A few years ago when Shoddy had just come out and I had stumbled upon it, I was really into the metagame, and competitive battling. I was waaay more into pokemon in general then, when I had Pearl -- I was all up in gamefaqs in the trading boards, trying to collect as many pokemon I didn't have yet, and whatever events people were willing to trade to me. I at one point wanted to start a quest of having as many smeargles as necessary that knew every pokemon move that existed, but I knew that that was way too ambitious nearly from the get-go, mostly from people telling me so. ha!
so, after I discovered Shoddy I got really into competitive battling, mostly because of this neat online simulator! I didn't know about Net Battle at all, and so Shoddy was my first exposure to the online battling scene. I'm not exactly sure why, but the metagame that really interested me was UU. I learned soon enough that I was quickly annoyed by strategies that I would see over and over (in both OU and UU) like Ninjask BP teams, Rain Dance teams, GyaraVire and everything that was new and fresh and awesome, to me, and to most everyone else I'm sure. But! UU was like turning the volume down on battling but fine tuning the bass, like this wasn't as ridiculous and noisy as OU battling was with all the hyper offense (before I learned about these things called 'stall' teams) but fine-tuning the levels and layers of battling with not even simpler, but different strategies. Maybe I'm just over glamorizing it, but that's the best way I can remember being drawn to it. I think it also just had a bunch of cute mons or forgotten mons that were too weak/unpopular to use in OU, so being the kind spirit that I am I was all 'COME TO ME MONS, I WILL GIVE YOU PURPOSE ONCE MORE!' this especially applied to Octillery, one of my favorite mons to date (haha Inconsistent, oh octillery, I told you your time would come....) and my BP team that mostly revolved around him, with fall back strategies like Sticky Barb Trick Rotom, Curse/Attract Umbreon, and other silly shit that I loved to succeed and piss people off with.
Like Synre, Firestorm and many others around, the only thing I really care to do anymore is VGC battling, which probably appeals to me the same way UU did, in that it's a different, more specific set of rules and standards you need to play by, especially with the 2011 rules of ONLY using Gen 5 mons..............I guess that is okay. I really wasn't happy with it at first, as I always envisioned a team of mine having Breloom on it. R.I.P. still, maybe I'll be more into the scene after B/W comes out in English, and I run through the in-game again actually understanding everything, and memorizing all the (somewhat terrible) names.
