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Smogon: Why you came here and why you stayed

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I came here cause this is the best site for competitive pokemon. I'm trying to get more active on the forums, as opposed to just laddering and stuff.
 
I originally found out about Smogon a little while after D/P was released, no idea where I heard about it from. I've basically been lurking the site since then, and didn't decide to join until recently since I felt like I didn't really have anything that I could contribute to the forum (which I still probably don't now, but whatever). I stay on here because out of all the forums I've been on, it seems to have the most intelligent member population and I don't know any Pokemon site which does things as professionally.
 
I'm new to Pokemon (the game). I was looking for certain movesets online. I was googling "Infernape moveset" or something like that then i saw this Smogon thing and I was like "wtf is Smogon?", so decided to check it out. I did'nt even know about IV/EVs and their natures! So I'm still here lurking and learning.
 
I liked to play mafia so my friend said come to Smogon, you can play mafia online there. I hoped right on and now I'm here to stay.
 
How I started: Growing up I watched a lot of Pokemon, along with Sailor Moon and Bananas in Pajamas. At that age I just thought it was so cool, like raising you're own pets. And since I didn't have a dog growing up it was the next best thing.

Why I stayed: Call me a romantic but it was a part of my childhood I wanted to continue to indulge for its fantasy, is simplicity, and just recently, its competitive edge.

Smogon: Reading a competitive battle guide on GameFAQs I found one on movesets that I thought was boss. From there I learned about Smogon and it has really changed my way of playing, mostly because there's an actual community of diehards ;)
 
I have played pokemon since ruby and saphire (my mom didn't let me play video games until I was eight), only only last December did I realize there was more to it than shoving four moves on a pokemon. My friend had been reading online, just random sites on pokemon, and kept coming across the terms ev and iv. When looking those up, he came across smogon. After I lurked for a month to wrap my head around the concept of evs, ivs, natures, and base stats, I decided to become a part of the forums. So there you go.
 
How did you find Smogon and why did you pick it? I found smogon by google and typing in "competitive pokemon forums". I wanted to learn to play pokemon competatively, and this site gets alot of hype. I almost joined Serebii but it takes forever to load so fuck that. I found it

Why did you stay? "I GOT NOWHERE ELSE TO GO!!!" Thats semi-true. I also go to another Pokemon forum, but its not competative.
 
Well, where to start... Back in 1999 I guess, during the good ol' days of Red, Blue and Yellow... This will be a blast from the past, heh. At first I hung around some Dutch anime board, but the level of play was dreadfully low at the time. By pure chance I stumbled upon Azure Heights while doing a search or something. I don't know, it's over 10 years ago. That's where I learned how to play Pokémon comepetitively. Not much after that I discovered Pokémon Daily which I prefered because of the more laid back attitude by most of the people without sacrificing play level. This was an awesome time where I got to know great people like Darth David, branners, VolTure, GolemKong, kaize, DS-Nirvana, Schwa, White, etc. etc. I actually even made it to administrator of the forums and SOp of the IRC chat, back on sorcery.net.

After some years (around 2001 if my memory serves me correctly), the people running the website (Karma Charmeleon, GolemKong and Hitmonrich mostly) became inactive and the community waned. This is where I founded Marble Palace with the likes of kaize, Darth David and DS-Nirvana. The website had its ups and downs, but did a lot to keep the old gang together. This lasted until eventually all the founders of Marble Palace lost interest in Pokémon somewhere in the Ruby/Sapphire generation. In the meantime Smogon was founded and I signed up, just to follow the developments.

In the meantime I actually did play the games on the Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS, but I quickly put them aside after beating the games. For some reason Pokémon came up as a subject during a conversation with a friend, which I also knew through the competitive battling scene and things started to itch again. The coming release of Heart Gold and Soul Silver, remakes of one of my favourite games ever, made me check Smogon again and see who was still around. Thankfully, I still found people like Vineon, chaos, McGraw, MrE and even VolTure in the IRC chatroom.

Well, the European release of Heart Gold and Soul Silver is in two weeks, and I'm picking those up. I might just catch the Pokémon bug yet again. It's certainly interesting to read up on everything that has changed since I've left the scene. We'll see how it goes, but I'm just sticking here for nostalgia's sake at the moment ;).
 
During the long time I was doing competitive battling I avoided this site at all costs because everyone here came across as arrogant, power-hungry and fueled more by their ego than anything else.

I came back to this site late last year to check out the Create-a-Pokemon project because it sounded interesting, but I still got exactly the same vibes and found it very unpleasant so I turned away from that too.

But by then I'd been doing a little bit of (bad) spriting so I decided to post in the spriting forum. People there weren't nearly as bad as the rest of the site, so I stuck around, participated in some WSC and enjoyed a fairly long stint around that particular sub-forum.
 
Hello!

I'm a new guy here. Well, boy, I suppose you could say, because I'm rather lacking in the age department (13, turning 14), but I'll try to keep my posts as intelligent as possible.

So, how I came here. I was internet lurking pokemon stuff via Google, and ended up on Serebii or PkMn2k, I think. It mentioned something about Smogon, so I decided to check out this website. At that time, I wasn't too interest in pokemon itself, but I needed something to do with my spare time after I decided I'd cut my MW2 addiction. I decided that pokemon sounded interesting, so I've spent the last week(ish) knowledge-hoarding everything pokemon related. When I started off, I knew absolutely nothing about pokemon, and ran around with a Swampert Hydro Pumping everything I saw. I didn't know IVs, EVs, Natures or STAB bonuses. I just kind of, attacked everything. Never used anything like Roar, Encore, DD or moves of the like. I read about competitive gaming, and decided that would be really fun, so here I am.

I'm going to apply for an apprenticeship after I get a little more acquainted with these forums and the members, and we'll see how that works out. I suppose I could mention a little about myself know, and that funny little thing called real life.

So, as you know, I'm 13. I like playing rough games and eating food. Started playing pokemon when I was, uh, around 7, and have been on and off since then. I started off with Blue, then Crystal, then Ruby and now I've managed to grab a Platinum, so I've had my fair share of p0k3m0n g4m3g3z. I'm looking forward to meeting everyone here, and maybe sharing some of my input, once I figure out how to be as l33t gamers as you all are here. IWFOYS stands for "I will feast on your souls." Uh.. :heart:

But yeah. I think that's about it, but if you've got any questions, fire away. I was going to start a thread introducing myself, but figured this'll be good enough. *Goes back to lurking.*
 
I one day started playing my old Yellow and Gold versions and was looking up different teams and found the site. The site definitely got me more into Pokemon, especially in a competitive aspect. I've used the site resources and articles for a while but just decided to register. :)
 
I joined Serebii on June 6, 2006 as Dj06. When all the fuss about Garchomp and Deoxys was going around in the Spp-Wifi chat, I was like "Wtf is going on."
My sandstorm team was tearing up Spp-Wifi, then I was beating [insert name here] 6-1 with Garchomp(he was a Youtube battler and he was well known) and he disconnected, but didn't leave the chat. He said I used an Uber. I asked him which of my Pokemon were uber. He said Garchomp. So I checked the tier list(on a link to Smogon that he gave me), and sure enough, Garchomp was listed as a Uber. I've come to smogon ever since. Many of the greats that I had heard of were on Smogon: LR, Jumpman, Obi, KG and a few others.
When I joined, I wasn't able to post until February(it kept telling me my account had to be validated so I told Jumpman on Shoddy), three months after my join date. Smogon was more competitive than Serebii, and I liked that.
 
I was at a Gamestop, well actually getting fired from a Gamestop. When before I left I figured I might as well use my employee discount and bought a couple of games. I haven't played a game in a while and a used Platinum game turned out to be one of them. I had not played since Yellow so I did a bit of research and that led me to this site.
 
I first got Ruby for Christmas in 2003 with a GBA, first console of any kind, and loved it. I then had a few other Gen3 versions and several lv100s from training against friends. I was on Serebii for quite a while. Then my Pokemans like died down as high school came along, with Diamond. I got bored of it in late 07 and stopped playing.
I started a new save file last week, love it again, looked up competitive battling as I didn't understand much on it on Serebii, and this place was mentioned. Ventured over here.

Now I'm staying to learn, and because at least this place actually loads quick half the damn time, unlike Serebii which is really slow, and Smogon has more useful information for a beginner... unlike Serebii, which is shitty in that department.
 
If anyone reads this and has anything to say about it, feel free to PM me.

My name is Ryan von Fiedler. I'm a career game designer, and I got there by devoting countless hours of my life to game oriented pet projects that all my friends said were pointless. Like when I told my friend Paul that someday I'd like to make a full set of Pokemon, he'd say "Why?" Well, now I've stumbled upon Smogon University, and I think most of the people here know why I'd like to do that.

But we already have a Create A Pokemon board, and it doesn't work the way you think it does.

I know. I read up on all the processes, and I know I don't really have an outlet for creating around 100+ Pokemon here all by myself. Mostly, I would like to learn, and the articles and processes I read about the CAP has saved me days of data crunching. I'm also going to try and sign up for the next round of apprenticeship, as becoming a better competitive player should also help. In many ways, what I am doing is the exact opposite of the CAP. With the CAP, you try your hand at game design in order to ultimately learn more about competitive play. I am trying my hand at competitive play in order to ultimately learn more about game design.

It sounds like you know what you want to do. Why the exposition?

Well, eventually it'd be nice to have my Pokemon under peer review. These aren't going to be Pokemon I "created in the 8th grade". In fact, I was well over 18 before I ever came up with an idea for a Pokemon. With Shoddy Battle, I can design and program my Pokemon, and if no one cares what I come up with that's fine. It's my pointless hobby, after all, only meant to keep my abilities as a game designer (and my portfolio) sharper. But I'd still love some peer review some day, and I can't imagine there's no one here who'd be interested in what I come up with.

Just start participating and getting to know people.


Yeah, probably, but it doesn't hurt to get my intentions out there in case anyone reads this thread. Feel free to PM me if you're interested or have suggestions, or just want to say I'm being a noob.
 
I discovered Smogon University thanks to a reference in another forum. I wanted to learn about competitive Pokémon battling, so I decided to check Smogon out.

After lurking on the website, the forums and the Shoddy Battle Smogon server for about a week (my curiosity also made me search for other competitive battling communities, but found none that could match up Smogon), I concluded this is the best competitive Pokémon battling community and signed up to the forums.

What made me stay here are the really cool sets, information and articles. I also find the idea of tiers and clauses pretty smart.
 
Well the really reason is that I don't have anything else to do in my job heheheehe so I started playing Soul Silver and decided to study about pokemon to make a better team. Well now I know there is a lot of rules and things that I never imagined about this game. Waiting for the tutoring program to learn more with the forum ;)
 
I'm new, so I can't say why I stayed because I don't even know if I'll stay (but I saw that there is manyyyy informations there, so I think it'll take a long time to see everything, so I bet I'll stay for a while), but I'll say why I came.

Actually I wanted to get into (oh sorry for my poor english, I'm not sure this expression exists) competitive Pokémon, because I always loved competition and strategy, so I read lot of threads and website in french (Ya, I'm from France ! Sorry everyone :/) but I noticed french competitive community is not really large, or maybe it is hidden ! So I wanted to see some international things, and I discovered the very good veekun's pokedex, where I saw the link for smogon. Reading few pages I've found it really interesting, and wanted to speak with the community there, so I went onto the forum, and, guess what ? Here I am : D
I hope in few months I'll be able to tell you why I stayed : )
 
I came with ideas for my own fanmade pokemon game (that I will one day program from scratch and not romhack), searching for a pokemon community knowledgeable enough to help me keep my game reasonably balanced as I planned it out on paper. I've only been here for a week or two, but I expect I'll be staying and persisting in my efforts, because I'm convinced that if I can get past the "we only do metagaming" ice, than this is exactly the place I was looking for.
 
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