PBA Origin Story - What's yours?

[Rem]

PBA ORIGINS
I'm making this title extra dramatic so people click on it
I came up with the idea of making this topic for people who have stories to tell and want to share with people. Here you can share you story on your life on PBA. Talk about anything you want, such as - how you found PBA, your first impressions, memories (good or bad), funny stories, etc.

For a good quality story try to include the following if applicable:
-5 memorable people/friends that made an impact
-3 achievements that you're proud of

And totally optional :
- End with answering this question: What do you like most about PBA?


Feel free to be as personal or vague as you want, make sure that you are comfortable with what you put. I'll be sure to include my own story soon. Who's brave enough to be the first person - what's your origin?

[Aniketsamalinfinity]

Guess I'll be the first to take the leap....

Back when I was in 8th grade (that was 6 years ago) , I was this shy person who was always sort of the social outcast mainly because I was quite short in height ...
Getting bullied was not even a big deal anymore coz i was used to it.... But a couple months into the academic session i heard some of my classmates talking about this
game and i remember thinking - "Hey , maybe I should give it a try , what have i got to lose anyway" .... and so i did , i didnt exactly know what the link was so i googled it
and found this acc , i registered my nick and that's how it all began ....

The ign "aniketsamal" wasnt my first account neither was "orko97" , i dont exactly remember what it was but it was related to my real life name ... y first pokemon was a squirtle and that first evening i evolved it into a wartotle and took it to lvl 25 (yup i do remember the exact level coz it was my first pokemon ever since this was the first
time in my life that i played a pokemon game) ... In the coming weeks i grew and grew and once i knew the basic working , I started cheking out profiles of my classmates secretly . All of them were almost at the same level at me and i was surprised by it but then something just clicked in my mind and i decided that I would try to be the best in my class and that day wasnt far off , I was randomly searching a psychic map (i think) which i obtained through that random map cheat where you used to just write a number in the url and it would unlock the map and that's when i caught my first legendary , a mewtwo , which also happened to be the first legendary caught in my class ...
Soon after i was found out by my classmates and at first i thouht that i wouldbe bullied into handing over the mewtwo but instead something strange happened , I was suddenly treated like a human being for once , suddenly i was part of this huge circle of friends who liked to play this game and enjoy it . I was invited to online battles , people helped me out with my yards and basically everything that this game was meant to do , it helped me make friends . Looking back a mewtwo wasnt much but then
again for a 12 year old group of kids , we just wanted to be happy ... No money or shiny legendaries could compare to the fun we had playing the game.... But then something unexpected happened , along came a leggy yard ... There was this guy who allowed free access to his yard of leggies and one of my friends heard about it and our whole group joined the yard ... true to his word it was a leggy yard with leggies appearing almost every step , there i caught myself 300-400 leggies along with all my frnds along with a shiny suicune ... A lot of my friends got other stuff like a ghost regice , a shiny moltres , etc. I gave away my shiny suicune to a friend of mine who couldn't catch anything and that friend's name was "aniketsamal" , he had the only golden in our class which was a golden omastar which was literally worth its weight in gold to us . But then , everything changed , one day i come to school and there's chaos all around , turns out that PBA had been shut down , I couldn't believe it , rather i didn't want to believe it . I came home , immediaely popped open my computer and enterre the PBA site and there it was , in front of me , the thing which helped me maked friends just gone . It made me scared of what might happen next , would i be an outcast yet again ? would I be bullied yet again ? would i ever have friends again ? But .... thankfully my fear was only in my imaginations as it turned out to be yet another day in our little friend circle , yes we were sad and upset about pba closing down but we were satisfied with the time we had spent on it and mind you that friend cirlce still remains today , AFTER 6 FREAKING YEARS .... So yeah , pba helped me out pretty much in being more social and forthcoming , it helped me conquer over my bullies , make friends and just have fun .... Shoutout to my friends - Aniket(aniketsamal) , Harsh (harsh__kumar), Milan, Deepak (deepak) , Suraj (ab41258) , Rudra , CV and Raghav.

Bak to the present (or atleast a little smaller differnece in the past)... About a year ago , i get a call from Aniket and he tells me that PBA is back and he just randomly saw it when enterred the site ... I was ecstatic on hearing that but i told him that i didnt remember my account id and password and so what does he do ? He tells me that he knew how much i loved playing and he just straight up tells me his password and tells me that he would not be playing it anymore anyway . So after i finish talking with him , i shoot a text to all of my buds who played and everyone is like " Nah bro , We're too grownup for that " and maybe they had a point there . So i contemplated playing it or just going on with my life ... A few days went by and i didnt think about it but one day i was doing some project work and something happened in my mind and before i knew it , i was logging in to pba , and for the first time in 5 years I actually was revisiting my past .I checked the account , i remember the exact stuff that was in it , a golden omastar , shiny suicune , shiny entei and 5mil cash . That was enough for me and since my friends no longer wanted to play , I could play it the way most top players did , trade pokes and try and be the best in the world ... 1 year later and people acceptit or not , I am one of the best players there is , 1 look at my profile would make any doubters wince in pain but is it all worth it ? I dont believe so no , I no longer have the love that i had for the game when i was a noob , I had no problem just having fun back then but now I'm like this zombie who just logs in , sits in chat and waits for a good trade to come by .
In retrospect , PBA did change my life for the better and although it doesnt have that charm that it used to in the past , it still holds a very dear spot in my heart ...

Also in my PBA journey I have come across some good buds along the way but there were 2 major people who stood out -
1.lemons aka borsalino7 - I tell people this a lot but it was actually him that gave me my big break , back when my net worth was arnd 100m , i used to do a job for him , which made me collect golds for him in exchange for a 20% commission, although I did only 2 jobs for him , it made me learn the tricks of the trade and I have never looked back since ...
2.mickerrs aka mickerrs - starting from a noob to being successdul , he was always a friend that i could rely upon and although he doesnt play much these days , whenever i see him online , i try having a chat with him no matter how small it is ....

So this was my PBA origin story , believe it or not but this actually took me well over an hour to write .... Feel free to comment on my sotry and do share yours ....

3 achievements I'm proud of ? Well there are a few ...
1-Becoming more social .
2-Being the best in my class
3-Crossing a billion dollars in cash
4-Getting my account "winningcombo" unbanned and laying the bricks for creating a new system for people to get unabnned through

What do i like most about PBA ?
It helps me pass my time , heps me randomly associate with people halfway around the world and fills me with a sense of nostalgia

Signed- your friendly rebel , orko

[Chromohit]

Good story freind. My story also starts from the same standard i.e. 8th. Well, now its my turn.
I was bored with the games I had in my device and wanted to play something new. First, I started to look for games of my favorite anime both online and offline ones. Pokemon was one of them in the old time. And thats how i bumped into this game. I liked it so thought to stick to it. I also found that in short time i got addicted to this game.
I was a sort of shy to chat with others in shoutbox so I played alone for more than a month or so. I bought the bug map and wandered there only for much time. I just loged in, caught pokes and loged oout again. I remember that i didn't went somewhere else than hollowbrok town for 3-5 days untill i figured out how to go to other maps. My first special poke, was a metal caterpie, which i sold for money as someone gave me a deal i couldn't reject. I also bought cloud map. I caught many a pokes and all i focused on was training my starter to lvl 100(it was a charmander).
After that I wanted to buy a legy as i thought i have enough money for it. And that was first time i used shoutbox. First some players tried to sell a normal legy to me for a million or so, but, I didn't had a million. So, i was saved from getting ripped off. Then, I bought an Articuno, my first legy. Someone noticed me(Satan060696) and commented on my wall. He helped me by giving some pokes. And from there, I started the real journey.
After that, I sold and bought many pokes and first i focused on legys only as i had very less of them. Satan became my first friend. He gave me work in 2 of his yards, which gave me enough cash eventually. Then i became a regular face in shoutbox, i always open it in a new tab whenever i am playing. I made some more friends there and then one of them told me about yards, and also gave me access to their yard. Anyways, i caught many a special and voids there which i sold and became rich.
The richness didn't lasted long sadly . I spent all the money I had on yards and pokemons.
I ,thus, ended up having 20k. Well, with my lvl 100s, I again got enough money eventually, but this time it was much lesser than the fortune I once had. I worked and completed some yards for my friends and started training pokes, but i took the training work only sometimes when I got some bored. I left the training business and thought to stick to my catch and release business only because of shortage of time. The catch/release work I also left and the reason was the time as usual.
I then completed 3 achievements in an hour, which I think itself can be considered an achievement by me. And after that, my PBA life is running smoothly I later joined a clan made by the friends of mine. I helped in completing clan challenges there. And left it, then I played freely, I have made much progress till now. Well, I, after so big journey, am here telling my origin story. Hope you liked it.
In my journey, some people made a large impact. My those friends are :
1. Satan060696
2. Zubairafras321
3. LOK_LAMBERT
Other 2 that made impact can be:
4. Poojan30
5. Saborni
Achievements I am proud of- Not any yet
What i like most about PBA- The whole PBA lol.
Your dependable Hero- ~Chromosky~

[glucht23]

My origin story..

I was a young lad when I came to this site. I figure I was around 12-13 pokemon crater had closed down long ago and I was bored one day and the game popped into my head. when I put in pokemoncrater.com it linked me to pokemonbattlearena.net and boom I was back. I wasn't real good at the game at this time. back when I first started PBA I was still using dial-up internet and only had my moms computer so I SUCKED. My original username was glucht792 because of some personal stuff that I won't mention. I played on that account for a while until I forgot my password one day so I made the currently famous glucht23 account. My lack of internet speed made training impossible at the time. So I devoted my time to searching for specials and making yards with my former clan the Royals (best clan in the time) I didn't have really anything worth much. I devoted myself to uniques and got up to like 2600. But when pokemonelites.net came out I went there instead. We just got our wireless internet around that time and I got my first computer so I became a trainer on this site. This site is where I became close friends with Darkmuj, Darklord_6, and his brother Deoxys. We had competitions with eachother constantly. Me and muj had the competition of uniques. He was the guy who managed to catch a few special legys and sold them and became richest in the game. Deoxys was the no.1 trainer with the best regirock training account in the game. Darklord was kind of that guy who lurked in the shadows catching the rares and training at the same time. Then there was me. I was the 4th guy to hit 100k battles on PE if I recall correctly. Then I meet thesavagebear and me and him worked together to make the new best training team on PE. Anyways, I got so into PE that I gave around 1000 uniques to my good friend from PBA rafiki786. You guys now know him as Monster, ~dragons~, or MrFroslass. Bout a month or two after that PBA and PE both shut down. it was sad. I must've taken like a 2 month break. all I did was go onto chat for a while where I talked to darkmuj, deoxys, and darklord_6. After 2 months Darkmuj invited me to monsterranch (another game of kyros) where me and him again had a contest for who could be number 1. I kept up a bit but muj somehow kept ahead for a while. When he got banned mro got a little boring. I didn't know what I could do with all my money on the game at that time.. But there was a special poke that I really liked on MRO and it would soon become my signature. I began being a gold collector. Spending all my stuff on gold rares on that game till I had tons and then... Darkmuj talked to me again.. time to hop to the next game. We played chaos.pokemoninfity.com (another game of kyros) for a while where I was somewhat alright but I never really became no.1 there like I did on the other games.. However I meet agent_raichu there and you guys all know him as Funnycrater, But instead of spending alot of time there I hopped to the original form of the site pokemoninfinity.com where I became the richest in the game in a little over a month and restarted my gold collecting on that game. I was playing that game when about 5 months later PBA reopened and I started racing Darkmuj, Darklord_6, Deoxys, Funnycrater, and quite a few other people that you guys know as pros now for number 1. I restarted this game with 360mil to my name and 26 golds. I began catching special legys and selling em all the time that was my source of money for a while and eventually I got my first max cash and I blew it all on golds. Alot of people on pba chat called me "the only rich guy that still used special legys for his money instead of golds" Patience was everything in this game. But if you look at all the stuff I have now. (most golds in game and most voids in game + uber rares) which I got out of patience and dedication instead of going the easy way and donating all the time for it :>.

5 friends that made an impact would be
1. Darkmuj
2. Darklord_6
3. Deoxys
4. Funnycrater
5. rafiki786

3 achievements I'm proud of?
1. having most golds in game
2. having most voids in game
3. having 1 of the only shiny gallades that will ever be in game

The best thing about PBA? obviously golds. But the people around this game aren't so bad either.

~glucht23~

[Rem]

My story started when I was 13.
In 2009 I joined in late September and usually kept to myself. Sometimes I would lurk on the in-game chats (back when there were mirrors), but most often I would spend that whole time searching for my first shiny. I became active in the community when I was banned for swearing at someone for breaking the rules (i saw the report years later and oh god was that awkward). I joined the forum after being banned for two weeks and eventually I joined IRC after someone told me on the in-game chat. That person was Poketrainer989 aka Pokaa. We became best friends when she gave me a shiny lucario, which at that time was like giving me a million dollars, I was flabbergasted that someone just handed off their shiny to me. When I joined the IRC, I was welcomed by 80 strangers coming and going in the chat, it was really active. My first friend I made on there was Shohs, a previous admin who also nominated me to become a staff member . I became a staff member a few months shortly after joining, which was very difficult because no one thought I was fit for the challenge. Being a voice was difficult, I remember that was the most times I received death threats from people which was strange to me because I was 14 when I was promoted.

There was a user who repeatedly PM'd me. Some days he would be normal, but other days he would just send non-stop harassing messages and it was frustrating to say the least. I gave him multiple chances, but each time he would break his chance. I still wonder how he's doing to this day. (no i won't say the username)

Six months after becoming voice, I was promoted to Halfop, and then a year after that, an Operator. I'm glad that I've been able to see PBA in all forms of it's life. It's old life, it's downfall, and it's rebuilt version. I'm grateful to all the staff members who've been there for support, as well as the community for when I needed it. I couldn't imagine what my life would have been like if I never registered JProcks. (terrible username what was I thinking) I try to remember as many people as I can, but I know I could never forget a few people like Pokaa and Shohs, but I'll edit in a larger list of acknowledgements because I could not think of everyone right now if I could. I'm even grateful to anyone who's ever given me a hard time, or straight up hated me. My most proud moment would obviously being chosen as staff and not have been demoted. My other proud moment was when I was able to nominate people for staff. I think I nominated TycoonNEIL and SandyBoi as staff members and they both were promoted! I'm proud of this website in general and how it functions and the community. Every game and community has it's flaws, but honestly I don't mind. If people dedicate their time to the website that changed my life in a weird way, then I'm proud.
I have so many wonderful memories that came out of here, that I can hardly remember all of them. The good always outweighs the bad.


Also, Thank you to everyone who's posted their story and thank you to everyone who is playing or has played. You made the game what it is, and to me it's been successful. Even if the numbers have dwindled, this game was still the best game to play. I'm looking forward to the many years I will be a part of this team, even if I may be away most of the time. Thank you PBA, the best part of this game are the people who play it.

[Termes]

Hey guys, I'm a tad nostalgic and I did have this written up a while back when I was still actively playing but I'll post now for the fun of it.

Good personal read from the guys before me!

Initially, I joined this game 5+ years ago when I was mid teens.

Before that, I played Pokemoncrater (with my brothers) - like the majority of you fellas. After that went down, I took a couple of years off of pokes! Then i guess I must’ve just went searching for it and stumbled on this. These days, the siblings give me flack for playing a game with 2D images and not getting with the times.

The very start of my PBA days is not as vivid in my memory but I can remember ALOT of the people, whether they were friends or just fellow gamers I never really had the chance to talk to.

Maybe for the first 50 days or so I was probably doing stuff on my own w/o really talking to anyone. Then I hit my big break through joining the Royals. I think I may’ve joined them through one of my first good friends (Mickerrs).

To be quite honest, I have so many memories of pretty much everyone in it and I always find it funny and strange (simultaneously) to contemplate that you may never see or hear from them ever again.

I could name pretty much all the players from Royals, which I still fondly hope of one day seeing the likes of again incl..driftking, nymphetamine, ice985, xxarturoxDxx, ray2lu, am_az_ing (the real one), carlos_pv3007, quintonimor, greenfuzz9 and shadowrae. It definitely had some juggernauts in its day in terms of personnel (personality wise, rank, having valued Pokemon or training abilities).

Other ex/royals I still see often to this day include Mickerrs, Markie, Spooked34, Fat_man, Ramit and Glutch23.

One of my best friends (and a good friend of a lot of others) is nose_que_poner. He is so sneaky and cunning, he is just a long-standing great friend who can be so intelligent and humorous. If you needed anything, something or a piece of information - Steven would have the answer, always. He is a genuine nice guy with a huge taste for sarcasm. During his peak, he was the unrivalled top player in the game!

Then there’s some people who I was just really impressed about or admired. One of my faves has got to be funnycrater, Do I even need to say anything? He knew how to put people into their place, he could give an insult or crack dark humour. There’s some people who you just talk to about Pokemon which you don't get too serious with (which is fine), but funny could go in and converse non-pba talk with you with the finest articulation, he was astonishingly good at literature and would blow my mind with specific pieces of knowledge/experiences he had.

After coming back onto the game, and especially recently since I’ve become (or rather became) much more active than I ever were the first time round I’ve met some newer friends which I've had the pleasure of meeting incl..Sherlock, Nikash, Aldhairxd, Adpower, Killhaterz, Wolfman, Aegaeon, Ryushi, Dadu, Quimbala, Lynx, Bat, Ted,Tpil, Kikujo, Pointtlegy, Sandy (both forms) and perhaps a few more I can't immediately recall.

My biggest takings and moments of joy from this game would have to be..

Meeting so many people, like Rem said. It's what makes any game or platform great. There's some who I get along with and have more in common with than most people i’m friends with in my native Melbourne. There's definitely some really interesting, intriguing and intelligent players around here. It's funny where sharing a common interest can lead you, eh! That moment you add that PBA friend on Facebook is cool when they could basically be anyone in the entire human race and you finally associate a face with that name.

Also, catching and buying some great pokes. My fondest catch has to be a (shiny) Shaymin which sold for about 200+mil at the time. The first time, a new feel is always the greatest!