3 Years, 7 Months and 22 Days that's how long this project lasted, from the beginning where Kyle questioned me "Why does your Excadrill run Sludge Wave?" I answered "I don't know". That started it, the next class I had that day was a maths class with one of our old Gym Leader, Spelings. I asked him if this was fun, that's all it took, two of my friends who I had absolutely no idea that they were into Pokémon, set off this incredible journey that really bought the best and worst out of me.
My responsibilities really picked up on Thursday, August 7th 2015 at 10:29pm when we decided to host our own server without a third party. This cascade of events really helped shaped who I am today, Sora has been the biggest project I've undertaken in my life and I'm really damm proud of it. From the beginning it has always been more than Pokémon, it's been something on a whole new level. To those people saying you can't find real friendship online, up yours, cause these people are the awesomest bunch of guys and girls I've ever met. Sora has always been about us, our lives, our dreams, our aspirations and to final say goodbye to this place so we can chase those, it brings a tear to my eyes.
空 - Sora, means The Heavens in Japanese and I think it's a word this server can live up to. I've had some of the deepest conversations in my life on here 3am in the morning, things I know will make me toss and turn for hours but being able to speak my mind to others is a really empowering thing. There are just too many of you to name individually in this memo and I owe all of you my biggest thanks, so I'll be going through each of you individually with messages instead.
I do however wish to thank a user called Silvy, man what a character! "He's the hero Sora deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we'll hunt him. Because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight." I'll miss all of the Bane and Batman references too. Without Silvy we would've never even gotten our server off the ground, I sucked at coding and I still do and he alone has taught me more than what 13 years of schooling can. Late night coding has really taught me so much and bought the best out of me, trying to figure out why something wasn't working when at times it was as simple as a syntax error.
A special callout to my man Tempy, he's made the other half of my job HIS! Our website is so damm fine, I would've never even been close if I attempted to build one from scratch. His art is something I would use money to buy and trust me I've never purchased art before in my life. Shout out to the rest of the Admin team, thanks for bringing me on board and also allowing me to mess with all the things you've setup before me.
There are so many memories I wish I can go through now but one of my all time favourites was sending Kyle biology facts every time he fainted a Pokémon whilst he was streaming reborn. Man I really pissed him off but it was hilarious, we both had a biology test the next day and I'd like to think I improved his scores by at least 1 mark. You know Sora has been such a rollercoaster for me, at the worst of times it felt like a job and at the best I would giggle whilst I coded something really fun or annoying. April's fools has always been my favourite, trying to top the year before each time and I think we reached our peak this year with a 3 year old art style theme.
This marks the end of an era for me, I won't be returning to Pokémon games on the DS systems and Pokémon Showdown, I believe I've really truly 100% this game, the rank of Pokémon Master has been achieved. I might take a peek at what Nintendo has in line for the Switch but I'll be needing my time for my studies and other projects. You know the beauty of this is the next time I'll be this involved in a Pokémon game is possibly be with my kids in however many years time. Until then keep an eye out on any future projects I may start work on, my twitter is @Blazing360 and I'm always on Steam and Discord.
Thank you again to everyone that has come by Sora and until our paths cross again I bid you the best of luck!
Digitally Signed, Salted and Hashed
Newton
Codename: Sora Blade
END MEMO
Friday, June 30th 2017, 00:25:00