Life with My Raid Group

I've spent several months now with my local raid group for Pokémon Go, and I can say that we're a lively bunch. We keep tabs on each other via a group chat in a popular instant-messaging app, and that's where everything happens before we meet and undertake raids, or even before special events like the Community Days. It may seem like a lot of things happen in the group, and they really do.

Whenever an upper-tier raid occurs somewhere that most of the members might have a chance of attending, someone starts an attendance list to check just who and how many members are interested and can execute the raid. The coordination then continues by determining at what point players are to enter and perform the raid, as well as how many groups to do it in, if there happens to be many players that want to join. Not all raids are posted, though; just the most important ones are, including the Ex-Raids. Otherwise, when we're not engaged in raids, we update on other Go tidbits, which may just affect how we execute raids.

One interesting bit of fun that we have is that occasionally, someone becomes generous enough to start a quiz. Based on something that the person has done, everyone else puts in guesses (for example, guessing the CP of a particular Pokémon). The one(s) who have the closest guesses win prizes, and sometimes they're not too shabby. I've only taken part in two of them, and I almost won the first one, if it weren't on a technicality. Perhaps I'll win the next one. Regardless, these quizzes are fairly entertaining and keeps the group together.

As for the members in the group, we're a varied lot. There are over 100 members in the messaging group, but as is typical of these groups, only a small percentage of that is actually active. Those who are active are even more varied; although I don't know their ages for sure, I can at least ascertain some things. I'm rather sure that many of the members are about the same age as me, or maybe only off by a few years, but what's very interesting is that there is at least one person who's quite older than probably most people in the group. And as seen by the photos I posted for the previous Ex-Raid and the one before that, most in the group are men, though there are a few women. All this just speaks to the appeal of the game and Pokémon in general.

I'm very much thankful that I'm a part of this raid group. It really makes raids more coordinated, which is vital for the upper-tier raids and especially so for the Ex-Raid. On top of that, we have a lot of fun doing the things that we do. Whatever the game holds out for us in the future, I'm sure we'll have more fun with that, thanks to the camaraderie and coordination provided by banding together.

One year ago: Alola-Exeggutor - From Humanoid to Coconut Tree Dragon