Friday, December 15, 2023

The Remnant Vestiges of Silph

The last time I wrote about anything that directly pertained to Silph Arena or The Silph Road was in July, for its final formats before its closure. And by now, in a way, it has done that... only perhaps in a way that one would not expect. That way is by leaving some vestiges of its existence, at least other than the expected ones. That reason is also why I've been holding off on writing the "farewell" post - although now it doesn't seem like one in the strictest sense. Even so, it seems the time has come for me to do just that and establish that "farewell".

One of those vestiges is the Trainer card for the Road side of things. It's the last accessible vestige of the site even with a login, although one may have to be wary about editing it at this point, which is well past the operational cutoff of August 1. Meanwhile, on the Arena side, things apparently didn't "go dark" immediately as expected at that point and all prior things are still accessible... or was, as on many browsers, now the Arena pages throw up a security certificate error, which I wouldn't recommend bypassing just for the sake of trying to view things unless it's absolutely necessary. At this point, the "farewell" is rather effective.

Some might recall that I also had to partake on a familiar gamer platform for the purpose of Factions communication, and the dedicated Silph Arena part of it is still there... just largely defunct. For me, all I see are what used to be the announcements section for Factions and the general chat space for its participants, which still sees messages from time to time by them, some purposeful and others less so. It's also still moderated but to a lesser capacity, just to keep certain people in line. Those who had participated in the Arena to a greater scale might see yet other things, but at the least, this is what I see.

As for other vestiges, they are (or seem to be) there where I can't see them, at least where I'm not privy as such. The ex-body of researchers for The Silph Road still operate in their own idiosyncratic ways, and they occasionally post reports on Reddit, a platform I don't (have many reasons to) check and browse through. It's one of the vestiges that has been said to survive even as I posted the initial farewell roadmap, something I didn't touch on at the time. While something may still be going at the least, the results could be potentially reflected in other ways and not necessarily bear their name.

Now with all the things that used to bear the Silph name becoming separate and disparate, a "farewell" seems to be really in order, even if it's not in the capacity of one. Whatever happens, all those Silph things at least had a bearing on my Pokémon Go experience for at least a significant amount of time, and nothing new or existing cannot change that. It may be that a "farewell" is subjective or figurative in this case, but it still has to be said somehow. So be it - farewell, and may the vestiges hold wherever they may.
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