you were able to work around the bug. I had a similar experience with Oblivion. During the thieves guild quest line (I'm pretty sure it's right before the last mission) for some reason the man who's supposed to be where I need to start the quest isn't there. He never shows up no matter what I've tried. I know I probably have to start a new game and try again, but I don't have that kind of time haha.

Yeah he was in the temple a few times when I didn't think he should have been, but at least in those cases I was able to interact with him, heh. Man that glitch had me worried for a while! Thanks for the welcomes, too!

Heh yeah I just recently got the Oblivion GOTY discs so I've been plowing through it...and yeah it's still a little buggy. :) Still, that's the first really bad one I've encountered. Haven't seen too many others and if I did they were fairly mild. And thanks for the hello! Just recently got into GB on a friend's recommendation and I'm really liking it!

Been a while since Shivering Isles was released hasn't it? Still pretty buggy though. :P Also you seem new judging by your post count, so hello!

Heh yeah I was pretty irritating, that's for sure. :) I'm just glad I had that save or else I would've had to go back a lot further. I like the Shivering Isles quests quite a bit, but I really didn't want to go back and start over as I'm pretty close to being finished!

Ouch! This has not happened to me when i was playing the Shivering Isles. You have got lucky it seems : )
 
Something similar happened in Fallout 3 with me, where i had to re-load saves, but the NPC was not there ever to meet him. Finally after about 6 tries, it worked.

While working through Oblivion in an effort to cull down my XBOX 360 Single Player Pending List, I hit a nasty bug. I only have the Shivering Isles quests left and after the "Retaking the Fringe" quest I was told to go back and visit Sheogorath to complete that quest and start the next. He wasn't in this throne room, however, and upon doing a little searching that's apparently a known bug in the game. There's a fix if you're playing the PC version, but on the 360 the best workaround seemed to be load up a previous save.
 
I had originally done the Ritual of Dementia quest, but luckily still had a save from when I was working on the Ritual of Mania for the achievement so I started from there and was able to get by the bug. Anytime I loaded a save from after the Ritual of Dementia was completed and ran through Retaking the Fringe again, I encountered the problem. Loading from before that quest started and going through the Ritual of Mania (actually just finishing it up) and then replaying Retaking the Fringe again worked finally. Crisis avoided!