Smogdoom: June and July's Tales of DOOM

If you've been at Smogon during these last two months, you'll have noticed the fragile and kind-hearted competitive community once known as Smogon has descended into chaos. The utopia we had all come to know had turned into something much scarier. Smogdoom was upon us, and the end was nigh.

Why was Smogon down at the start of June?

At the beginning of June, you may have heard Smogon was DDoS'd (which is when a Gyarados uses Dragon Dance to set itself up for a sweep). We can disclose that this isn't actually true, and rather, this was an inside operation to obtain ownership of Smogon from chaos. Zebraiken, absent for the last few months, had actually been earning money on the outside, trying to save up to buy Smogon from chaos. The exact cause behind this is unknown, but we do know that this was proven to be unsuccessful, as neither Zebraiken nor chaos could prevent what really went down to shut down Smogon. You see, in an attempt to become more revolutionary, Smogon tried to remove the Sleep Clause from Ubers, and unfortunately the Sleep Clause was super effective on the server!

Why was Smogon down at the end of June?

The end of the month arrived, and Smogon once again experienced downtime. Of course, with more downtime this meant there was more crazy speculation. To get to the root of this speculation, we had to box it in to one of two theories.

The first theory was that Bloo became so jealous of chaos's stunning good looks that he decided to take away chaos's sleeping time in hopes that without his beauty sleep, chaos would look more average. According to the rumors, this is why he "broke" Smogon; however, there is no actual evidence of Bloo ever touching the Admin CP.

The second theory circulating was much more terrifying...that Haxorus (with the help from Metagross) had hacked Smogon, and had stolen everyone's passwords. This is due to tier shifts coming soon, and both Pokémon were angered at the thought of dropping to UU. As for why he wanted to take the passwords, rumors have said that Haxorus had no real reason to take most of the passwords, but there were a few specific passwords he was looking to get his dirty claws on. He specifically wanted Antar's password, as he knew that the tiers would shift soon, and if he could somehow prevent himself from dropping to UU, he'd do it, even if it involved compromising an entire website.

Zarel, the owner of Pokémon Showdown, knew that Haxorus needed to be handled carefully. You see, Zarel once trained a Haxorus, but he didn't love and respect his Haxorus, so it often missed its Draco Meteors and always took critical hits to the face. Haxorus was often angry and tried to hack Zarel's accounts on various websites to no avail. Zarel wanted to prevent this Haxorus from Outraging all over Smogon, so he decided to talk to it as a friend. After hours of befriending Haxorus, Zarel convinced it to settle down and not harm the community Zarel had grown to love. The beast was tamed and the competitive battling community was safe. Haxorus did, however, warn that the next time Smogon users complained about hax, he would be right there, and would launch a brutal attack on the community once more.

Behind the scenes, chaos was working hard to swap Smogon's forum software over to XenForo from vBulletin. This wasn't because of Haxorus at all; rather, it was because chaos had become suspicious of LonelyNess's captaining abilities in WCoP and decided that LonelyNess (and USA Central) could somehow be stopped if he switched forum software. This, however, wasn't the case, and USA Central continued to win very few games, much to chaos's displeasure.

Will the possibility of name changes doom Smogon even more?

In the early days of July, various users have had username changes without any repercussions on the server. Some of these include PttP > My Name Stays Until I Stop Liking Every Post in IS, and tennisace > buttsmuggler and mattj > jesus hates the like button. With these name changes possible, the first thing that comes to mind is, "can just anyone change their name now?" The answer is yes, but with a price. As everyone enjoys their new name-changing toy, the server will start to pay the price. Add the fact that generation six will continue to bring activity to both the forum and the website, and then you have a problem. It's not that the server will lag or anything, no, a much worse fate will come about. In order to snatch the generation six names, username changes will likely occur more often, as users cannot create multiple accounts. This means users we've grown to know and love, such as Oglemi, will likely become Inkay, or something even worse: Inkay513, as Pokémon names will be in high demand, and numbers will become necessary. This doesn't sound bad at first, but due to Pokémon names being everywhere and Pokémon Showdown often going down, as per its namesake, the players will be forced to travel around Smogon for their generation six needs. Ultimately, users will try to capture and battle with other users, eventually leading to half the userbase being captured, and nothing will get done, leading to Smogon's doom.

Why did Issue #28 REALLY take so long to release?

Issue #28 featured a conspiracy article explaining Smogon's deepest secrets. We regret to inform you that this was a cover-up, and that while the majority of the conspiracies revealed are true, the secret behind Issue #28 taking too long to come out has been covered up. We can now bring you the true story, as we feel it's time we were honest with our readers.

The truth is that chaos, still in a rage over Zebraiken trying to buy Smogon, accidentally deleted the Article Workshop a week before release. Setsuna caught word of this and intended to publish what chaos did once the Article Workshop was up and running again; however, chaos had other plans. chaos didn't want to be seen as incompetent to the community, so he tracked down Setsuna and kidnapped him, holding him hostage until Setsuna vowed to not publish what chaos did. Luckily at that time, Jellicent was traveling to meet his next interview victim. When he was almost at his destination, Birkal sent Jellicent a text message, informing him of what went down, and what he had to do. Jellicent found where chaos was holding Setsuna hostage and forced chaos to release Setsuna. To do this, he had to threaten chaos with the worst thing possible: the vodka. He took a sip of his vodka bottle and smashed it in half, with the vodka spilling all over chaos. Jellicent pointed the now-smashed vodka bottle at chaos and kindly asked if chaos would release Setsuna. chaos reluctantly agreed, as he knew that when Jellicent put his vodka on the line, there was going to be trouble.

There was still one more obstacle: getting chaos's permission to include the truth in The Smog. chaos agreed to The Smog only revealing the truth once he had moved to XenForo in case anyone had any follow-up questions. Or more specifically, in case the police had any follow-up questions.

Why did Joim really get the admin position?

As you may have seen, Joim, a writer for the Smog, admin for Pokémon Showdown, and up until recently, moderator of Smogon forums, had become an administrator of the community. You may assume that this is because chaos needed extra help with the XenForo switch, and it may be that Joim may have been the perfect candidate, but this is all wrong. Joim is one of the many Spanish users on this community. In fact, Spanish users make up a good portion of this community. In WCoP, Spain was kicked out, and as you can imagine, the Spanish community has been deeply shattered by this event. The community got together and started devising a plan - how can they, the Spanish community, find a way to seem like the powerhouses they once were? The only way was to get someone into an admin position: someone who looked innocent, harmless, and could lead the community to victory. This person was Joim. They knew he already had the admin position on Pokémon Showdown, so all that was left was to get him to admin on Smogon. They figured that Joim needed to volunteer for as much as possible, and the more he volunteered for, the higher his chances of getting the coveted admin position were.

His efforts paid off, as on the 6^th of July, Joim became an admin, and the Spanish community rejoiced. Much still needed to be done, as Joim had to win chaos's trust otherwise chaos would suspect Joim's horrible plans to get Spain to take over Smogon. We are only releasing this information in the hope that chaos does not actually read this—and rather only reads the one section most relevant to him. If he does by any chance read this, well, Joim will be doomed, too.

How does this spell Smogdoom?

As you have now seen the truth behind everyone's actions in the last two months, it is now up to you to prevent this from happening again. If you keep your passwords safe from Haxorus, always have vodka on hand, and make sure the Spanish don't get kicked out of WCoP, then you can guarantee Smogon will be safe from the forces that have brought about Smogdoom. As for us, jumpluff has just accidentally drifted away in the wind, so we've got to send Jellicent out to track her down. That's all for now!

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