An Introduction to the Ruins of Alph room!

By Jayi. Released: 2021/01/23.

Introduction

The Ruins of Alph may be daunting and completely abandoned in-game, but the Ruins of Alph room on Pokémon Showdown is a pleasant place that's brimming with activity! Originating as the "Old Gens" room, Ruins of Alph (RoA) adopted its name in late 2016 when Lutra, the current Room Owner and Community Co-Leader on Smogon, suggested the option for a name change. Around this time, Old Generations as a whole were becoming increasingly popular, and people really saw this section as a thriving one. With this and initiatives taken by Lutra alongside former Room Owner CZ to develop both the room and the RoA forum, the room's growth started to skyrocket. This article will largely look over the RoA room and also go into detail about the RoA forum and its integration with the room.

What happens in the room?

Upon entering the room, the first thing you may notice is the Room Intro. Managed by the Room Owners, the Room Intro serves to provide you with easy access to our resources like the Room Sample Teams, our OU Sample Team Forum Thread, the RoA Discord Server, which features channels of all the past generations, and even a large archive of Old Gens Resources. Additionally, we display some announcements and current news about the room like our monthly ladders and opportunities to become an RoA Tour Night Host.

You might think, "this all sounds very interesting, but what is discussed in the room?" To put it simply, any Old Gen metagame, whether it be a known tier like ORAS OU or even a more odd metagame like GSC 1v1! Both casual and competitive players alike can engage in metagame discussion, receive teambuilding feedback, ask for Old Gen battles, and have quality conversation! Room Tournaments are quite frequent, most commonly Old Gen OU and Random Battles.

RoA Tour Nights

RoA Tour Nights, as it's called in the forum, are periods of time during the day (with Asian, European, and Pan-American times) wherein 3-4 tournaments for a specific generation are consecutively hosted. On Sundays, we host a "Spotlight" that features all past generations from the tier chosen, so, for example, if OU was the spotlight of that tour night, we would start the tour night from RBY OU all the way up until SM OU. This is our biggest project, so this is the largest section in the Room and Forum Features. Applying to be a host or an assistant of that host is fairly straightforward. You will have to post in this thread detailing which night you want to cover, and one of the forum mods will add you to that specific slot. You will then be given access to the #tournights channel on the RoA Discord server, which has nearly all the information on how to effectively host and assist a host written in a message pinned in that channel, though you could always ask the friendly hosts we have available. One thing to note is that you have the right to withdraw your forum alias being associated with one or more PS aliases. Contact Lutra with your requests for this (no ongoing agreements). Lastly, the ONLY posts that are allowed in the tour nights thread are the tour nights summaries issued by a host. If you wish to raise an issue about a tour night or tour nights in general, please tag Lutra and the relevant host in RoA on one of the following: Discord, RoA room on Pokémon Showdown!, or the host's or Lutra's profile on Smogon. Alternatively, you can message them privately on these platforms too or ask in the #tournights channel.

RoA Spotlight Community Choice

Every month, Ruins of Alph allows users to vote on what 2 ladders they would like to see on Pokémon Showdown!, as well as the rotating ladder. The rotating ladder is always UU or Ubers and goes in order of generation, so, if current the month is DPP Ubers, BW will follow the next month. Refer to the Old Gen Tournaments Calendar thread here by Lutra with more information regarding the rotating ladder. Voting lasts 10 days in total and is broken up into two stages of five days each. Stage 1 is generation voting. For 5 days, people can vote on any generation besides the one in cooldown, which means one among RBY, GSC, ADV, DPP, BW, ORAS, or SM. Stage 2 of voting is format voting. For 5 days, people get to vote between all of the formats, barring the ones that are on cooldown. Every format is discussed between staff, which also follows a rotation of generations, and it’s then up to staff's discretion; we try to lean towards equally distributing the number of formats up for vote between more and less popular formats. This means that you will see traditional formats like Little Cup and NU, as well as less popular formats like STABmons and Balanced Hackmons. The Community Choice voting is primarily maintained by Rage and Kris. If you take issue with a part of this process, take it up with one of them!

Sample Teams

RoA has introduced a Sample Teams thread that has a list of competitive sample teams for new competitors to use as a means of learning the respective Old Gen tiers or simply to help anyone in need of a solid team to play. This thread can be found here.

How do I contribute?

This question is flung around quite often, so let me try an break it down from a Ruins of Alph point of view. Tour Nights is a great place to start, and it's exactly where I started to contribute to this community by. It seems challenging at first, but once you tackle through your first few nights, it's a piece of cake. Another way to contribute is to host some of our monthly spotlight tours in response to the new RoA Spotlight Community Choice results of that month. Or, if you're someone that excels in live chat, the Ruins of Alph room on Pokémon Showdown! may be the place for you. The popular room usually has a discussion going on for anyone to chip in on. These are only just a few examples for you!

Meet the Room Owners

The Room Owners are users who have shown their personality and dedication throughout the room and the forums. Lutra and Earthworm are the RoA Community Leaders on Smogon, whilst Rage and FOMG are moderators of this section. This is what Lutra, FOMG, and Earthworm had to say about their time in RoA and why they got interested in this section.

Earthworm (the pirate99)

I'm 29 years old at the time of writing, so I was 7 when RBY came out in my home country of Australia, and I started playing competitively online when RSE was the current generation. RoA was therefore a natural fit for me when my interest in Smogon and Pokémon Showdown! was rekindled a couple of years ago. It's a great community and one I find is worthwhile contributing to. You won't regret it if you decide to spend some time with us.

FOMG

Hi, I am FOMG and when I discovered Pokémon Showdown, I played the generations of which I owned the actual games (Gens 1-4), and RoA is of course the best room if you are interested in those.

Lutra

I got Pokémon Blue for my birthday when I was 8, though I didn’t become interested in RBY competitively until 2009. When RBY transitioned from Pokémon Online to Pokémon Showdown!, I naturally spent more and more time in the Old Gens (now RoA) room. I was hosting RBY and other Old Gen tournaments on the Smogon Forums when I was made a room driver in 2016. The RoA room has not stopped having very regular tournaments since! The RoA room has many hard working staff members, and we have a lot of ambition to keep delivering more fun.

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