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Smogon: Why you came here and why you stayed

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My Pokémon roots date back to the pinnings of R/B/Y. Pokémon Blue was my first game along with obtaining a blue GBC. I've owned and played though Pokémon R/B/Y/G/S/C/R/S/E/FR/D.

My first competitive website I stumbled upon was serebii during the R/S/E era. I don't remember exactly I came across Serebii. Their Pokédex was a valuable asset.

Then, during the D/P era, things drastically changed. With the inclusion of WIFI battling, that is when I surrounded myself in the world and art of competitive Pokémon battling.

From buying an Action Replay to the use Pokésav, I've been through it all. Now, in 2009, I can comfortably say I am a veteran at the ever-evolving Standard Metagame. I can remember it like it was yesterday, 2007, where SkarmBliss was the norm.

Like Serebii, I cannot exactly remember how I stumbled upon Smogon. Probably a referral or something. But whatever, I mainly used the "Strategy Pokédex". Now, I am an active member of the forums here, learning and refining my skills in addition to giving advice and socializing with the members here.
 
Came from waaaaaay back in first gen. Pokemon Blue Version was my first game, although by the time I got it, Silver and Gold were already out. One day within the last few months, I heard my friend mentioning "Marriland." I saw a video, thought he was awesome at the game, and then did what my instinct always tells me to do when I see someone who I think is good at something. Find a video of them LOSING. Marriland vs. Disfunction did just that, not to mention introduced me to the magical world of baton passing. It exists parallel with Narnia.

Don't know how I found out about Smogon, and I can't say why I've stayed, since, so far, I haven't. (Only 3-4 posts.) Still, so far its pretty cool.
 
I first played Pokemon back in the days of Red and Blue, although I got into it in mid '99, a few months later than most kids did. I stuck through it relentlessly, my interest never fading through the GSC and RSE eras. I admit that I didn't enjoy Ruby as much as I had Crystal, the game I played previously, and I found picking natures and moves in that game to be rather annoying. Yeah, I was aware of natures, but only picked which ones kind of "felt right" as opposed to what was useful.

I learned about IVs, didn't care, and was intrigued by EVs, but the extent of my EV training was "I'll just max out everything, but maybe fight a crapload of Zubats along the way to give this guy more speed." I learned about Smogon and was entertained by reading the articles around '05, but never went into competitive.

DP rolled around and my Pokemon craze flared up greater than ever. I carefully planned out my DP team, but now my ability to pick natures was worse than ever, following the logic of "this guy has high base speed and low defenses, so I'll raise his defensive with EVs and Nature to even it out. Cue Sassy Infernape. Roflmao. Somewhere along the line after I beat the Pokemon league and took on the Palmer at the battle tower, I looked ahead at his second team, and in my longing to beat him, decided to train a Tyranitar, since it seemed very good to beat his Pokes. Enter my first real competitive breed. Granted, I screwed up the IVs since I didn't know how the parent-passing-on mechanic worked, but considering that she was Jolly with Dragon Dance, it was my first real step into the world of competitive Pokemon.

Over two years and a lot of team members later, I'm still having the most fun just breeding new Pokemon and messing around with Theorymon. I finally decided to join Smogon in April of this year, after watching the process for CAP8 and dying comment/participate. Until then, I had been highly intimidated by this place. "No one will like you if you don't know how to battle properly, and if you say anything dumb they eat you." But since my introduction to everyone was within CAP and people got acquainted with me based more on my art, I had a warm welcome and felt like it would be fun to stick around. Since then, I've gotten lots of help with RNG, done tons of random Wi-fi battles with moderate success, and had an overall enjoyable experience.

But like hell if I'm ever going to ruin that all by posting a RMT. =P
 
I'm new and this is my first post so as such, I'll give a bit of background on myself. Real life, I'm a bum, BUT I'm joining the air force and will be leaving for basic in aproximatly 2 and a half months. Don't know my job yet, but it's something on my list of choices and next month I'm gonna take a test to see if I can be a computer programmer.

Internet wise, I am(was?) a FETO player, FETO being fire emblem tactics online, a turn based pvp FE game which some of you may be familiar with. I was very good at the game and if I never got account resets would undoubtably be on the top 15-10 winners list though I believe the game would be better without such lists tbqh. I made a couple friends there most notably a player known as Beo currently Nissan who was one of the top players at the beggining of the game and a very...noteworthy person in the community. I say noteworthy because at the onset of the game he "broke" the game with his op mage team to which they got nerfed and ther was much arguing to be had. The game is fun but there have been lots of questionable changes at least in my opinion. Still if you like fire emblem and you like pvp, I'd say go for it, though the game seems to be dying somewhat due to inactivity *shrugs* oh well.

Moving on. The head of the website that runs FETO made an aim blast group and about a month or two ago, I kept hearing pokemon talk. I was like "wtf fad?" Unknown to me, there was a competitive pokemon scene and when I was on another website about game design and competitive games (the latter being a big interest of mine) I read that pokemon was one of the most designed games competitvely. Aside: The website owner, a guy named Sirlin ended up desigining a game with a pokemon template I believe called Kongai or something like that. End aside. I finally decided to poke my nose around hear and see if I liked it.

Well, I've been reading stuff hear for a couple weeks now, exclusively uber metagame, and I must say that whenever I get my own comp (at library) I will definitly jump into this scene and strive to become an elite player. Ubers just looks so...skill intensive to me. Primarly focused on preperation, predicting, and planning which is all good in my book. The other metagames with larger card pools...err poke pools seem to have adaptabilty as a more necessary school though I have done little reading on them and could be dead wrong. Eh, ubers just looks like the best meta too me though I've read that lots of people veiw it as "boring". To each his own I guess. Never thought I'd veiw pokemon as cool again, but it's most definetly that for me now. Until then, I guess I'll lurk here and play FETO till it dies and hopefully have do at least one Fire Emblem debate before basic training. That's all folks, Tef out.
 
I guess I might as well mention, I've been coming here since maybe a month or two after D/P came out, when I decided to get into competitive battling for a bit. I understand the basics of the metagame fairly well, but I've never been more than mildly interested in it, so I probably won't be doing much analysis.

Of course, as I'm sure my join date will tell you, I never joined here until recently. What caused that, you ask? Well, I'm a freshman in college and my school requires me to take writing seminars. The one I'm taking right now is "Studying Digital Culture," an anthropology based seminar. For our final project, we have to pick a topic related to digital culture and do a short ethnographic paper on it. For me, it was a toss up between here and the Dwarf Fort community, but eventually you guys won out, because it's more lively and I really feel like I can get into this community for the long haul after the assignment is over.

So yeah, Smogon, will you be the Trobriand Islands to my Bronislaw Malinowski?
 
Everyone I knew on Pokethology had completely left the forum, and so I decided to venture on to Smogon's forum for the change. Smogon's total loyalty to the Pokemon competitiveness and its in-depth research had been the anchor of my reason why I continue to keep coming back to this website. Although elitism had long been one of the common thing to expect, it is now a completely normal thing for me.
 
My friend recommended the place to me and I've been too lazy to say bye. But its still fun in its own little way ;)
 
I, Stefani Germanotta AKA Lady Gaga, played Pokemon as a little girl and continued as a teen, then after some surfing on the net, found this, and still secretly plays it now, and even playing competetively.
 
Well, eventually making it HERE to the forums was a long string of events.

First, I think I discovered the shoddy battle simulator via www.gamefaqs.com, and so after installing and updating Java accordingly, I began to play competitive pokemon! This was... hmm... 3 years ago? Around then? I had basically discovered shoddy shortly after it was created, and I had hung around there ever since. After maybe a year or so of talking to people there, talking to them through other venues (AIM etc) they would sometimes namedrop "smogon" and I was all, what??

So! I eventually discovered www.smogon.com, and only really used it for the pokedex section. I didn't bother to join the actual forums until, as my post will state, July of 2008. And so then I made my debut as a poster.

I've stayed around mostly because of the relationships I've made here. I more-so maintain those relationships via IRC, but I've recently become more interested in actually looking at all the forums here, and learning about various people. That's my main motivation for staying here I guess; learning and creating relationships with and about people, although pokemon is still fun too! ^_^
 
I joined Smogon through Shoddy Battle. I started using it because I couldn't be bothered to breed and EV train, and also because my Wi-Fi kept screwing up on me. I saw Smogon at the top of the server list, so I joined there. I then heard about the forums, and, here I am.
 
So here's my story.
A few years ago,
I got bored of pokemon,
I'd won all the games, completly filled Firered dex, basically everthing fun.
More recently, my friend (on Smogon he's "Master Of Puppets")
told me abbut Smogon, I deicided to start,
got seriously addicted, got addicted to breeding, and here I am.
 
My story is way to long, but to make it short.

I've realized that Netbattle is a complete shithole, and I want to absolutely rid myself of it. This place seems to have nice people, so why not?
 
Compared to most people here, my Pokemon and Smogon career hardly goes back far at all. Even in 2000 when everyone was obsessed with collecting the cards, watching the TV series and movies, and playing the games, I was one of the 'outsiders' who had no interest in it.

Much later, in February 2008, I was looking for some new ROMs to play, and saw Pokemon Emerald at number 1 on the 'Top 10 ROMs' for GBA list. So I thought I might as well try to see if I like it. I became quite addicted to it, and after finishing the game's story I was compelled to purchase Pearl for my DS (my friend had Diamond, plus I'm glad I got Pearl since I love Palkia very much).

I was quite noobish at the game, even using things like Quagsire and Raichu to fight the Elite Four. Anyway, later on I discovered that the Battle Tower was very fun, but I struggled to even beat Palmer at battle 21. So I did some Google searches on the Pokemon I was using, and also on the Battle Tower, and thus found Smogon. At first I glanced over the site's search result thinking "Why the hell is there Pokemon stuff at a university!?" - I actually thought Smogon must be some university somewhere. Lucky I ended up clicking it regardless, and so I found this to be the best place for competitive battling information. It's helped me very much in my battling strategies, and thanks to people like Jumpman and Peterko I got some pretty good records. So naturally, I have no reason to leave this site for as long as my desire to become Number 1 at something persists.

I sometimes wish I'd played Pokemon when everyone else started, but it's not like I'm behind those people now; obviously way ahead since most have stopped by this age.
 
My pokemon experience dates back years ago to the RBY. I was in to it from the start. I played most of the cartridge games until somewhere around 200 era I came across RSbot on mIRC and got my first taste of online battling. There were some awesome folk on RSbot - my memory is foggy but I can still recall having great discussions and battles with the likes of absolut kaos, blueshirt32, omicron donut, strawhat, shiny zangoose, M.O.P, AJ, amazingampharos and asuka to name a few (plenty of other cool peeps who's names fail me im sorry!).

Those were the days really :) mIRC botting was a bit tricky, so it kept a lot of nubs out. Soon RSbot died and netbattle stormed in with 386 and by then I was almost solely playing UU/NU because the OU metagame had lost my interest quickly and I love using guthbeat (volbeat) guthsparce (dunsparce), clefable, kingler, seviper, CB murkrow (murkrOWND anyone?) because to me UU/NU were far less predictable and helped spice things up.

I played nubbattle a while and then it became increasingly hard to keep track of where everyone went and I think I fell behind on where the good crowd had gone to higher ground lol. I joined smogon in 2005 as it seemed like a well put together group with great passion and info but I just sorta fell out of pokemon.

Only recently did I bother to check on the current metagame and found the new cartridges allowed wifi battle, which was really my long time hope and the reason i RSbot/netbattled in the first place.

Now I find myself terribly behind on the current metagame (not even sure how many there are now? 400 something lol). I have been scanning the forums like a madman learning all sorts and starting to come to grips with recent changes. Looking to perhaps restart in the UU/NU metagame although it may pay to start with OU to get a better idea of the real state of things.

Looking forward to getting to know everyone and I hope this time the flame will burn a bit brighter than it has previously.

If you reached this point I salute you for your morbid curiosity or lack of better things to do. See ya round!

p.s I have gone by Guthwulf my entire RSbot/nettbattle/shoddy life so perhaps some of you may recall me... somewhere in the far distant corners of your memory.
 
Well, I came to smogon because pokemon is a fun game that I wanted to get into competitively. I may not be that good, but reading dozens of the smogon articles has definitely made me a better battler.
 
I played Pokemon back in the days of RBY, but got off of it until DP came out, at which point I stole a friend's DS and Pearl and played them through. Now here I am.
I came on here originally reading articles and whatnot, and signed up for the forums when I needed help making my Shoddy server.
 
I started playing pokemon at age 5 with yellow, them moved on to red (this one was in spanish luckyly since when i was 5 i didn´t know shit of english), later gold, crystal, saphire, leaf green (actually i wanted fire red but there were no more on store), emerald and finally pearl. later i bought a flash card and downloaded platinum and eventually Heart Gold (epic).

I got to smogon becouse looking for a pearl playthrough (i think) i stumbled across marriland´s page on youtube, from there i saw a comment saying "smogon sets suck" on marriland´s team revealed video looked smogon up in google since i needed help with sets and lurked for about two months, finally a month ago i became an active member of the forums and i have a youtube page where i narrate my battles.
 
My story begins in the nineties, when red, blue and yellow were the greatest things since sliced bread. I remember in school, almost all of my class had one of them and would often battle and talk pokemon, compare teams and exchange hints, etc. And of course everyone watched the cartoon in the afternoon.

I was one of the shunned freaks who did not have a cartridge.

Now I loved the whole pokemon phenomenon, and I would sit with my friends and pick up stray titbits of pokemon knowledge and became totally immersed in the story and concept of the games. I remember someone let me play their game for a bit, it was great. I distinctly remember trying to catch a geodude but knocking it out by accident. I soon started reading guides, learning all the tips and soon people where coming to me to ask for help or clues and hints to the games (i knew where to find jynx). I felt good. However I always longed for a game of my own. (I can tell this post is going to drag on.)

Obviously I lept when I heard about Gold and Silver being released in 2001, I was one of the first to get one (Silver, the first weekend after it was out) and I played it to death. However there was a downturn for pokemon in the eyes of kids at my school, it started to be seen as childish. I would say we were driven underground, but in reality we just stood at the other end of the playground and learnt to hate cool popular kids (on reflection, this is probably how nerds are formed). So I beat the games, became league champion, but I never battled a real person. I was always scared I would lose and it would leave a nice big "failure" mark on the wins/losses part of my save file. I was a perfectionist and a sore loser back then. Now I've grown up and am lazy bastard who couldn't care less.

I bought games from every generation to the present. I had Sapphire, FireRed and Diamond. I had my first real battle with a friend on sapphire, and I lost. I felt a bit down for a while, but on reflection I think it was just something I had to do to grow up (feel free to call me a pussy). My family finally left the stone age of technology got an internet connection around the time of me purchasing Diamond, and after I beat the game and was steamrolled by battle tower, I sought help. I remember googling for the best slaking movesets a year or 2 ago, trauling throught the obligatory gamefaqs drivel, and finding smogon's page on him. It blew my mind. I had never really thought about egg moves and TM's I'd always just thought they were a novelty to add a bit of depth. How wrong I was. Then being the curious man I am, I checked to see if this revolutionary pokedex had entries on all my team. So I adapted my guys, whacked some TM's on them and played a bit more.

I noticed slaking had a little "NU" on his page, and I could not comprehend why smogon said he was never used. On Diamond he was my best pokemon! So I checked all my team, and had about 1 OU guy. I was curious about smogon, and lurked the forums for a day. I read mingot's articles on RNG abuse and watched the little video demos on youtube. Before long, I was churning out shinies and really felt some sort of debt to the site. I was dying to try shoddy after reading so much, but I lost my confidence and got steamrollered again, this time by a 12year-old from the internet. I thought I'd join smogon and learn to get better, until I was the one flattening 12yo's. I left for uni about this time so moved away from all my pokemon chums and I decided I'd continue battling online.

After I've posted a bit more and mingled, I think I'll apply for the tutoring program.
 
When I was 10 I played Blue for the first time. I loved it and I really enjoyed the strategy element. I was getting really good at chess at the time and I didn't have anyone to really play so the idea of a strategy game I could play on my own was really cool. I eventually got ruby and then diamond. During this time I learned a lot about the game but I wanted the strategy element instead of just a video game. I went on gamefaqs were I read every pokemon chick post and based a lot of my sets around what she had suggested. She had mentioned something called smogon and I looked into it. When I got diamond I used serribi for a lot of my info but smogon kept coming up so I looked into it. I lurked here off and on for about a year before I joinded on a day I was sick. I also downloaded Shoddy battle and really liked it. I don't ever think I will seriously play the game again unless I get heart gold or soul silver or something. However I really love the strategy element and the idea of belonging to the group that is the best of the best. There is too much mediocrity in the world and so it is refreshing to be somewhere where people are not apathetic but skilled and that is why I stayed at smogon.
 
I got referred here by a friend.
Before that I was a lurker at Serebii, if I could get those forums to load, lol.

Both the humor of some of the posters and the quality of the articles written here have been enough to keep me lurking here for over 2 years.
 
Well, my Pokemon Story and Smogon story run into each other, so here goes:

I got into Pokemon in the good old Red and Blue days back in 1998. I was at the ripe age of 10 years old and I was with a friend and his family for a weekend trip to the beach to which I we both brought our gameboys and he brought along both of his copies of Pokemon Red and Blue. I played his Red version all weekend long and upon returning home that Sunday night, begged and begged my parents to go and buy me a copy of either Red or Blue. The following week I embarked on my very own Pokemon journey with my own copy of Pokemon Red.

Shortly after Pokemon Gold and Silver came out in Japan in 1999, a schoolfriend of mine had imported a copy of Pokemon Silver and he let me out of all of our friends borrow it for the weekend, to which I took full advantage of it. For that week, I was the coolest kid in my 6th grade class. 2000 gets here and I anxiously save up money to buy a copy of Pokemon Gold (since I had already played through Silver months earlier) and played the crap out of it I did. I also received Silver for my birthday that year, and having both copies with two gameboys was so amazing.

Ruby and Sapphire get here and they came completely under the radar for me. I ended up getting a copy of Ruby a littler later in the game, and for the first time ever, I dislike Pokemon more than I ever have. I hated generation 3 so much that I sold my copy of Pokemon Ruby, decided that I had just outgrown Pokemon and never looked back. In late 2005/early 2006 websites begin to run their coverage for Pokemon Diamond and Pearl which are about to come to America, and I decide to give the Pokemon train one more go. I pick up a copy of Pokemon Fire Red from the local Best Buy for a cheap $20 and embark once more down memory lane in anticipation of transferring my little monsters up to their big brothers on the Nintendo DS.

Being the college sophomore that I am at the time, I anxiously wait outside of the now defunct Circuit City in town (since they had D/P for $27 on launch day!) and dive in head first by picking up both Diamond and Pearl. I begin my long journey on that fateful day and I have loved every moment since then. Diamond and Pearl really rejuvenated the Pokemon train for me and I couldn't be happier Diamond and Pearl come and go and I invest entirely too much time into them and begin to discover the joys of IV's, EV's and a little dedicated competitive Pokemon website called Smogon. The year is 2008 and I am getting into the full swing of things with competitive training and battling, Platinum in Japan has just been announced and I am loving Pokemon just as much as I loved it 10 years ago.

September 2008 gets here and Platinum arrives at my doorstep fresh from Japan and I'm Pokemon bliss once more. Months come and go and American Platinum comes out and I double dip for the first ever with any game and it's well worth it. Flash forward to September of this year with the release of Heart Gold and Soul Silver. My imported copy of Soul Silver gets here and it's like I'm 11 years old again and playing through Pokemon Silver for the first time in Japanese; needless to say, nostalgia rushes over me like never before. By this time I'm full into the swing of competitive battling and training and now I've even gotten a friend that I battle with once every week or so and Pokemon is so very good. I'm now finishing up finals and still playing my Japanese copy of Soul Silver like mad, trying to finish up everything in the game, so very excited to play through the games in English, training new competitive pokes, and now after 3 years of lurking, registered on smogon.

I know it's a long read, but if you stuck it out, I hope you enjoyed the post from a long time Pokemon fan. Long story short, I found Smogon back 3 years ago when looking up strategies for competitive battling and walked away with way more information that I ever thought I would know about the game. Take this as my intro (and quite lengthy) first post on Smogon, and I hope it is a sign for good things to come.
 
I came here so that i could play in tournaments but i need 100 posts before I can do that, so you shall be seeing me post everywhere xD
 
I came here to become a better battler i guess you could say.

better competition really.

i started out at sites such as gamebattles , marriland , etc and have grown tired of them. I want more of a challenge
 
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