Today about 4pm est, when I logged on I was no longer in PA and my buddy list was gone.

Exiting VO and restarting corrected the problem(s).

Maybe you accidentally selected the wrong character?

Nope, he selected the right character and was still visible in guild chat.

Yeah, this happened to one of my characters too. I didn't really care, because I just restarted VO and it worked perfectly.

I can confirm this one for space999999/Thespian. We all thought it was pretty darn weird.

Maybe the game was trying to do you a favor.

Definately not the wrong character.....