Smogon: Why you came here and why you stayed

[Mekkah]

Some people find it interesting to know how so many of us got into Pokémon and how they found this site. Others are dying to tell us. In addition, if you have been around and you are enjoying your time here, or you found Smogon helpful, you might want to express your content. This thread is for people from all these categories. We ask that you keep discussion out of this thread though.

This thread is a merge of What has Smogon done for you and How did you find Smogon?. Many, many people already posted their stories in there, so chances are that if you're looking for someone's, a user-specific search through one of these gives you the result you're looking for.

Example posts for the lazy:

What has Smogon done for you? (blackshellbowser)
How did you find Smogon? (Steelicks)

 

[Tracker]

Yep

It all started for me on October 16, 2001. I had heard about Pokemon for quite some time now. It was the time when those tiny 8-bit sprites were all the rage in my neighbourhood. On that day, a boy the age of seven and a half walked into a Zellers and picked up the most lucrative item on its shelves, a video game for Gameboy Color. I distinctively remember that there were only 3 copies left, 1 for Pokemon Gold and 2 for Pokemon Silver. I took Silver. I had worried my little heart out that they would have been sold out yesterday, but when I walked out of that store, my dream was realized. Since then I have accumulated a collection adding in Pokemon Crystal, Pokemon Ruby, Pokemon Emerald, and Pokemon FireRed, Pokemon XD, Pokemon Pearl and Pokemon Battle Revolution. I have managed to legitimately collect 251 through some horrendous amounts of luck. I had done all this, with absolutely no knowledge of competitive battling.


The idea of competitive battling came to me when I was wandering around in my Crystal game sometime in 2007, when I found the battle tower. This 16-bit image stayed in my mind all these years. It was the land where a Snorlax using Return, Rest, Sleep Talk and Shadow Ball could decimate your whole team seemingly effortlessly. I swore that I would conquer the Behemoth one day. After a few Google searches, I found an inconspicuous-sounding website named smogon.com. That was the day I arrived.

The reason I like Smogon is that there are rules. The jungles of GameFAQs boldly goes un-moderated for the most part. You see people hacking and even requesting hacks. I lurked there for a while before realizing how stupid it was. Everybody was collecting useless events and shinys. The battling was good, but I could be sure that they were hacking for flawless IVs. So, thats my story.

 

[Cronkite]

When my interest in the Pokemon series sharply rose in 2004, I became aware of competitive battling. As first I passed it off, though as I noticed that it was a part of the game that kept me from completing it, I began to take interest. I still have not grasped it completely as I have not yet gotten the trainer card star in the Battle Tower. Although Smogon has helped me improve slowly over time and understand how important things such IV's, EV's, Natures, and items matter.

 

[DeLorean]

I came to smogon because a friend told me about it.

Not sure why I stayed.

 

[chaos]

Hi guys, thanks for posting, but please read the example posts and try to put just a tad more effort into posts so the topic is entertaining to read!

 

[Sklez]

Well this is fitting for me to post on my one year Smogon anniversary. I joined one year ago, to the day, searching for help to breed a Porygon. Immediately I received help from a user and so started breeding for a bit. I set up a wifi shop, and got a few trades, but after some months my interest in Pokemon dwindled. I was never quite able to completely understand and follow the competitive discussion. Don't get me wrong, I still love Pokemon, I just don't use shoddy much these days, I never have.

Sometime in my first month at Smogon I found Firebot and the rest of socialization. Throughout the last year there have been so many times I have clicked that linked and been able to laugh with the hilarious things people post there. I took me a long time to make my first post there though, it was quite intimidating at the time. These days I post every so often, and hope that I sometimes add something to the humor, but I've never had an good idea for a thread.

I've been coming to the chat quite a bit recently, but there is never much going on due to my weird timezone. As to why I've stayed while not playing Pokemon, well I have to say that smogon is the most interesting forum I have ever been to. Here there are many quality threads while at other places it takes ages to filter the crap. Smogon's accessibility is top notch, its always easy to find what I want. The people are nice, funny, and helpful. I have a lot of fun joining in the community activities like mafia and feto, and hope there are many more of these things in the future.

Speaking of the future I can't see myself leaving for good anytime soon. Every time I take a break for a while I find myself catching up on what I missed while gone. Hopefully other people enjoy my presence here as I greatly enjoy being here.

 

[EconBiscuit]

How I first got into Pokemon?

I first got into pokemon with the introduction of pokemon to UK tv screens, watching this I become obsessed with the pokemon world, how cool pikachu was and would Ash ever become the master he dreamed he would become. With the Pokemon gripping everything around my school, trading cards came and then my mate told me how he found a pokemon game. I borrowed his GB and off I played til my hearts content. I finally got a GBA and ahold of Red, Alas I got bored of the pokemon goodness and focused on other games. T'wasn't until Ruby/Sapphire came out that I was back into Pokemon. After that I stopped for about a year and then got Emerald, in which I first started learning about EVs/Ivs. I was attempting to use Pokemon as well as my other GBA games to ween me off my addicition.

How I heard about Smogon?

I was mates with AlienJesus through a mutual friend and then we ended up going to college together, after attemptiing to get me onto Netbattle, which I used that to competively battle twice. Both times I had my hand handed to me on a plate (With a Mono Type Elec vs. Mono Type Flying). After that I gave up on netbattle until I improved my game some more.

Once D/P came out Alien Jesus also pointed me to this in which I haven't posted on, just looked at people's trade threads until I made my own. Eventually I got a Ninty Wifi USB connector, which refused to work on my PC, but managed to get it to work on my GF's cpu (Limited). Eventually I got myself wireless internet and I haven't really looked back.

Some people have made me want to stay here, and my reason for staying now really is the competitive drive and Mafia, aswell as making at least one funny Firebot thread

 

[hbdragon88]

I came to Smogon first because of its analysis, then took up residence in the forums after some time here. The primary reason was to turn off signatures, as some one had a picture of a large teal DS Lite that I didn't want to have to see all the time. It was through Smogon that I learned about the July GameStop tournament and the Manaphy and Darkrai TRU events.

Most of what I've done here is limited to the Battle Tower and its variants. I didn't get much help on the D/P tower, but I adjusted my R/S/E teams to suggested changes, only to get repeatedly owned. I still link to them in my signature. I have not played any of the Tower games since February, on an self-imposed strike against the complete horrificness of the AI's hax.

I've come to regard my motives for staying around as none other than just werid, because other than the July tournament I've never played competitive Pokemon. And my use of Latios and Latias to smash through the tournament can hardly be called fair because the twins were banned at the time (they're still banned, I'm sure). Maybe it's just the feeling of hanging around the most wel-versed and intelligent players in the Pokemon universe that makes me want to stay. Debates are always fun to read and it seems astounding that a game that seemed at first so simplistic is so very deep and fanastically strategic.

 

[N/A]

I first liked pokemon When I got my Yellow from my mom when I was 6 years old, sigh those were great times :)

I came to Smogon after I heard about it on a swedish pokemon (Where I actually was looking for some nice shinys <.<) community from Hamstern and Frokko. On that site, Hmastern wrote a IV breeding guide and I got into it in maybe 3 seconds :)

Then I came here, bred 5 great IV pokes and set up a thread and now I have a 56page trade thread with Frokko and Hamstern :D so that's prob'ly why I stayed :P

 

[gaudetjaja]

I registered here a couple of years ago for a reason I don't remember, and I came here a few months ago because I was bored with my other communities and I wanted to get back into pokemon again. I stayed because the people of #smogon were friendlier than expected.

I kinda grew up with pokemon, the anime and then I got the game for my birthday (I think I was like 7 or something) and I've never really left pokemon ever since with the exception of a few months before I came back to smogon.

My team building and battling in general skills have been majorly improved (although I'm still decent at best...) and #smogon forms a good place to hang out in with interesting discussions from time to time. I don't spend all of my online time on smogon, I do other things too, so I think smogon has brought a bit of balance in my e-life!

 

[omgthatkid]

I got into Pokemon a while ago.
Competitively?
Just within the last year or so.
I remember I had to share that Pokemon Blue.
Then it was tradition that my brother gets 1 game, and I get 2 of the "trios"
Then my brother stopped buying them, so I had all of the Hoenn games.
But my little brother got into them (kinda) and bought FireRed and Diamond.

I don't remember how I found Smogon, but I'm sure it was through the GameFAQs message boards of Diamond and Pearl. As you can tell, I got my account in April of last year, about the time the game came out. I was, however, on those boards the summer before the game came out. That should how much patience I have. ^_^

I haven't been very active, only coming here occasionally to look at movesets or try to read what's going. But then I started with the CAP project and now I come here everyday.

 

[Black Flame]

I got in this site a long time ago. My friend told me to come here because it had great advice, and I agree. There isn't much more I can learn from this site, but I want to stay so that the three months I couldn't post (forgot to activate the account) won't be in vain =)

 

[shadowbulba]

I found this place in a Pokemon Emerlad guide on Gamefaqs. I love this place a lot. The movesets, forums, and most of the members are really awesome.

 

[Hamstern]

How I got into pokémon: I was like 9 and all the cool kids collected the pokémon card so I had to do that as well. Bought a gameboy and played until yellow and silver until I was maybe 11. Then I got nostalgic when I was 15 and bought emerald.. But stupid as I was I got stuck somewere and found serebii were I learned about IV's and Ev's under the "game mechanics"-part. At that time my IV-goals were like 1+/31/1+/x/1+/1+ so yeah :P

How I found smogon: Some guy were at a swedish game were asking if his pokémon were good enought.. Some other guys said: Hey, this is not smogon!". So I had to check up that weird smogon :naughty:

Why I stayed: Funny members, no small kiddies, wi-fi section :}

 

[CactuarJoe]

Well, in high school, I ended up getting pretty well addicted to Magic: the Gathering. I started looking for sites and resources to help improve my game, and eventually, I ended up being one of the best players at my school. After high school, I had a hard time finding opponents, and an even harder time keeping up with all the new expansions and whatnot - it was just too expensive. For a while, I didn't have a serious obsession. And then I picked up Pokemon Ruby.

I had played Pokemon Blue and been fairly into it, but I'd missed out on Pokemon G/S/C. Seeing all the new stuff they'd put into the game since Blue really gobsmacked me. So I went about seeing if there was a competitive group for the game, and found Smogon. ^^

Smogon has helped me - and hold on to your hats, any "PKMN is not SRS BSNS" folks who may have snuck in - to really enjoy Pokemon more than ever before. Learning new strategies, figuring out how to beat tough opponents and helping others to perfect their teams - how is that not fun? But anyway, that's my extremely long story.

 

[Kietharr]

How I got into pokemon
Second grade, all of the cool kids were doing it. This was 1997 I think so there were no real game stores in my town so I made my dad drive me down to Everett to get it. I wanted red version initially because all of the kids said it was better but I realized that none of my friends had blue so I could get all of the red AND blue pokemon with trades. I bought blue version with my hard saved 30 dollars and a link cable. I brought it home, popped it in my gold Gameboy pocket and played it... for 8 hours straight. Of course I was about 8 years old so I only got to Cerulean City, but I was hooked.

Unlike my friends, I had a computer (my dad upgraded and got a new computer with Win98 so I got the Win95 as a hand me down) and I had the internet. First thing I did was firing up the shitty search engines of the time to improve my pokemon skills. I picked up a lot from random sources and assembled a standardish competitive RBY team which dominated all of my friends running Charizard/Venusaur/Blastoise/Pidgeot/ 2 random pokemon.

How I got to Smogon
Fast forward almost a decade. D/P is coming out and pokemon is cool again. I dropped pokemon for the R/S/E generation because I was in middle school and went through the "IM A BIG BOY NOW I DUNT PLAY LIDDLE KID GAMES, GTA AND HALO ARE HARDCORE" stage. I picked up a copy of Diamond because I thought that Dialga was more awesome being a gigantic armored giraffe looking thing. Found wifi feature, started looking on the internet and eventually ended up at Neoseeker forums. I got tired of the sheer levels of stupidity there pretty quickly and was intrigued when one of the few people who didn't suck dick there talked about Smogon being the best site to go to if you want EV spreads and movesets because everyone at Neoseekers would mindlessly jump on a bandwagon for a 'unique' moveset. He was instantly flamed, "don't listen to that idiot, smogon is full of jerks", "Smogon is full of boring, uncreative noobs, all of the innovations come from other sites they just copy them", "Smogan band me just 4 usin u wtf fukking faggets1!1".

Naturally I was compelled to investigate! I came, I saw, I stayed

Why I stayed
1. I can actually advocate a superior standard set without being flamed for being uncreative. Sorry, as unique as special torterra is, it's not good.
2. I enjoy the higher level of intelligent discussion and the ability to actually criticize and be criticized without an instant locking of a thread for 'flaming'. Criticism helps me learn, both ways. You're not going to get any better if people are seriously telling you that any set is equally viable if you're skilled enough.
3. Teams are actually rated, not given a score out of 10 that means nothing, "You have a massive infernape weak, put a starmie or vaporeon somewhere, possibly over hippowdon because your gliscor makes him redundant and your team does not benefit much from sand stream" is MUCH better advice than "10/10 awesome team ^_^".
4. Much older user base. I'm sorry but I simply can't take the opinion of anyone named sk8erkid1995 seriously.
5. I'm a shitty firebot poster but I find firebot pretty damned funny. Your community has to be a pretty decent one if you manage to get people who don't even play pokemon to hang around here.

 

[lumipigo]

i joined Smogon whne I was trying to put toghether a team for my (still) incoming Nintendo DS and Pokemon Diamond. I'm playing in the shoddy battle server right now. I used to just use the site and go for the most comon strategies, but now i'm doing some variants of my own...

I stayed because I've read about the tutor apprentice and i'm really looking forward to it...

so that's my sotry... Not a novel, but that's what happened

 

[SeiferA]

To be honest, I've known about this community for a while now. I just haven't really decided to step in here up until now because all of this seemed quite intimidating. Of all the sites out there related to Pokemon on the net, this community seems like it may very well be the best and most hardcore. I'm not saying I'm not competitive at all, mind you; I just personally don't devote a LOT of time to the games like I should. Too many distractions and so forth.

But then again, I'm starting to realize that if I want to step it up a bit, it may be helpful to get my "feet in the water" sort of speak and start learning things from the real pros. I've had my teachers teach me a few things, but I think it's about time I go beyond the two teachers I got and look further out.

So yeah, long story short, I came here because you guys definitely seem like the best of the best :P

... sorry if that wasn't long enough. There's not much else to really say, and I figured I'd kind of make this an "intro" for myself sort of speak anyway XD;

 

[Flash Ketchum]

So I started coming to this site in mid November, after myself being on a small site named GameTalk for a while. At the time I thought I was a descent battler, but I wanted to be the best on GameTalk (at the time that would have been a big thing to me.) When I asked one of my friends who was one of the best battlers on our small little site how he came up with the move sets he used, he kinda chuckled and told me they were the Smogon standard sets. So I asked for the link and after about a month of kind of just looking around and pretty much copying the sets @_@ I decided to register hoping that Smogon would help me become the better battler that I wanted to be. I also heard there were some awesome battlers who could maybe help me get better haha. But long story short I came here hoping to become at better battler and learn more about competitive Pokemon, and so far Smogon's helped me with everything I hoped it would =).

 

[Ayashi]

When I started Pokemon: Well I guess I'll start by saying I've been playing pokemon since the red and blue version came out on gameboy. I remember the first day I actually got the blue version me and my brother were so excited I think we both played the whole day XD. Needless to say I've been following all the generations. In total I've finished the blue, gold, sapphire and now diamond, I never got into buying the red or green because I figured the blue was about the same.
​

How/When I found this site: That intro was a bit longer than I would've liked bit I figured I might as well put some background. It's funny because I only began to seriously think about competitive play a month or two ago. I enjoyed playing the games and that was it, but a friend of mine was talking to me about pokemon and how he still played so I picked up my diamond again and started seriously EV training and building up a team, which brings me here to smogon. I actually found it while I was using google to research pokemon. At first I used it only for move sets and EV training, but eventually I began to roam the forums and decided to become a member of the community.
​

Why I stay: The reason I decided to stay and am staying is because I believe that I can improve myself if I hang around people who actually know what they're talking about, and also because I still love pokemon <3. I also figure I can make some friends here, who share the same enjoyment of pokemon that I do. Well I hope that wasn't too long a read XD I guess I had more to say than I though XD.​

 

[Comentor]

What got me into pokemon was honestly WAY back in the day while I was reading nintendo power, I read a preview for pokemon red/blue. I thought it looked amazing and purchased my pokemon red on its release date. I've been hooked on and off ever since.

It was however this gen of pokemon when I really became serious in the competitive battling of pokemon, because of wifi battles, and in my research of varies pokemon, movesets, and such, friends pointed me to this site for moveset/nature/EV suggestions for various pokemon. Thus, I have been utilizing those resources for a long time now, however, I had never bothered to even examine the forums here until very recently.

I look forward to getting to know everybody here and anticipate being at least relatively active on the site ^____^

 

[Darkartisan]

What got me into Pokemon:

When I was 4 years old, (10 years ago...yes i'm only 14...) I bought Pokemon red because I was hooked on the television series. I had no idea how to play until I was 6, and I saw these teenagers playing, so I found my cartridge and started playing. I was instantly in love. Beating Brock and catching my first caterpie, watching it evolve...then when I defeated the elite four, it was like a dream that I never wanted to stop. I've been playing since I was 6, and I have beaten every series at least twice.

How/when I found this site:

After watching Marriland wreck some people, I went to his site, figuring that I could learn a few things. I found out that half of the kids at Marriland had no idea what they were talking about, and half of them were too stuck up to help me. I left kinda pissed off, and went to Smogon. I was instantly amazed at the info on the strategy pokedex, and figured that I would hit up the forums. My shoddy team went to 1230 in a matter of days.

Why I stay:

Many of the people here at Smogon are very friendly, know what they're talking about, and help give me pointers on whatever they see wrong. I enjoy reading random posts here, and just really love the community.

Now where can I get a Smogon teeshirt? I'm dying to get one after I saw Zerowing's...

 

[BlueFusion]

When I started Pokemon:

Let's go back to about... 1998; I was in the 2nd grade. My neighbor (my best friend still today), invited me over, and she (along with her two other siblings), were all watching the TV show, looking at the cards, and playing the video games. I had no idea what this franchise was that was so popular over my neighbors' house, so I got to know it, and I became hooked.

Today, I'm not much of a fan, and I'm more of a competitive battler, but it's still quite fun and enjoyable.

How/Where did I find this site:

Well, I have a firend here who once brought up the forum. I started looking at the website, checking out the Stratagey Dex, and downoladed Shoddy, when I thought: "Hey, why not just join the forums?" So of course, I did, and here I am.

Why I stay:

Why wouldn't I? I just joined anyway! On the other hand, I want to improve on my competitve skills, and well, maybe even make new friends.

 

[Mothim]

When I started Pokemon:
Back in the Second Grade, like it probably was everywhere else, Pokemon was all the rage. I couldn't figure out what was so big of a deal. Then I got Red Version for Christmas and I've never been able to put down Pokemon since. Interestingly enough, Pokemon has seen a very recent surge in popularity from the Diamond and Pearl releases last year, at my school at least, not sure if this is happening at other places also.

When/ How I found Smogon
Up until the release of Emerald, I had never played a minute of competitive battling, barely even raising any Pokemon to level 100 (or past 70 for that matter). After messing around a bit on Serebii and seeing that they never really had any sort of help for competitive battling besides explanations of EV/IVs, I looked elsewhere, and this is what I found. Frankly, this is just the most competitive, fun, active, etc. Pokemon Community out there, and I'm glad to be a part of iit.

 

[Hikari Meoru]

Hello all.

Today is my first day here at Smogon as an actual member. I felt this this thread would be the best place for me to introduce myself and my beginnings.

I started playing Pokemon on Sept 30, 1998. I remember this clearly because I had just came from a Dreamcast test session (sending in those damn registration cards actually came in handy one day!) and my friend told me that I should get Pokemon Red because he was getting blue. I actually told him "Hell no, that damn thing with the yellow rat, I'm not playing that crap!"

But, due to his urging, I copped my copy, and well, my life has fell into shambles since. Since that day, I've spent countless hours playing and learning all I can about this game. I'm no master or expert, I leave that for you folks here and on a few other select boards-but I honestly can say I've been with the American surge of Pokemon from the beginning.

I surfed through High school on Pokemon Red and Blue, and then my early college years held Gold and Silver for me. It was then I heard about competitive battling, but I was not sure about it, and so I left it alone. Then one day, I played my friend who got a interesting Houndoom as he put it, from a trade with some kid down in Chinatown. The second I saw SunnyDoom (and subsequently watch it kill my Golem)-I knew there was a new level to this game that I had not even touched.

However, what I found was some weird AIM prog bot crap that used crazy algorithms to "play" Pokemon with, and yeah that just wasn't working. So, with some searching, I found/heard of/visited/lurked Pokemonelite2k, Pokemasters, Smogon, GHPD and Netbattle, in that order. I never joined the sites, I just went there and studied.

I think I studied Pokemon more than I studied college work, truthfully. I'm never gonna be able to quote numbers, but hell, I'm glad for you guys and the smart people at each of those forums that explained things very thoroughly.

Why I "Stayed": I continued to lurk because when R/S/E dropped-and Netbattle got updated for it, I was all over it. I was always in the Smogon server..possibly under this moniker even. I remember a shireload of names that I seen on this board in there as well-and so I perused this site more and more, but never posted. Considered joining the tutoring session (still am) but I'm still kinda strapped for time. Maybe next time.

So today, after what I can honestly say has been years of visiting, reading, laughing and learning from this site, I decided to join. I just hope I can give back something after all this time.

Ugh, that sounded like an after-school special. Well, that's my story.