Good to see you, boo. It was DPP that caused my absence. All everyone here wanted to talk is talk about it, and get Strat/Move for it. No reason for me to stick around. Good to see there is more activity in the Adv Gen these days. Not sure if those members are like me and don't like DPP or if they just can't afford ponying up the cash for a DS. Nice to help people again, though I have become a little rusty. Heh.
I do agree that DPP has more choices and the Wi-Fi is freaking AMAZING!!!, but it is rest of it that turned me totally off of DPP. I expected a drastic change moving from GBA to DS. The DS processor is about FIVE times better than the tiny, yet so very convenient, GBA. I expected an overhaul of the game play. I expected (similar to GSC) the ability to go to different regions. I even expected difficulty levels. The fact that DPP is the EXACT SAME in game play as the other games has ZERO appeal to me. I thought RSE was lame too, but at least in Emerald they really expanded the breeding and EV training aspect of the game, and made the Battle Frontier which is something that is actually something of a challenge. The battle structure change is also retarded. Knowing that a Psychic attack was always a special attack was easy. Now it depends on what the programmers deem as a non-contact move. I tried it and found that it has totally watered down the overall strategy of competitive battling. Now it is all about speed and power. If they really wanted to change up the metagame in a positive way, they would have introduced new Pokemon that were actually good enough to stop Pokemon like Skarmory and Blissey, instead of a bunch of crappy pre-evos and another batch of too many Legendaries. Ridiculous.
So, while I cannot battle or trade with someone in Japan or Russia, my boys and I can still trade and battle with each other.