Quote Originally Posted by Sauteed View Post
Not wanting to spoil anything but Urianger was in Walking Sands all during 5.0 and beyond for me. >_>
That's because you haven't finished off all his quests so he "can't leave" until you do so.

Essentially it's still his earlier self there, even though in the present time he has moved elsewhere.

If you finish off all of his quests, then the next time you go there, he will be gone.

They seem to avoid doing this with standing NPCs for the most part, which is why you have prerequisites like finishing the three hard-mode primals before the end of ARR so the other Scions aren't left sitting around the Waking Sands as well, and why all of Unukalhai's Lv60 quests have to be cleared before you can start on the Void quest story.

I think Urianger was in an awkward place story-wise for quite a while because of that early decision to make him a questgiver NPC - unlike the other Scions who can move about and "change appearance" (at a technical level, represented by a different character model) but he is permanently tied to that location and appearance for so long as the player hasn't done the quests - which could be never. He generally turns up in cutscenes and then departs again, or is only present with the group for a short time. I think it just got to a point where the writers have said "if the player hasn't cleared ARR story content by now, we can't keep holding up continuity for them".