The begining of the Journey..
I started playing Pokemon back when r/b came out, i Must have been 8 years old, I was always going over to the neighbors (who was a very badass 14ish year old at the time, to cool to associate with such a younger dude), but since our parents were best friends, he was stuck with me.
At some point, he let me play his Pokemon Blue (he had both versions), his lead was magikarp, and i was stupid and thought that I had to use splash over and over, then when I did a certain amount of splashes, it would actually do damage (I swear this is all true).
He eventually noticed that I was using struggle over and over and corrected me, I was supossed to switch out, so that magikrap would gain exp and evolve.
He let me borrow his red version, and for the first 5 minutes I couldnt figure out how to get out of his moms house, Id get on the carpet, never go down it.
I started figuring the game out and didnt do anything to retarded..when I was battling Misty, she whooped me a few times, so I thought that talking to nurse Joy 4 or 5 times in a row, thinking itd make my Pokes stronger..
yeah. :/
Anyways, fast forward a bit.
I skipped Gold and Silver, picking up Crystal on its release date, I kept bothering the aforementioned neighbor, he sent me the link to gamefaqs so I could look stuff up myself, I stumbled across the Crystal message boards, and soon became a 'Regular' there, one of a team of raters who had a "Rate my Team' thread.
I couldnt get netbattle to work on my computer, so I battled on mIRC, or something, but it was mostly against the same gamefaqsers over and over.
About 6 months before R/S came out, I decided to grow up and be too cool for Pokemon, I didnt get back into it again until a bit before D/P were even announced, maybe 4-5 months.
Why I came..:
I stumbled across netbattle, only to be blown away by the changes, EVs? IVs? Natures? Abilities? none of this made any sense to me, and needless to say I was a horrible battler, in one battle my opponent noticed my Starmie didnt outspeed something it should have (the opponent and Pokemon escape my memory..)
He gave me the rundown on EVs and IVs, then pointed me in the direction of
www.smogon.com, which he said I should read up on the analyses a bit and make a better team.
I started battling very soon after and did pretty good, not enough to make a huge splash or anything.
Why I stayed..
So from that point on I battled mostly on Netbattle, then Gamefaqs when D/P came out, at some point I got sick of battling people whom I knew were using illegal amounts of EVs, but could prove it sinc emost people had a backup with the correct stats, incase of me wanting to check them via trade..
So I started battling on Smogon and very quickly opened up a trade thread, now I mostly lurk Stark Mountain, for the great war stories and discussions(sometimes not so great..) and mostly only post in wifi, though im broadening my horizons..