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Smogon: Why you came here and why you stayed

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Hi everyone. As you can see I've been on these forums for a long time. However, I've actually been a bit scared of posting here. I decided to go ahead and say "Screw it", anyway here goes.


When I started Pokemon:

I've been into Pokemon ever since I bought Blue way back when (I remember counting the pennies out on my bed) and I was hooked instantly. Then in 2000 I bought Pokemon Gold and the magic continued- I'll never forget sitting on the sofa after school and just playing it solidly (I chose Chikorita as my starter). Then a few years later after my dad bought me a Gameboy Advance, I got Pokemon Sapphire/Ruby/Emerald as they came out. I came into competitive battling in summer 2008. I learned how to Ev train and Iv breed and so on so forth. Currently in this gen I own US Diamond, US Pearl, EU Pearl, US Platinum and I learnt about the serious competitive side of Pokemon.

How/When I found this site:

I found smogon by chance. Researching Pokemon and other Pokemon websites I'd never been to before. I've come to use it as a reference and for important information. Smogon has proved invaluable to me and I'm sure it will continue to be for many many times to come.

Why I stay:

I decided to stay on smogon because of the quality of its members. I've noticed the high quality posts and interesting findings which I could only find here at smogon. I want to attempt to improve my battling and prediction skills which personally I think suck to be honest at this moment in time. I hope that my debut will be well received and I look forward to taking part in many discussions and other things.

And there you have it =].
 
WHEN I STARTED POKEMON:

It all started for me back in 2001, when i went over a friends and saw them play gold. The next day, I had bought Silver, i became addicted, and compelted the game in 20 days. I did the same with ruby,emerald and diamond.

FFINDING SMOGON:

Up until 5 mounths ago, i had no idea what smogon, ev's, iv's, egg moves or Competative batterling were.

I was in the battle tower, got up to 30, then was defeated by a scizor. I wanted to get a 50 streak, and so typed "battle tower" into google, where i found a link to the d/p battle tower records page.

I saw Jumpmans amasing record and was amazed (like everyone else) i clicked it and found all this mumbo jumbo about ev's. After some time on serebii and smogon, I found out a lot.

I joined yesturday, and don't intend to leave. My battle tower record is now 68, thanks to Smogon.
 
I was a hard core Serebii man as I was an in game player up until the fourth generation. I clicked on the Game Mechanics part of Serebii which explained all about Ev's and so forth.

From there, I googled competitive topics until I found that Wifi battles are posted regularly on Youtube. I watched Marriland's videos for the most part, and thought he was GOD. But he said the guys over at Smogon could probably beat him, so I checked out Smogon. Being already pretty interested in competitive battling, I read all the entries in the Strategy Dex and began to create teams. I then ventured into the forums and Shoddybattle, where I now am most of the time.
 
I got back into pokemon after a long absence and restarted by pokemon diamond game (hadn't got anything worth keeping). I beat the game quickly despite no knowledge of competitive battling and not even knowing it existed :P Then I got to the battle tower.

I fully expected my team to easily sail through it as it had done the rest of the game, only I got beaten on the 5th battle. As you can imagine that pissed me off so I started looking into how to make my pokemon better. Learned about EVs IVs and natures and then began looking for movesets. Every google search I did sent me here so I bookmarked it. Since then its been my bible, and I've got into Shoddy and all other aspects of the game. No way I'm ever leaving.
 
I started playing at Pokemon RBY.

Skip forwards about 8 years, and by that time playing Pokemon had faded from my mind. Then my best friend introduced me to NetBattle. I was hooked. And I got Emerald around that time. I dropped NetBattle after about 2 months.

Skip forwards about 2 years more, and I hear of DP. No real excitement there.

Until I find out about the Physical/Special split. I went out and got Pokemon Diamond in January this year. After about 2 months, I beat the Elite Four with 28 hours under my belt.

By this time, I had already started Lurking on Smogon. I've been doing that since... about November, December 2008.

3-4 days ago, during a lack of stuff to do on my commputer, I downloaded Shoddy. Built a Rain Dance team that lost easily. I overhauled it, and the new version racked up 10 wins quite quickly. Then racked up 10 losses as quickly.

And today, here I am. Not much to say about that. I figured that, after Lurking for so long, I might as well participate. *EDIT: Today, by the way, refers to the 16th of May, 2009. For all you people who want to know that.
 
I've been playing Pokemon since the very beginning, getting Pokemon Blue for my birthday. Since then, I've been playing the whole series with the exception of GSC because I was broke during that time period.

I just started competitive battling a few weeks ago and while I have fully EV'd Pokemon and such, I'm horrible at putting a team together and strategies and just prediction. Yes, I'm a Pokemon failure if you want to put it in that context.

I'm staying here because I feel like I'll get good help from here. I mean, I already have people helping me outside of smogon (people I actually know) but I'd like to get as much help as I can.
 
I started playing Pokemon in kindergarden with my first game being Yellow version As I got older my desire to be better at this game became greater and greater and things like going on the internet didn't help.

The site where I actually learnt about competitive battling and such was Gamefaqs. While I didn't post a whole lot I tried making teams based off things I learned there but that didn't work to well, but one thing I did learn was that there was a place where great battlers where, a place called Smogon and they had a tutor/apprentice program. As soon as a new one started I became a member of Smogon and signed up as an apprentice. Since then I've become much better thanks to Smogon and the people here.

There are lots of things keeping me here, tournaments, giveaways, regular news, firebot(usually) being hilarious. And before I can even think of leaving I have to get the number 1 spot on the Standard Ladder Leaderboard.
 
Well even though i just officially joined today. I have been consulting the analysis and forums for quite some time. Maybe even a year. How I found out about smogon? Back at my days where i was just a newbie, i once fought a person back at freidncodes.com wich strangely was better than the rest in a way that fighted a lot more prefessional like. After our matches she always gave me tips and even encouraged me to integrate more UU's in my team. At first it sounded crazy but after i managed to keep up with her in our battles. Than she told me that if i needed more tips i should check here at smogon.

So why i stayed? After examiating the analysis pokes and forum and comparing them to previously sites i have been too i insantly realised that if i wanted to become a ''real pokemon trainer'' i needed to learn from the best. So here i am now after a year of trying the anaylisis pokemons the teams at RMT and building my own team (wich is far from perfect), i decided that it was time i joined the community officially. Because i knew i wasnt a noob anymore and i could actually get some respect here now compared from how i was a year ago when i found out about smogon.

It may not be the most intersting story ever told but its my story so XD =P

Oh and before I forget... SMOGON IS #1 and all of the peoples that help to keep this website the best.
 
When I started pokemon?
It was around 1998 or so I guess, I went to a carboot sale and bought a Game Boy Color. I checked the slot and it had pokemon Yellow in it! I played that game forever.

How/when I found this site?
It was a two years ago or so, I had no idea what Evs an the like were, and I searched Google and found Smogon, and it helped me a lot by looking at all the articles. I only bothered to join a few months ago though because I'm like that.

Why I stayed?
I found it great thats why. Enough said.
 
I have been lurking on Smogon Forums for the past couple months, and a couple of years before then I had discovered Smogon and been using their strategy pokedex and tier list. However, I never dared post on Smogon Forums due to their strict rules and my newbishness. Recently I have finally signed up, because I have gained the confidence, and made a few posts here and there. I came to Smogon because I want to fit into an intelligent community (I came from Gamefaqs, it's very crazy) and I want to learn professional competitive battling and social skills, and what better place to go than Smogon?

I have been playing Pokemon since Red/Blue was released and always enjoyed it, although it took Diamond and Pearl's release to make me realize the existence of competitive battling. I have gotten decent at battling, and yet I feel I am nowhere close to spectacular. The main reason I signed up and planned on staying is to take part in the Tutor/Apprentice Program, although I hope that I might become a contributing member to Smogon as well sometime in the future.
 
It all started on my 7th birthday when I got my first Pokemon game(Yellow Version). I found my first favorite pokemon ever on that game(Primeape). I went around winning all kinds of battles with him, in-game and link cable). Then later on in 3rd grade I got Silver Version. I found my new number one favorite pokemon in there(Aipom). I had a mighty Ampharos to own the whole game. Through R/S/E/FR/LG I basically just cruised around doing alot of training and whatnot. I also won alot of battles via Wireless Adapter but was not familiar with the "TRUE" competitive gameplay of pokemon.

I first found out about true competitive gameplay a month after I had went through D/P a few fun times. I joined a website called Celebi Warriors like a year before when Mystery Dungeon first came out, and they were talking about Compet. Gameplay when D/P came out. I joined a few forum sites that were specialized in Compet. Gameplay when my friend AMJZero(or ShinyMew) from Celebi Warriors had told me of a site called Veekun that had an online pokedex and had explanations on the juice of Compet. Gameplay(dammit I am saying that too much), EV Training. He told me that I should join it and battle a few people there. Of course I was like, "Oh hell yea Ima beat everyone!" Unfortunately it did not turn out that way at all. I got my ass handed to me without any wins at all. I then decided to stop being stubborn and check out the whole EV training deal and found that it really works! So after that I started using its IV Calculator and finding what my stats would be and stuff like that.

A month after getting used to EV Training I started looking for some of Veekun's associated websites and the first one that caught my attention was a site called "Smogon." I went to it and found that it had a whole lot more than Pokemon Information and other stuff like that. It had recommended EV spreads, Move Sets, another friendly online community for peopl who love pokemon like me! I battled people here(still got my ass handed to me) alot and got some of the more advanced concept of Competitive Gameplay. I left Pokemon for like 1 year unofficially but came back when I started to miss it. I visited Smogon again seeing that alot had changed! It didn't have that "Smogon University is not yet finished" message anymore and had even more helpful info about different pokemon and had tier lists and other stuff. Even though I have no WiFi at the moment I will always stick by Smogon and come up with teams to be rated so that I will have something to come back to when I need to remember what I had on my team. Smogon is one of the best online communities that I have signed up for. :toast::toast::toast:
 
Well, this looks like as close to an introduction thread as I could find, but I may as well.

I've been a Pokemon fan since the series hit the US in the Red and Blue days, but knew of it previously via Nintendo Power magazines and would read the articles about Red and Green (which I found stupid at the time). But after so long, I've become a huge fan and am a fanatic when it comes to completing the PokeDex in the game. I've stayed rather consistent with the series excluding a year or two when I thought I outgrew it, then one day out of boredom to pick up my Silver game which was laying around "for laughs, to see how stupid this stuff really was." Never turned back since.

I now run my own Pokemon forum, simply call it RTC for now. I've been running it for about two and a half years and blah blah blah, this isn't an advertisement. But wherever I go that involves websites about Pokemon, I go by the name of The R.S., which is short for "The Rescue Squirtle"; a tributation of the PMD series and my all time favorite and first ever obtained Pokemon, Squirtle.

Now, I've come to Smogon to do final studying and such for competetive batteling for the World Pokemon Championships coming up this weekend for me in Phoenix, Arizona. I've got a team prepared already, but I needed them tested and if any last minute changes of any kind were to be made, either through minor tweaks to a complete team reformation, now would be the time. Why I waited for the last minute is beyond me; I personally think it is because I like the aspect of racing against the clock.

And finally, wither or not I stay long enough to become part of the furniture or not is unclear, but we'll see what can be done. For now, I'm going to get adjusted to the forum, ask some questions, do some batteling, and probably get my butt kicked a number of times.

Nice to meet you all.
 
PokéColosseum™ said:
I come here because I like the ideas on competitive moveset smogon offers.

Why is my signature not working? :(
Click to expand...
Only badged members can have images on ther signatures, its to save space and time.

Well, first I came just for a reason: The CAP server. However, I lurked a bit on the forums and discovered the wonderful community Smogon is, and I wanted to take part in it. Now, after seeing all the trade threads, I feel enouraged to stop hacking and start getting the Pokemonns the right way.

The reason I stayed is pretty much the same
 
I came here because I kinda like Pokémon and every other community is retarded (this one isn't perfect, but it's the best).
Also, I always lurked Firebot, there are some fantastic threads there and does anyone even try to read all of these replies?
I also like the pictures thread.
 
I found pokémon in kind of a dodgy way. My brother had randomly bought plastic figures of Golduck, Raticate, Rattata, Poliwag and Poliwhirl, and I thought they were really cool. Then the TCG arrived, and I managed to do pretty well on the trading side despite only every getting the fire/grass deck and a couple of free cards off friends, one of which (a diglett) ended up starting a trading chain which ended in a holo Mewtwo, which I was pretty proud of. This was when I was about 6 or something. Then I got Yellow (first thing I ever bought off the internet), and proceeded to get pretty good at it, raising a lvl100 Jolteon pretty soon off the mark and replacing my Pikachu with it. And then my game died from possibly the creepiest glitch I've ever known: enough to make a grown man shit bricks. When I was 6 at the time. I'll have to document that glitch actually, at some point, though my memory's gone quite fuzzy now. I could probably sum it up as a kind of corruption status that affected my pokémon one by one, turning their sprites into boxes and rendering them unusable in battle. I call it "Box Virus". Sadly I don't have any pictures or anything, given how it was 10 years ago now and I started a new game immediately due to it becoming unplayable. People should be able to get the gist of it, but I highly doubt anyone'll believe what happened- I myself have never found an explanation for it despite reading into all the programming quirks and glitches of 1st gen. That incident's what inspired me to, really.
Anyway, from 2nd gen to 3rd gen I played pokémon like most people. The only interesting things I can think of were how I found a shiny Donphan and almost murdering my cousin for accidentally killing a shiny Lugia. 3rd gen I began to look into competitive battling, and that's when I found NetBattle and Smogon. I got pretty good at NetBattle actually, but never made a Smogon account- the first time I tried to make an account it didn't work, and it ended up that I couldn't be arsed making an account for a whole 4-5 years. Still lurked the whole time, though. Best Pokémon website online, really. Serebii is full of idiots, Marriland is full of EV-training noobs who EV but can't battle or make a team and as for GameFAQs and Neoseeker... just look at any of the "event and shiny" trade threads and I won't need to explain.
 
Smogon and Pokemon

Introduction:
This is my first post as a member, and thus thought that this post would be suitable to begin my venture into the Smogon community.

How I Got Into Pokemon

Ever since the conception of Pokemon, I have been into every product, merchandise, and character/game except for the manga. The reason for the manga being that I have not had enough time, but I have wanted to read the Pokemon Special.

Anyway, getting back to the point, I discovered Pokemon when I was 5, in 1998. I had recently moved to Oregon, from Hawaii where I had lived for the five brief years of my life. Compared to the mild paradise of Hawaii, Oregon's days were either too short or too long. The temperature was too hot during the summer and too cold during the winter.

Despite this trivialities (from a modern time frame), there was an unconquerable void in my life. My temporary existence in Hawaii was idealistic, surrounded by all of my family and friends. In Oregon, I had my parents and sisters, and had no friends. Pokemon was a way to fulfill my subconscious desire from escape from my sub standard reality. I was bullied, involved in a five month war (don't ask about it), and was flunking school.

Initially I got Pokemon Red version out of curiosity. I was at a gym with my parents a month before my birthday. I was watching a kid play the game, and was blown away by the interface. The main thing that made me want to get the game was "Charmander grew to Level 7!". Being almost five, my natural reaction was to assume that Charmander actually grew. The guy said that they could go up to 100, so my assumption was that they would grow to Godzilla level sizes.

Thrilled, I decided to venture out and beg my parents to get it for me. And so I played, and played. I got every version, every spin off, everything. My dad even played the first generation games, and we would commence it epic "duels" where we would raise our Pokemon to Level 100, and try to give them the best moves. Back then, that was my competitive caliber, and I have fond memories of that.

Every generation gave something new and interesting, a new take on a creative series. Eventually, when I moved back to Hawaii at the age of 8, I had discovered that my best friend (before and after I moved from Hawaii to Oregon and back) was playing the games as well. And that's when I got competitive.


How I Heard of Smogon:

Around third grade, I stopped flunking and magically started doing well in every class. My standards drastically increased, and I was unsatisfied with even a B+, and occasionally even an A-. Naturally, these standards spread to everything else. I heard about Smogon in the middle of 2005.

Why I have stayed:

I don not know if I could really consider staying, considering that I just registered a few hours ago. But if you take into account the many times I've visited, there are many reasons.

I have very high regards for Smogon, and the standards that they have set. It is unique among communities. Marriland was alright, but seemed more focused on the actual series. I was in it for competitive reasons compounded with a sense of awe and appreciation that has carried me through the series since childhood. Much like the series, Smogon University has grown from nothing to greatness. Bulbapedia is a wiki, and while it is a excellent source of information, I recognize that a wiki community can only go so far. Serebii.net seemed focused on everything Pokemon, yet it was not specialized in competitiveness.

And so, I continued this process of elimination until I reached Smogon. I was initially there only for competitiveness, but as I glanced at the pages, and analyzed the information, something grew in me. Something that told me that this was a true competitive community. Throughout the years, I have grown to appreciate the character and caliber of the fine members who have contributed to the website.

I stayed because of a strong sense of community spirit, organization and high, intelligently decided standards. It is for these reasons that I will continue to stay in the future.

And so concludes my first post.
 
How I Got Into Pokemon

To start off with RPG's have always been my favorite type of game , where you have to collect - and where you can see the results of your hard work from building. Games like Command & Conquer/Final Fantasy7



i think around 1999 or 2000 when Blue & Red where released in the UK, I was working part time in a cinema at the time and
for some reason everyone had a GBA and the game. I was playing Final Fantasy 7 at the time so thought Id give it a go.
After 2 weeks of what I thought was training - my Lv 23 pokes were destroyed by a Lv 70 Arcanine lol

I didnt play pokemon untill 2006 again when i was on tour and found a 2nd hand copy of Leafgreen.
Now fast forward to 2009 and Im hooked - a few of my friends still play but really as not as much as me hence why I looked for
a community to join




I came across this site randomly when I first discovered competitive battling,
Im slowly getting to know a few people. But Im staying because people here
are really friendly and willing to share knowledge, and also to one day contribute something back
 
Honestly, I came to Smogon a bit sceptical. I had heard stories mostly about bad things, really, but despite this I decided to lurk and see what this was all about anyway, since I was getting into competitive Pokemon. After 4 months of lurking, though I had decided that what I had been told was way different from reality, and I decided to finally sign up. I didn't get too active here until March, but I've found that Smogon was as friendly as pretty much anywhere else. I stayed because of this, this and the fact that I get much more intelligent conversation about things here than the other forums I've been to.
 
I came here because I am just starting to learn about competitive battling and I want to learn as much as I can! My friend (and mentor) Age of Kings came to this forum so I basically followed her here. =P I stayed because I really like the atmosphere here.
 
Forums be gangsta.

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Seriously, I never was a Pokemon battler, always one of those emotional supportive people. Almost two years ago, on Shoddy, I was such garbage, and never saw improvement in myself. The thing that kept me halfway interested in Pokemon, was the friends I met along the way. Last year, I strongly improved in the art of competitive battling. Whilst losing interest in Pokemon not long after my improvement, all I was doing was socializing on Xbox 360 Live and all. On a chat, where I hang out, everyone was all up on Shoddy one day. I felt somewhat left out, so I then decided to get back into the sacred art of them Pokemon. Now I see myself as a decent battler. I have enough proficiency of the current metagame to be considered as such.

Overall, I love being on forums as well. First time in a few months. I'm sure I'll enjoy my stay here, at Smogon University.:toast:
 
I love a lot of the people's sarcasm, rudeness and all around comical nature of a lot of the posts, but at the same time it's refreshing to see that people are still serious about the game and also contribute well meaning, detailed posts too.

I only really showed up because I was bored one day and said " Oh look, I used to play pokemon when I was 12, I wonder what this is about! " It's too bad I really only play once every few month's though, My CRE is perma stuck at 1300-ish.
 
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