SlickRiptide

It would be interesting if Future Lord Nemesis is actually some kind of fractured personality ala Rularuu, and Nemesis, Silos, and DJ Zero are all aspects of the original "Lord Nemesis". That would even allow for LW to actually be "Lord Nemesis" himself without it being a contradiction.

Anybody reading this thread ought to know they are reading spoilers, but just in case: ************SPOILERS AHOY******************

The biggest argument against the Letter Writer being someone contemporary hero or villain is that LW appears to be a contemporary of Mender Silos. S/he knows who or what the Coming Storm is and s/he is able to determine at one point that Silos' futzing around with the time-space continuum is having some real effect on the outcome. Even the menders under Silos have a difficult time with figuring that sort of thing out.

Then there's this passage, from the Twilight's Son letter:
"Again, be cautious of those you speak to about this; the Menders are aware of my existence, but not my time or location and they would not take kindly to you associating with me. All I ask of you now is to do your duty, pursue the truth and look for more of my letters."

That doesn't sound like someone who would be easily located by simply walking into the Vanguard DPO.

Honestly, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if LW is Nemesis himself, or one of his self-aware duplicates. Given the way he's replicated his mind/brain around, and we even know of several alternate-universe versions of him, a second Lord Nemesis running around our space-time is no huge leap of logic to make.

Here's the thing about Mender Silos - if he's truly our version of Lord Nemesis then he lives for eons past the actual event that he calls The Coming Storm, given that it's "coming" in the near future and he's already delayed it slightly.

Yet, he somehow regrets his part in the arrival of this Coming Storm. So, he somehow survives it and manages to live for hundreds of thousands of years. Meanwhile, some theoretically post-apocalyptic future exists where Tess would be a fearsome warlord, implying the sort of future where Khan had succeeded in ruling the Star Trek Earth.

So, the Coming Storm does not immediately destroy the world, regardless of whether it destroys Ouroboros. Or, alternatively, it destroys the planet or destroys civilization but does not completely destroy humanity.

Nemesis plays some part in the whole thing that somehow contributes to the damage they do. The real question is - What part did he play? How is he attempting to undo it? IS he attempting to undo it or is he attempting to change things to some alternate future where he has a world to rule?

LW knows the answers to these questions and is opposing Silos' agenda, whatever he perceives it to be. I just don't see how that could be someone from our time. I suppose it could be a future version of someone we know, just like Silos, but somehow I don't get that feeling.

If LW really is someone from the 20th/21st century then it's someone who discovered time travel independently of the Menders, traveled to the future and saw what Silos had left behind, and is now opposing him on principle. I don't believe that it's anyone we know unless it turns out to be someone completely unexpected.

Holsten is pretty well convinced that the Coming Storm is a new Rikti invasion, so I don't really expect to find out that he is behind it. He doesn't strike me as the Temporal General type anyway.

If this Battalion is the Coming Storm then I'd expect that Silo's mistake is that Lord Nemesis willingly joins up with them or even summons them in the first place. For whatever reason, Silos is avoiding acting directly against his earlier self. LW appears to be unshackled by such considerations, an argument in favor of LW being someone who is NOT an alternate Nemesis.

I'd also count LW's untracability (yeah, I made that word up) as evidence of LW being a person from a possible future also. Whether LW cares about preventing the Coming Storm or even believes in it is an open question. S/he appears to be all about disrupting Silos' agenda rather than "saving the world" in the sense that we would normally think of that phrase.

Lady Grey seems to be presented more as a Victorian woman who has survived into the present day based on her vampire powers and maybe because she's a "slow incarnate" herself.

I don't think her writing/thinking/speech styles match the letter writer. S/he is much more modern. That aside, I just don't think that sort of clandestine "ghost in the machine" stuff is really her bag. She'd use a more direct approach to accomplish her goals.

Lady Spirit was always intended to be a fist fighter and Martial Arts was basically a compromise. The alternate animations for Martial Arts helped a lot when they were added, but with Street Justice, I suspect that she'll finally be getting remade as a real "brawler" like she was supposed to be.

Honestly, when the keepers of the lore say "Oh, we don't actually put the right information in the game, we just do whatever's convenient" then I can't see anything to do but throw up your hands and say "Fine. Whatever." and cease worrying about it.

If the owners of the game don't value the backstory or find it to be an obstacle instead of an asset then there's no use in being a player and trying to keep it straight or appreciate it or build your own personal game around it.

Maybe the button mashers are right and we should just stop stressing about it and get back to grinding levels. :-/ Apparently that's where it's really at.

Just for the record, Matt still insists that BaB is NOT a member of the Phalanx.

A compilation of the Twitter conversations:

@Positron_CoH Matt Miller
I was reading Paragon Wiki... where in CoH do we give the impression that Back Alley Brawler is a member of Freedom Phalanx? (he's not)

@NightErrant Austin L.
@Positron_CoH. I think it's because there's overlap with the Surviving Eight and the Freedom Phalanx in many people's minds.

@NightErrant Austin L.
@Positron_CoH, In addition, during ther Lord Recluse Strike Force, you fight him during the "Defeat Future Freedom Phalanx" mission.

@NightErrant Austin L.
@Positron_CoH, And during the final mission which is -also- titled "Defeat Statesman and the Freedom Phalanx".

@Positron_CoH Matt Miller
@NightErrant Yeah, but there's a Longbow Eagle with them too, and he doesn't get mixed in with that bunch.

@Positron_CoH Matt Miller
I am thinking we need to change the objective title to "Defeat Statesman and the Freedom Phalanx, and Back Alley Brawler, too".

@Positron_CoH Matt Miller
We use Paragon Wiki to remember what we have told the players already. Story bible contains a TON of info, much of it contradicts itself.

@Positron_CoH Matt Miller
Surviving the Rikti War does not grant automatic inclusion into a Supergroup. He's friends with all of them, but really, retired.

@Samuraiko Michelle Travis
SCORE ONE FOR THE #COH LORE GEEK! ((Note: Michelle is referring to the notation in the Architect database that BaB belongs to the Phalanx))

@Positron_CoH Matt Miller
@Samuraiko AE does not a canon make.

@Samuraiko Michelle Travis
And @Kheldarn verifies once and for all that BAB is a member of the FP. It's in the game. Indisputable. Thank you, Khel! ((Note: Here Michelle is referring to the screenshot posted in the forum that shows the newly-madeover BaB in Atlas Park with "Freedom Phalanx" as his affiliation in his "About this contact" description.))

@Positron_CoH Matt Miller
@Samuraiko Still not true. Because we don't have a enemy group for "Retired Heroes", he had to be stuck somewhere.

And that's the end of the discussion on Twitter, though Matt DID answer one other "lore" question, heh:

Positron_CoH Matt Miller
Three. @Positron_CoH much debate has been made over exactly how many hours Anti-Matter spends crying before falling asleep.

tldr; The lead designer of the game insists that BaB's apparent affiliation with the Phalanx is a matter of bookeeping within the game's database and assumption by players, not actual fact.

I don't presume to judge any more what the "facts" truly are. Be your own judge.

I blame Mender Silos. "A Time Traveler did it" is the new "A Wizard did it".

What Golden Girl said. Paragon City supplanted New York. It isn't entirely clear that New York even exists - It might be named Empire City instead. It also isn't clear where the United Nations is headquartered since, by extension, Paragon City would have been the most reasonable place to put it given the history of "Primal Earth". Since we haven't yet been told otherwise, I suppose that we assume that the U.N. is in New York or its analog. It matters to the extent that it would be good to know where the Vanguard is headquartered when they aren't spending their time in the RWZ.

For that matter, we don't even really know what the state of the U.N. is in a post-Rikti-War world.

As one of the vocal voices (I have no problem envisioning people at PS looking at the forum and saying "Oh, yeah, Slickriptide is ******** about the story again. Moving on...") I'll limit my answers to short ones:

1) Yes, emphatically.

2) No, at least not for what I take the word "fundamentally" to mean. It is frequently inconsistent and opaque.

3) A qualified no, but that's not my lookout. I don't expect the devs to change the direction of the story just because I don't like the idea of a cosmic Elder God being involved.

4) Yes, emphatically. I would be quite happy if an issue was devoted to investing the lore into the game so that it was accessible, official, correct, and relevant. Especially if it meant that some sort of historical content was added to coincide with that infusion of lore. The "story pack" in Guild Wars being an excellent example of such content. (The player relives a historical event by playing the main character of that historical event rather than playing her own character, and gets a souvenier on completion of the content.)

So, what do you think? Should we worry about it? What steps should we take if we do worry about it? What's your opinion when you run across spoilers for content you haven't yet experienced? What steps, if any, would you suggest for avoiding spoiling content for any new VIP's who come to the forum as a result of joining Freedom and becoming new forum community members?

How Do We Protect Spoilers?

This is a tough question to answer. Vets obviously want to be able to talk about their game freely. Newbies (presumably) want to experience the game the first time for themselves and then join in the discussion with the vets and give their own fresh viewpoints on whatever it is.

Paragon Wiki (and probably wikis in general) has a pretty neat mechanism where you can tag a piece of information as a spoiler and it's hidden until the reader clicks on it. The readers decide for themselves if they want the topic spoiled.

Alternatively, it may simply be enough to put the word *SPOILER* in the thread topic as someone did just recently for a discussion of the Underground trial. Is it worth asking Zwilllinger / Avatea to ask about having the forum software modified to create a [spoiler][/spoiler] tag or something similar? Are there some conventions that we as a community could adopt that would help people who want a spoiler-free discussion to read a thread and still have warning to skip a post or series of posts to avoid spoilers?

What things are worthy of spoiler treatment?

When is something a spoiler and when is it common knowledge? Should we refrain from talking about the Organ Grinders story arc when the Dark Watcher himself spoils the whole thing for anyone who walks up and clicks on him? Is Mender Silos' "true identity" an open secret and therefore not worthy of being a spoiler? Is the Clockwork King's "true" origin a secret when every newbie discovers it pretty early and the loading screens hint at it? Where should the line be drawn?

The Steven Brust mailing list that I subscribe to has an informal policy that any new novel is automatically spoiler material for six months. After that, it's presumed that most people who are going to read it will already have done so. After that, it's up to individuals to decide whether they want to mark something as a potential spoiler for people who have not read the work in question. Is something like that even a viable option in a video game with a constant stream of new users?

Do We Even Need To Worry About Spoilers?
If the answer to this question is "No" then the rest don't really matter. I'm going to suggest that an informal policy on spoilers would benefit the community, but clearly some sort of consensus on this is necessary amongst the community.

A great deal of what makes the game special is that your first realization of something like the Clockwork King's origin or Mender Silos' background or Virgil Tarikoss' true motives comes from experiencing their content first-hand and having a "sovereign experience" - that is, an experience where it's brand new and unspoiled. I think that encouraging an atmosphere where the experience of new VIP's is respected is going to result in stronger ties binding those new VIP's into the community at large.

This isn't even just a Freedom thing - Just recently I found myself unintentionally spoiling some things for a current player who was relatively new because I assumed "everyone knows that" when it wasn't actually true. Another example just yesterday occurred on the Freedom beta forums, where someone supported their views on a discussion thread by talking about the dialog of a NPC there, prompting a "Thanks for the spoiler, Captain Spoiler" response from someone else.

Some people feel that spoilers are inconsequential. One example on Twitter recently from a film critic I follow - "Spoilers are overrated. Does anyone ever attend their first performance of Hamlet thinking, 'Oooo, I hope this all ends happily?'" This is appropriate, given that a MMO is not too different from a popular play in that you have a constant stream of people who have experienced it and people who have not experienced it. Is it really the responsibility of those "in the know" to become caretakers of the experience of the newbies or is it their own lookout?

Likewise, I saw a newspaper article recently that showed some evidence (which I am now unable to find in order to reference) that for most people, spoilers had only a small effect on their enjoyment of a film. Do spoilers actually ruin the experience for players enough to get concerned about them?

Every so often you encounter some serendipity where some topic pops up repeatedly in numerous different media; enough to make you wonder if the Universe is sending you some kind of message

Just recently, I've seen the topic of plot spoilers pop up here in the forums, on Twitter, on mailing lists and even in the popular press.

It got me thinking that with Freedom close to launch and the presumed influx of a lot of newbies into Paragon City, that it would be a good time to start a discussion about how to handle talking about the game without outright spoiling things for the hopeful influx of new VIP's.

The day that revenue from Premium members exceeds revenue from VIP members is the day that the devs are going to get over the prejudice described by Arcanaville as "Its still centered on subscribers first, and ala carte player second."

That's the day that there will be some unhappy VIP's when that primary focus shifts away from them, because when that happens the devs are not going to start beefing up VIP and penalizing Premium in an effort to make VIP more attractive. They're going to follow the money.

When speaking of Watership Down, saying that the novel exceeds the film in every respect is NOT a way of saying that the film was lacking. On the contrary, I think that it does the best job of telling the story that an animated film could have done at the time. It's completely faithful to the plot and, more importantly, it's completely faithful to the spirit. I enjoy and appreciate the film whenever I see it.

In fact, some scenes, like when Bigwig sits on the road to illustrate the indifference of the Hrududus, just need to be experienced visually as the film shows it. heh.

What it says is that if you have only seen the film and you thought it was a great story then you SHOULD read the novel because you'll discover that it's an even BETTER story. It's one of those cases where I think you'll find that the novel expands your appreciation for the film rather than diminishing it.

So, is this a thread about Fringe now? Because I really want to know what happened to Peter. (John Noble suggested that in the new continuity that Peter Mark 1 also died of the same disease that killed Peter Mark 0.)

I do agree that the original PotA film hit the high points as well as could be expected with their budget and filming schedule. Besides, you can't get more iconic than Taylor discovering Miss Liberty in the sand. That's a moment that deserved to be filmed no matter what film was wrapped around it.

Is it certain at this point that there will be a sequel to the new PotA film?