I've come to the point where I can't continue to play through any of the games main quests or Fighters Guild quests because the gates in these ruins simply won't work.
The first issue I ran into was in the Fighters Guild, during the Azani Blackheart quest. You know, where you head down one ruin with Oryen, decide he isn't there, then head to Atatar, find him, kill him, and thats it.
In the second floor of Atatar, I encountered a gate, with a door directly to the right of it with a push block behind it. In this layout, pictured below, this is exactly what I did.
When I came in, I instantly went left, and "activated" the iron gate in the Northeast corner of the room. It gave me the "This gate is opened elsewhere" line, so I went around, cleared the room, and eventually found my way to the block. I tried to activate the iron gate near the block, and I did NOT get that message. In fact, that was the last time I ever got that message for the Iron Gates in the Aelyid ruins.
So I pushed the block a dozen times, and nothing happened, it didn't openthat gate. I didn't have a save anywhere near there, so I scoured the net and the official boards and eventually found an account of someone who had closed the door to the cubby where the push block is, and that got the block to work. Amazingly, it did. I opened the gate, went down, shivved the guy, and came back up... but the exit block didn't work. No worries, I had a plenty high acrobatics skills and could get out the way I came in
even though the bridge collapsed.
Gravy, Oryen isn't following me. Moving on to the Stone of St. Alessia quest, I head out, find Sedor. My sneak is ultra high and I didn't feel like dealing with Savage Ogres (I think was lvl 18 at the time), so I went sneaking around until I decided to kill them anyways. During my sneaking around, I hit the pressure plate that opens the gate upstairs that lets you get to the push block that opens the gate infront of the stone.
After killing one and realizing they were Grand souls, I went out, found a bunch of empty grand soul gems, and came back to clear the place. I kill all the ogres, then realized what happened. I hit the pressure switch, and now itcan't be pushed again, and I can't open the door to finish the quest. And I still can't.
Again, I scoured the net and these boards, and theres an account of someone who said screw it, went out and did some other quests and tried here and there, and eventually it worked. So I went out and started the mages guild quests, trying now and again to get the stone. Eventually the dungeon "reset" it self to the point where all the ogre corpses were gone and the pressure switch was usable again, but no matter how many times Itried, reloaded, waited, and whatever, it never worked. I still haven't
finished that quest.
So I went thorugh the entire Mages guild, now I'm just down to the end of the fighters guild and the end of the main quest. Since Sedor still didn't work, I decided to go for the end of the Main quest, in which point I'm at Miscarcand. And still am. After being in there for about 5 minutes and realizing that it's the same crap all over again, I just gave up. Never did any of the Iron Gates give me the "This gate is opened elsewhere" trigger, and all the other triggered gates (sewers, other dungeons and caves with 'prison-like' bars) still work fine. But not the Aelyid ruins.