Samuel_Tow

I'm not sure there's much I can say that would help you there, then. As I said before, games are inherently wasteful and achievements in them don't really matter. Animals play games to learn the basic skills of survival, but it is applying those skills for real that accomplishes anything. Humans, for the most part, play games to have fun. If you had fun, that's all that matters. Trying to look for something in a game that makes you feel proud strikes me as a futile search, as there really isn't anything in gaming to be proud of. By their very nature, they are not productive.

I suppose if you really want something to take pride in, you should look at artistic achievement. This is the one solitary piece of gaming that has an out-of-game achievement potential to it. A game comes with rules, and playing the game within its rules to its very end is not much different than watching a movie all the way through. However, creating a work of art within the confines of the game can and often does transcend the simple experience of going through the motion and gives you an idea that's more valuable than just the medium which spawned it.

When I say "artistic achievement," I mean great costumes, great character stories or even great architect arcs. I'm talking about creating something which is not just an experience of your own, but something you can share with other people and in so doing affect them, even if it's in some small way. I have a scant few characters that, when I've shown them to people, they have inspired creativity in others. To me, that's something to be proud of because it's something more than just entertaining myself. It's entertaining and enriching others, and that IS an achievement.

However, what you describe strikes me less as search for something that makes you feel epic and more a case of burnout and boredom. I've been there before. The one time when I was seriously going to quit City of Heroes, as a point of fact, and missed two months of subscription back in September to November of 2004. When you find yourself forcing yourself to play something that you don't find fun, but constantly keep telling yourself that if you just reached this milestone or earned that reward then the game will suddenly stop being so unfun, that if you suffer just a little longer, things will be better. The sad truth is that they never are. If you have to bribe yourself to continue playing, you're doing it wrong.

I don't really know what solution to offer you here. What works for me is either returning to an old character or making a new one. And a character who's more than just a combo of powersets, but a character with a fleshed-out story and personality, someone whom I can look at and go "I'd like to see a movie about this character!" I'm not sure what could work for you, but variety and comfort are your only sanctuary. Look at adding variety in your game. Play characters you didn't think you wanted to, change up your play style and, if all else fails, play other games. Even a simple break of a couple of days playing something else makes a difference. Also, look into your playstyle and try to pinpoint the things that bug you. Then, just try to play without doing them. Doesn't matter the practical consequences - just try to avoid the things you don't like and see if you can't be happier that way. Don't like playing Incarnate farms? Don't. Try it out for a while.

In the end, again, there really is no real solution to these kinds of problems. I can, at best, point you in the direction of what I think the problem is - burnout and you torturing yourself with activities you don't like - but the solution is something you'll have to find for yourself. Because, all things considered, each person is different and unique in his or her own way, and so no solution will work for all, or even most people. You need to do a bit of soul-searching and find your own answers in this case, because only you can know what works for your personality.

Slightly off-topic, but yes, there's that. Every time someone says that there's no reason to not be an Incarnate, I point to this particular reason - it's HORRIBLE gameplay! It's painful, unfun work, and that alone is reason enough to not bother with it. And they're presenting this as the game's chief selling point and one single thing you can't get unless you subscribe? Heh...

Leaving aside the logistics of guessing exactly WHAT I am to make a canon character correspond to that, the Letter Writer being "me" is just about the worst possible outcome I can imagine. Consider the alternate versions of ourselves that we've seen:

Alternate dimension me in the dead ghost world where I became powerful and evil and killed everybody, then the ghosts killed me and proceeded to live in eternal undead torment for all times. Yikes!

Future me who fought with Recluse for control over Arachnos, in the process instigating and fighting many, many wars, eventually killing everyone in the world and leaving behind an undead graveyard of angry ghosts. Yikes!

Alternate dimension me who is kind of good but very incompetent and weaker than me in every aspect, and eventually dies via having a bridge fall on him. Ugh...

I've yet to see an alternate version of my character who wasn't either a complete dick or completely ineffectual. If the Letter Writer really is a future version of my character, then we are all SOL.

This is where plot contrivance really grates. The Letter Writer warns that we should not question the Menders openly because we will suffer. Why? Suppose the first time I find a letter in a box I walk up to Mender Silos, hand him said letter and go "Hey, look what I found." Under what leap of logic would he elect to kill me, even assuming he has the power to do so? If the letter held proof that the Menders are corrupt, and proof enough to actually convince someone who weren't preconditioned to believe unsigned, undated propaganda, what does he care? Someone wrote a letter full of lies and I didn't believe any of them. Why would Silos act on this?

We know now that Silos is Nemesis. Given these circumstances, I would assume him to be a smart guy. I would assume him to be clever enough to tell that if I'm showing him a letter that says "Do not show to Mender Silos," then I probably don't believe the letter and I'm probably on his side anyway. Now, granted, I get that the game couldn't do that in I11, and probably can't even to this day. But it's one thing to accept a simple limitation of the game system. It's quite another to swallow the Letter Writer's lies about the dangers of bringing this up with Ourobors.

Now, OK, I get that if I went up to Lazarus and told him to his face that I thought he was a deranged lunatic who performs crazy experiments and will one day doom us all, he might be upset. I get that if I went up to Twilight's Son and told him I thought he was responsible for the monstrous tragedy that befell his entire race, he may be justifiably angry. But if I went up to either of them and told them "Hey, I found a letter of lies about you. Will it help if I told you where and when I found it?" are they seriously going to go all "Traitor!" on me? Seriously?

I bring up doubting the Letter Writer because we really aren't given an option to do otherwise. The Letter Writer instructs us to not question Ourobors and we don't, because the game gives us no option to do so. This may be why I choose to distrust him so completely, but when the game forces me to mistrust NPCs that are actively helping me and trust some random person who writes intentionally cryptic letters... I distrust the latter. If anything, I expect the Letter Writer to turn out to be helping the Coming Storm, hence I'd guess it might be whoever may gain from such an event. Like the Hamidon or even someone from Praetoria.

Or why not Ubelmann the Unknown?

Maybe I misunderstand something, but isn't that a good thing? You're not gated out of almost anything and you can have everything good in due time. Isn't that kind of what all games should be like? Because the only two alternatives I can think of that can work instead of gating things behind time is gating them behind real money (Freedom) and gating them behind exclusively hard tasks. Honestly, neither of those are good solutions, as far as I'm concerned, if for no reason other than because they mean I can't have it.

Call it a selfish desire, but I'm not a good player, yet I want to have the good stuff. I specifically chose City of Heroes (once I knew what it was about) expressly because it allows me to have fun and have cool stuff without ruining my own fun by turning the game into a professional sport. City of Heroes has always been generous with us and given us stuff just for showing up, which allows me to both play however I like and still get the rewards I'm after. And to me, that's a good thing.

That's a problem that has no solution, because it comes down to what you want. And what DO you want out of the game, Nyx? Ask yourself this question and try to come up with an answer that can be said in a single sentence. Because, frankly, I feel it's a question you NEED to ask. Once you have an answer to this, then we can start looking for a solution.

The reason I say this is you don't play your low-level characters because they're too weak and you don't play your high-level characters because they're too strong. Unfortunately, there is no Goldilocks solution here. There never has been. You need to define the kind of experience you're after and then we can work on finding out what you need to achieve it.

As I can't offer you a workable solution, I can offer you my own objective and solution to it as an example:

Some time ago, I realised that the more I did things I didn't want to do, the less I felt like playing the game. Things I didn't want to do included participating in large teams, waiting for team tasks to form, min-maxing characters and taking part in the economy. My primary objective, then, became to play a City of Heroes with as few irritants as possible. My solution, then, became to avoid the Inventions system almost entirely, to build all of my characters to solo and join teams only as an exception not as the status quo, and to focus on writing stories for all of my characters that I could take with me outside the game.

That's just an example, of course, but you need to think about this in a more pragmatic and less emotional sense.

Here's the thing - why are we constantly doubting what the Menders are saying but never once have I heard anyone speculate that the Letter Writer is full of **** and just doing his own things. Granted, the Menders aren't exactly open about what they're doing, but this alone isn't reason enough to mistrust them. On the flip side, we have someone who doesn't even have the balls to meet us in person who's asking us to trust him because... He has the ability to put letters in crates? And, yes, he IS asking us to trust him in that there's something to mistrust.

Now, granted, maybe that's my own bias talking here, but when someone tells me "Don't trust anyone, even me, but instead look for the truth." that's almost always someone who wants to fool me. If the answer to the question "Why should I trust you?" is "You shouldn't." then I don't. The easiest way to introduce doubt where doubt doesn't exist is to constantly throw around "what if" scenarios with absolutely no backing than because you said so, creating circular logic. For instance:

Lazarus is evil because I said so. If Lazarus is evil, then his apparent madness (which isn't even all that apparent) makes sense. If he's mad in this particular way, then it makes sense that he's evil, doesn't it? Or Twilight's Son. He sold his own people, so he feels guilty. Wait, so that explains why he feels guilty - because he sold his own people.

It's pretty standard propaganda, if you ask me. It's demonising people by making up horror stories about them. Remember how WW1 Keiser Germany soldiers were being touted as baby-murdering huns who want to eat your liver? You know, because they did things they never actually did. But you had video footage of British actors in WW1 German army uniforms doing these things, so it must be true, right?

If I have to distrust someone, it's the Letter Writer. He's the one who recruits violent sadistic murderers and threatens me that I'll be buried under the wreckage of Ourobors when the citadel crashes into the sea. He clearly has a problem with Silos that goes above and beyond simple pragmatism and approaches Dr. Doom's obsession with Reed Richards and he's constantly trying to get me on his side when I don't want his stupid letters to begin with. This is a conspiracy theory story where I'm expected to trust the one person who claims a very unlikely truth, and I simply don't roll that way.

Far as I'm concerned, the Letter Writer's letters are propaganda. They're empty words with nothing to back them up. Until he shows his face and takes action, I consider him to be the one lying, if for no reason other than because I don't enjoy being told of a future where I'm working with a man I have no reason to trust or like, like he's robbing me of my free will and my choice. Silos may be Nemesis, but at least the guy never told me I'd be his manservant.

We disagree on a fundamental basis, then, because that's precisely what I want out of a game - repeatability. To my eyes, "achievements" in games are nothing more than pink elephants. They're make-pretend rewards that trick us into feeling like we've done something meaningful when all we've really done is waste time we could have spent being productive. Games are a past time, a form of leisure and recreation. All that matters with them is if you had fun, achievement or no achievement. They are not a professional sport, they are not a competition and they are not, above all else, work.

Yes, that I will eventually win at a game is a foregone conclusion. That's what I pay for. Barring incredibly bad judgement on my part (hello, Repo Man), if I go to a movie, it's a foregone conclusion that this movie will have a happy ending, and the fun of it is more in how the action gets to that point. And, yes, I do research my movies and look for spoilers before I commit to watching a movie as I'm tired of watching depressing crap like Dark Water. When I rent a movie, I pay for that movie-going experience. I find a happy ending as no real achievement, because a happy ending is what I pay for. It's the journey from beginning to end that matters the most.

These days, I don't play games without replayability, or at the very least I don't pay for them. The only time I'll say that I like a game is when I finish it and feel like wanting to start it all over again from scratch and trying again. Limbo, depressing of a mess as it is, is a good example. Beating it is not an achievement. Far from it - when I got stuck, I went to GameFAQs.com and read up on how to beat the puzzles. No, it is a good example in that the game is exerts such little pressure on me to finish it (mostly because I don't find it scary or sad) that playing it costs me no endurance, and I can start it all over again. THAT is the kind of game I want.

Oh, sure, MMOs are designed to be time sinks because they aim to keep you subscribed as long as possible. I hope Freedom will change this for City of Heroes, but that's besides the point. Yes, MMOs are time sinks, but even so, progress in them is repeatable. I would not have 9 level 50s (down from 13 at one point) and 50+ characters altogether, a lot of them in their 30s and 40s. Yes, it takes time, but so long as I know I will eventually get to the end just fine, I will keep paying my $15 and keep on chugging, because I enjoy the game at all levels.

Granted, all of this is personal opinion and preference. We simply appear to disagree on what makes for a good game. I lost my emotional attachment to video games, such that I would search for real-world merit to playing them. I've accepted that they are a waste of my time, but so long as I pay my bills and do my job, I get to do whatever I damn well please with my time, wasting it included. Games are a hobby, and hobbies don't have to mean anything at all.

*edit*
Something more concept-specific - there's nothing wrong with having your few favourite characters and always have them be the most powerful. Not all characters are created equal, and that wouldn't make for a very good story even if they were. So I have may own examples of Mary Sue and Marty Stu, and I always tell their stories as though they're the most powerful, and I'll probably make sure they had the best stuff if the game didn't give all characters the same opportunities. And if I didn't refuse to trade resources between characters.

This, to me, is the death knell for the entire Incarnate system. I could conceivably see myself maybe possibly suffering through the pain and making a single character a powerful Incarnate. However, it's such an unfun pain in the ***, there's no chance in hell I'm ever going to do that ever again. It's like asking me to make another Stone/Stone Brute other than my 50 without any fixes for Stone Armour. Yeah, not gonna' happen. It hurts way too much. In this regard, I can definitely see what you're saying - the Incarnate system has very, VERY limited replayability simply for the effort it takes to progress through it.

The rest of the game, though, I disagree is the same way. You speak of concepts and stories, but you speak as though final performance is all that matters, and I don't agree with that approach. To me, level 50 is as much the end of the game now as it always was, because at level 50, my characters' progression is done. Sure, I can keep playing them, but much of the fun of playing them is seeing them grow from a lowly wimp who can barely take down a few minions to a powerhouse who can take down entire divisions without breaking a sweat. It's that sense of progression that drives my gaming experience to a large extent.

In fact, right now I'm in the process of planning a curious reroll. My level 33 MA/SR Scrapper is going to disappear and be replaced with a SJ/MA Scrapper starting back at level 1. The deleted character's powerset combo, however, will not go unused, as I'll be making a brand new level 1 MA/SR Scrapper with a completely different concept. A pragmatic person would ask me why I don't just repurpose the old character into the new concept. I would answer that I want to play my character the whole way through (other than not wanting to spring $10 for a rename and run with the wrong origin).

The game doesn't begin at 50, not for me. It ends at 50. Performance at level 50 isn't all that matters because I won't spend the majority of a character's play time playing at the level cap.

I think this was developer offhand commentary that suggested this, way, way, WAY back in the past. Back in 2005 when I7 came out featuring Arachnoids, Castle spoke about wanting to make them into some kind of super threat that no-one could beat alone, not even their minions. That's why their regeneration is so stupid-high - enemy regeneration was to CoV what ambushes are to Going Rogue. He spoke about having to nerf their powers significantly for reasons OTHER than this not being fare, but also brought up the Battalion as an enemy group which, if it were ever put in the game, WOULD be unsoloable.

Of course, that's Castle being Castle - he loved making enemies who are stronger than us by a fair margin. That's also the old era of Jack Emmert trying his best to kneecap solo players and force them to team. In this regard, the Battalion were brought up and explained. I think that this is when it was suggested that the Battalion is what caused the Rikti to mutate. In the Omega Clearance, it is speculated that the Rikti may have done this to themselves, so I'm still prepared to believe that the Batallion are what caused their transformation, if only by proxy.

Either way, though, no matter at what point it was that the Rikti fought the Battalion, it was in the past. If the Coming Storm turns out to be Nemesis soldiers melding with Rularuu and becoming the Battalion, it would put their creation in the future and past the occurrence of events they were supposed to take part in. I'm also pretty sure they're both space aliens and ancient, again from what was said at the time. There were a lot of mentions of these guys back in the I7-I8 period, and mostly for no real reason. I think the Shivans brought up the point similarly to how the Arachnoids did.

Of course, I could be wrong on all counts. I'm going off memory.

Err... On what planet? I don't have a single 50 that's under 300 hours - that's three HUNDRED hours. And I don't exactly waste my time or play slow classes.

The thing with the Battalion is that they're said to have been the alien race to evolve the Rikti from the humans of their dimension into... Well, the Rikti. Now, I can't say whether the Battalion actively mutated the Rikti or simply presented a threat serious enough to uproot their entire culture and society, but they do have a place in the Rikti timeline, and that place is I think several hundred years in the past. We know this because the Rikti mutated society is not new. They've been adjusting for centuries, ridding themselves of war, destroying magic and rebuilding their society into something completely different.

To put the Batallion in as a result of Nemesis forces doing something in our future seems like a very weird timeline to follow. Granted, it involves time travel and alternate dimensions so someone could have just gone to Rikti Earth's past and done this, but it seems... Difficult to put into context. That's not to say it's impossible, just that it would be a rather very complex storyline. Perhaps a little too complex, needing masses of exposition to justify, and that's never a good sign.

To be honest, I am sorry to be the constant putdown guy of theories around here, but that's all I got. I haven't even the foggiest idea who the Letter Writer is, other than perhaps whatever shadow person it was that killed Merulia so the Well could turn her into the Leviathan, and even that's just a wild guess. It's just a guy who's strong and willing enough to oppose the Well, and that same Well of the Furies has to be linked to the coming storm SOMEHOW. But I'm really reaching here, since I honestly don't have a guess.

Sorry.

I mean Paragon Reward tokens, yes. Apologies for the mistaken terminology. What are those given for and what must one have to ensure he receives them?

So, wait wait wait... Trading is not Tier 2 but rather just two Reward Points? I'm pretty sure he should have that already. He has the base game and he subscribed for an additional month a few years ago, so he should technically have acquired two months' worth of "old veteran status" and already paid $15. I know money spent years ago don't count, but months subscribed should, right? For Veteran status? Failing that, yeah, I can fund him with a single month's worth of subscription of 1200 points, whichever we decide on. Be hard to broach the subject to the guy since he's uncomfortable with me buying games for him if they're not very cheap (I got him L4D2 for $8, I think), but we'll see how that goes.

Either way, thank you.

Oh, hey, about that! The guy has next to nothing on his account. He has a single character up to level 12, I think, and one that's easy to recreate. Will starting a new account with the new promotion work to give him the ability to trade? Because there's a chance the guy might not remember his login info. The last time he logged into his PlayNC Master Account was 2008, I think. Might end up having to make him a new one, but will that work? Trading with the guy is the only really pressing concern I have, to be honest. For everything else, we'll figure it out in due time.

Thank you That's more or less what I wanted to ask without actually coming out and asking it, as it felt... Rude, I suppose you could say. I've always found it amazing what kind of diverse array of people we have here and the knowledge that brings to the table. Over the years, I've needed to ask quite a variety of somewhat odd questions, like the feasibility of movie-style instant-kill poisons, the functions and jobs of the different military ranks and so forth. I've found that it's almost always better to directly ask about a subject on which I have little or no knowledge than it is to try and fake it on my own, and helpful people like you have... Pretty much always been there to help. Thank you kindly.

Still, I was a bit surprised to hear you are Chinese. I remember when I was looking for a Japanese name, I don't think we ended up having a Japanese person come around to contribute, but it's possible I remember wrong. Either way, your English is better than mine, and I salute you for it!

Now I'm kind of disappointed I hail from such an obscure country that no-one will ever need my services in that regard...

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I have my name, it's in the game, and I couldn't be happier with it. If anyone wants to make use of the thread from here on out for further requests as Leo has, you are more than welcome to do so. This is been one of the most positive things to come out of the forums in the last few months (to me, at least), so if we can keep using it, I'd like that

I'm speaking about a Premium account. I gave my old Buddy Code to a friend of mine, so he should own both City of Heroes and City of Villains, and he subscribed with his money for another month beside what came with the code. I expect the Buddy Code won't count for a token (even though it kind of came out of my subscription), but he should qualify for at least a couple of months. Are we saying he'll have to wait another full month before I can trade with him?

Speaking of which, how ARE those Paragon Points acquired? Do they add up just for having an account AT ALL? Because said friend of mine has the tendency to play something for a few weeks, leave it sitting unpaid for a couple of months, play it for a few more weeks and so on. Will he be acquiring months even when he's not playing or is there some kind of prerequisite?

Also, back to trading: I don't think there's a Paragon Store unlock for this, or at least there wasn't one when I looked in Beta. If there is one, I can pay for it on his behalf for the time it takes him to even out, or permanently if it's a permanent purchase. If there isn't one... This will be awkward.

You're mostly right. However, the arc was never about "cloning" a brain, but rather about creating an artificial one. Nemesis wasn't just making another copy of his ageing, decaying ratty brain. He was making a brand new one, one which was resistant to Rikti psionics and mutation chemicals, one which was not just immune from Crey's mind control but also superior to their own Revenant Hero brains, one that was superior to the Council/Column's bioengineering and super science. And, above all else, one that could be mass-produced.

You're right in that every Fake Nemesis is now technically a "real" Nemesis, in that Nemesis can see and speak through them, but remember - those machines are still mass-produced, and so cheaper, simpler and weaker than his own personal armour. But there's no reason Nemesis can't have two dozen copies of said armour and have, as a point of fact, many genuinely REAL Nemesis running around, all sharing the same mind. That's why joking about how you can never catch the real Nemesis because he has plot immunity is a joke on us - there IS no one real Nemesis.

I knew there was something fishy with the naming in that article! So essentially if I want to call someone by the title "master," I would essentially pair master or "shi fu" with his surname. OK, that makes sense. Is the "shi fu" lowercase, by the way? I ask because you wrote it in lowercase, but should I write it that way if I'm writing it down in a description field and, inversely, would it be a mistake to capitalise all three "words?" Would that be confusable with a real name? Not a big deal, by the way, that's just my curiosity speaking.

And speaking of curiosity: Freem, could you tell us a little bit more about yourself? Your knowledge of the language and naming seems extensive and I'd like to know at least a tiny bit more about you and how you came upon this knowledge I generally don't make a habit of asking people for personal info, and I will absolutely understand if you choose to decline. I just find it fascinating that you know so much in an area where I know precisely nothing at all.

Either way, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for your help

You make a good point, Leo. I'll need to rethink this, making me happy I decided to sleep on the name and get a few more opinions my way. It's definitely helping me get a better perspective on things.

That's not a bad idea, but it's kind of sort of taken by Penny's dad, Wu Yin I know it's not the same name, and when it comes down to Traditional Chineese characters probably not even anything like close, but as well as being authentic, I am also aiming for a bit of Westerner showmanship (which is funny since I'm about as East in Europe as it gets before you cross into Asia ), and having a romanised Chinese name that's that close to the romanised Chinese name of a canon character strikes me as a bit confusing. That, and I KNOW people will make fun of the name similarity

Wow... Three smilies in a single paragraph. I must be in a good mood.

I think you just gave me the name I was looking for pretty much as-is. Now I just hope I can snag it before someone beats me to it I don't know "Shen Shao Shi" has any kind of real meaning, but if you're offering it to me, I can assume whatever it means is not inappropriate. Seems like I can easily just go with that. Thank you kindly for your help!

Yeah, about that: The article on Shi Shen, the Chinese astronomer, the man is also referred to as "Master Shi Shen," which is given in pinyin as "Shi Shenfu." I assume this has to do with actual Chinese language grammar and word formation so I wouldn't even try to guess how that might work for my name, so let me instead ask a direct question: If the name you gave me should be referred to as "Master Shen Shao Shi," how would that come out in pinyin romanised Chinese writing? This isn't as directly important to the name above the character's head since I doubt I'd put it there, but it definitely IS something I'd want to put in his description field. He is, after all, "the old master" in terms of concept

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Something I didn't find a good single quote to address, as well: Thank you for your explanation on Chun-Li's name, Freem and Leo. I appreciate it, as I like knowing what I'm reading and what it means, if even just vaguely. The name meaning is interesting a well.

In general, thank you everybody for your help. I honestly could never have come up with this name on my own, and I really, really like it! I might actually go ahead and reserve it, even if I don't play the character right immediately.

See, this is why I like our community - I can come up with any request for any unusual thing and eventually people will come over and help out. It makes the gaming experience so much more enjoyable, and it gives a feeling that there's always someone who can help. So, thank you

That's actually an awesome idea, even if it's not about who the Letter Writer is. The Eternal Nemesis arc pretty much proves that the original Nemesis is "dead," in the sense that the last of his body - his brain - is now dead and replaced with a machine. From that 45-50 Crimson mission where he shows up again and says "Have we met before? Or was this another Nemesis?" it's easy to infer that there are multiple of him now, and from the way that Nemesis speaks through multiple Fakes at the same time, it's pretty evident that he now has a shared consciousness among his automatons and probably no one real body at all. So it makes sense that if he found a way to travel through time, he could have done so through a chain of interlinked automatons every 5000 years or so, instead of one direct jump, and those could potentially keep him up-to-date on the future, as well. He'd only need about 200 Fakes to travel a million years, actually, which isn't all that many.

Great idea. I love it!

I don't actually have a real argument for why the Letter Writer can't be the Dream Doctor in the way I can argue Mender Lazarus is not Dr. Aeon, to be honest. What I have are more meta-story arguments against him, in the sense that I don't see how this could make for a very good story. The Dream Doctor has always been linked with Rularuu the Ravager, and he doesn't seem to be the Coming Storm. About the only way I can see the Dream Doctor being the Letter Writer is if it turn out the Shiva meteorite and the Battalion are just a diversion and it is Rularuu the Ravager who is the REAL storm, which would then put the Midnight Club and the Dream Doctor to the forefront. But the way the story is slated, I don't see this happening unless we want to delay the Coming Storm for another 10 Issues.

It's like the realising that there are 90 more minutes left in the movie so there's no way the villain can be defeated right then and there. It's not a storyline argument, but more a meta-story one.

That's unlikely. As per his reasoning and that of his Menders, Silos came back through time as a direct result of experiencing the Coming Storm. He created Ourobors only after he had elected to fight the Coming Storm, to serve as a central staging ground for his Menders. I don't know what he did to travel back a million years into his past, but he resolved to do so specifically as a response to the coming storm. Of course, he could have lied about it, but to be honest, he's being sold as the good guy here, I think. And besides, "everybody lies" stories just aren't very good, all told.

It's not impossible, mind you. I just don't think I'd be thrilled at such a twist.