Website offline and future of PU

[Mr_Dark]

Website Offline / Server Crash
Last Thursday one of the hard disks in my server failed which caused the website to load very slowly or not at all. Unfortunately I was away for the weekend and was unable to fix it, but now (as you can see) the website is back online.


Future of Pokemon Universe
Since almost nobody is working on the game anymore, I'm open to suggestions on what to do with the website. If you have a nice idea for a (Pokemon related) website which fits our name (Pokemon Universe), feel free to post it in this topic or send me an e-mail.

As it stands now, the website is just a waste of money and bandwidth.

- On average the website still gets about 100 unique visitors each day
- The website still ranks high in search results related to "Pokemon"
- I'll be willing to "sponsor" the domain and website hosting, so you'll only be in charge of the website itself.
- The new website can be a reformat of the site we currently have or something completely new

Let me know if you have any questions or if something is not clear.

[Nivida]

Hay MrDark,

I stay online here 4 years or more..
In this time a have made a apprenticeship as computer science (programming) in Switzerland.
Now I Work on a project called: www.ganked.net

When its done.. i will made a Canvas Pokemon Online for my portfolio but i havent any graphics..
Maybe you wanna send me the PU graphics for my freetime project?

Greez Sam

[Embertine]

I am severely dissapointed in this. I had been waiting for sooo very long to get to play the game. I'm sure if you had only released a working beta for people to play online on, than this project may very well have gone much further than this.

I wish That this was finished. 

[spartandc]

I am severely dissapointed in this. I had been waiting for sooo very long to get to play the game. I'm sure if you had only released a working beta for people to play online on, than this project may very well have gone much further than this.

I wish That this was finished. 

I agree, i have been following this sense back in 2009, it could have come to become a great thing and it is very sad to see it go. Sadly things happen and i understand that, but even so i still have at least some hope this game will be made. I dont want to pressure anyone but hey, even if the game didn't and doesn't get made at least we got to meet some very amazing people. Here is to hoping everything somehow works out and this game becomes a thing again! Even if it doesn't i hope that everyone who has been on here has a great life and will continue to have a great life from here onward!

[Mr_Dark]

I am severely dissapointed in this. I had been waiting for sooo very long to get to play the game. I'm sure if you had only released a working beta for people to play online on, than this project may very well have gone much further than this.

I wish That this was finished. 

I agree, i have been following this sense back in 2009, it could have come to become a great thing and it is very sad to see it go. Sadly things happen and i understand that, but even so i still have at least some hope this game will be made. I dont want to pressure anyone but hey, even if the game didn't and doesn't get made at least we got to meet some very amazing people. Here is to hoping everything somehow works out and this game becomes a thing again! Even if it doesn't i hope that everyone who has been on here has a great life and will continue to have a great life from here onward!

Over the years we've worked on PU with great enthusiasm, but we had a lot of set backs - mainly regarding art. Of course we could have used sprites from the original games, but we were too proud because we didn't want to be like all the other games. Looking back at it, it would have been better to use the original art and then later upgrade it, but yea, we were young back then and didn't knew better.

Time passed by and more people on team started to lose interest in the game, Pokemon in general or maybe they (like me and Urmel) graduated and started working full-time. I work full-time as a developer and even if I wanted to I can't find the motivation at night to code on some other project (even thou I have a couple going on). I'd rather load up Guild Wars 2 and play that for a while before heading to bed (btw, I'm also guild leader of one of the bigger PvE guilds in GW2 - 400 members).

Anyway back on topic. In the last 2 years or so I've tried to re-ignite the spark and get this game going again, but failed due to lack of time and people. For those who think it's easy to run a project like this. It's not. From the front it might seem easy but there's a lot going on behind the curtains which you never get to witness.

Everyone who ever worked on this project did this for free because they liked the idea and wanted to donate some of their free time.
I'm very grateful to everyone I've worked with and met during this project.

[Ursaring]

So it has happened then. Well this has been a long time coming I would say. I loved playing on the balance server when it was still going ,and I learned so much their from Roloc and the others about competitive pokemon. Hope the site gets turned into something decent!

[Monzta]

Over the years we've worked on PU with great enthusiasm, but we had a lot of set backs - mainly regarding art. Of course we could have used sprites from the original games, but we were too proud because we didn't want to be like all the other games. Looking back at it, it would have been better to use the original art and then later upgrade it, but yea, we were young back then and didn't knew better.

Time passed by and more people on team started to lose interest in the game, Pokemon in general or maybe they (like me and Urmel) graduated and started working full-time. I work full-time as a developer and even if I wanted to I can't find the motivation at night to code on some other project (even thou I have a couple going on). I'd rather load up Guild Wars 2 and play that for a while before heading to bed (btw, I'm also guild leader of one of the bigger PvE guilds in GW2 - 400 members).

Anyway back on topic. In the last 2 years or so I've tried to re-ignite the spark and get this game going again, but failed due to lack of time and people. For those who think it's easy to run a project like this. It's not. From the front it might seem easy but there's a lot going on behind the curtains which you never get to witness.

Everyone who ever worked on this project did this for free because they liked the idea and wanted to donate some of their free time.
I'm very grateful to everyone I've worked with and met during this project.

Well then.  I guess that's a farewell. It was fun entering this community as a pre-pubescent child, and leaving as a university student. Much lolz were had.

Maybe you could donate ownership of the Dropbox group and all of its content to some developers on reddit or some other forum?

If anyone wants to keep in contact with me, my Steam username is sjert, or you can add my skype shown in my signature

[TrainerX]

Even though I was an edgy, annoying 12 year old when I joined, I still have fond memories of this forum. I met some really awesome people, learned some valuable lessons, and had a lot of fun. I'm not going to lie; this community definitely had its ups and downs, but I'm really going to miss this place.

Also, I want to thank the PU Team. You guys have gotten a lot of shit over the years, and a lot of people didn't really appreciate all of the work that you guys have put into this project. Thanks for dedicating so much of your own time to developing this game. You guys are awesome.

[Roloc]

So it has happened then. Well this has been a long time coming I would say. I loved playing on the balance server when it was still going ,and I learned so much their from Roloc and the others about competitive pokemon. Hope the site gets turned into something decent!

I'd actually still have it running if more people got on. I had been thinking about starting a normal server but keep the PU name so that more people would join since the balanced pokemon wasn't to interesting to most competitive players.

[Miss Wednesday]

My life literally started because of this project, thank you for starting it even though it will most likely never be a game, I'd like to thank you, if it wasn't for Pokemon-Universe I wouldn't be with Roloc and we wouldn't have 2 awesome boys, I'll never forget how my family started <3

[Roloc]

My life literally started because of this project, thank you for starting it even though it will most likely never be a game, I'd like to thank you, if it wasn't for Pokemon-Universe I wouldn't be with Roloc and we wouldn't have 2 awesome boys, I'll never forget how my family started <3

This is why I hate to see PU go. My life is forever better because of my fiancé and I meeting on here.

[The-Blades-slave]

I think most people saw this coming a while ago. In terms of what to do with the site, I've personally got no idea; for a while, it was pretty much just a forum for roleplaying, but most of us lost interest. Other than that, it's always just been a chat forum (at least in my days), and I can't see how that could change. Most likely because I'm an uncreative, unoriginal jackass.

Roloc, if you ever start a regular server make sure to tell me somehow. I could drag Meowth and Cortex on occasionally, and I'll probably use it a lot myself. How often actually depends on if I can find someone to hire me, but I'll still have a decent amount of free time.

To everyone else, it was nice talking to those of you I met. A lot of you quit just about the time I started because of some reason or another (I thought I heard something about someone though the forum had gone to poop, but people may have just gotten bored), but it was still enjoyable reading your old posts in forums and RPs. This place got me through a point in my life that wasn't exactly the brightest, and I'll always owe it that much. It also turned me into a decently intelligent teenager, instead of some illiterate brat who thought he could write lol.

[Mr_Dark]

I understand this is hard for some (myself included), because we've been through a lot. The easy way out would be to let the site continue as a Pokemon community. We'd just remove all the MMO related pages and forum boards. Then we'd assign some new Admins who're going to advertise and run the site.

What I read in your replies is that the new pokemon-universe.com could focus on General pokemon chit chat, role playing and the balance server. It would probably not attract the big crowd, but just the people who are interested in RPing or playing competitive pokemon.

Might not be much, but atleast the site will not go away.

[Yume Tsuki]

Though I seem like the most sustainable pixel artist around here. I could not bring up any motivation to work on the project at all. :/

When I started here for the first time, we had quite a bunch of pixel artists. I was very motivated and submitted a lot of work. Then the whole pixel art section died, and there were no more pixel artists except me. I have done a few things to try and get pixel artists here, but I never got any answer of sorts. Then Bryan came along who went to rally up whatever was left of the pixel artist crew. And apparently I was the only one to answer, then all the art we had got scrapped since we had a better pixel artist who knew what he was doing. (A lot of the pixel art work couldn't be called pixelart for the fact that textures were cheated up with photoshop.) and I got pushed in the section of coming up with designs for characters since the design a trainer contest, which was meant to get a bunch of active pixelartists from the pool of the PU community, giving people some self-esteem that they can actually do it. New pixelartist didn't really stay that long, and eventually bryan barely had any time either because of personal issues. And I didn't really feel like doing NPC's because I HATE animating things for it's repetitiveness.

I've seen things livening up just to see it shizzle into nothingness again. And nothing really motivated me to be working on the project. I had some short sparks, but they were really short. And it never really helped when I did a call-out for help without any answer to it.

Then again, I never minded being here. I had my own share of fun. And it was great until it couldn't last. Though I would certainly agree to make this forum into a community instead of a game, it would be a shame to shut it down while there are many memories lasting here. And this forum hasn't died out at all yet. We just need some more stuff to talk about except for just RP's and how the game is not going to ever be released.

[Flynt]