at winterhold the last task in "First Lessons" says listen to tolfdir. i did some communicating with him and now it just says he is busy and i cant talk to him in order to advance?

Another quest breaking bug? What a surprise. Bethesda are fast becoming a joke company who release a game hardly anyone can play and manage to do all the quests.

well im supposed to do a ward spell but he doesnt respond, the youtube video of another person has him throwing a fireball then it finishes the quest.

I have no idea mate, i refuse to play my copy until this game has been heavily patched. It is a joke of a product at the moment.

Same problem for me. Very frustrating. I hope an update will fix it and I don't have to forgo that whole quest line...because there's no way I'm going back to one of my really old saves

I had no problem with this one. Is there an enemy around outside (ie a dragon)?

I have a similar problem. I did have a dragon appear at one point as various staged-conversation stuff was going on outside of the College's interior entry area (where Tolfdir is putting on his lesson), which I think interrupted/prevented the Mirabelle tour from ever taking place. I was able to pick the quest back up at the Tolfdir lecture, and it progressed to the point of him asking me to stand in the circle opposite him and cast Lesser Ward, but he never casts the fireball at me that he evidently is supposed to cast. I do not get the message that he's busy. Instead, I get a dialogue option screen in which I can ask him what he's selling, if he'll train me in Alteration, and if he will give me advice about using Wards. I did have a follower with me when I initiated the lecture. I did have Lesser Ward already in my repertoire of spells (I think my response to him when he asked if I knew a ward was something like, "I have the spell, but I don't know much about using it.").

Also, being a beefy battleax-wielding Argonian, I wasn't really interested in doing the College stuff, so I didn't progress through the First Lessons quest anything like all at once. I first came back after doing the business with Faralda to speak to a certain librarian about certain transcendent parchments (which I believe is when the dragon attack interrupted the tour I may or may not have started) and only came back to the College later so I could get access to Saarthal.

I tried pushing Tolfdir off of his circle and recasting Lesser Ward once he'd retaken his proper position, but no luck. I tried asking my follower to wait a little distance away, but no luck. I tried leaving my follower outside in the courtyard, but again, no luck. I also tried attacking him-- both just once and enough to provoke a full-on brawl-- but that also failed to fix the problem (after sheathing my ax had allowed the dust to settle, obviously). According to a few other sites, the quest evidently will semi-reset if the player goes and does other stuff for a while. Guess I'll be trying that until this is fixed. Initially I didn't have the quest set as active (which hasn't mattered for anything else), but then I did set it to active. It didn't work either way.

Although I don't share any of DragonKin's hostility for Bethesda or the quality of the game it has released, I do think it's kind of embarrassing that the first quest in what I understand is a line of quests would be bugged-- and apparently in multiple ways, with both Mirabelle and Tolfdir struggling with their lines. Calling it a "joke company," however, is a joke of an assessment. Yeah, it svcks that some of the quests sometimes don't work very well, but the game is massive, beautiful, detailed, and a lot of fun to play. I've had plenty of awesome, awesome experiences with this game already, and I'd imagine the bug will be fixed sooner rather than later as long as people report it. It's the first significant glitch I've encountered, and I would guess I'm already well over 40 hours of playtime into it. That's hardly evidence of a joke product.

Same issue here, as i am a high elf that focuses on Mage its a real showstopper for me at the moment

Ouch. I tried waiting it out some in my game, but either it didn't work or I didn't wait long enough. I probably tacked on about 4 hours of game time doing quests connected to the main plot before going back, and Tolfdir was still standing there, stubbornly refusing to cast the fireball spell I know he really wants to cast.

I've had the same problem with Farkas in the Companions and this guy. Reloading a save before you talk to him managed to fix the problem for me with this guy. Don't know if it works with Farkas too because I don't have a save before I talked to him.