Frequently Asked Questions

New to PRO (Pokémon Revolution Online) and have questions abound about the game? Hopefully you’ll find all the broad strokes you need here!

General questions about PRO

How long has PRO been operational?

PRO was initially conceptualized in September of 2014 and began its incipient development. It remained on the down-low in its fledgling months, as it only slowly percolated to those outside of the know while Shane & co. were selective on playtesters; however, once a server-hosting plan was officialized in March of 2015, registration was publicized for new playtesters.

After a summer of intensively finalizing playtesting and bug-fixing, it made its official release into the beta stage on August 14, 2015.

Does Nintendo have any affiliation with this game?

No. This is not a Nintendo-developed, -endorsed, or -sanctioned game; this is a fan-made game developed and maintained by a syndicate of volunteers–by both the staff and community, to varying extents.

The corollary question may be ‘will Nintendo shut down this project?’ To that, we must candidly answer that Nintendo reserves the right to do so at any time; that is an ever-looming risk of running a copyright-protected game without adducible consent, and it’s one we have acknowledged when undertaking this project. However, while there is nothing we can do to categorically legalize the project, we assure you our administrative staff is exercising every safeguard they can to minimize the risk.

Players do not need to fret over an unlikely confrontation because they are unliable to any possible legal ramifications, and everything that can be to done to mitigate the game’s illegality is being and will be done behind the scenes.

What are the differences between each server?

There is no fundamental difference; they are all gameplay-identical. The only differentiators are that each one uses a different databases (for example, any data you obtained on Gold would not carry over to Silver) and that different communities inhabit them.

Will our account data ever be wiped?

No. The last database-wide account wipe coincided with PRO’s release into the beta stage; the staff have vowed not to do any more purges thereafter.

When will PRO advance out of the beta stage?

Nominally speaking, its beta label will never change; this is primarily due to legal reasons.

The game has effectively outstepped the beta stage, however; in addition to the fact that no more database wipes will happen as they did in the alpha-playtesting stage, the game’s development is unlikely to ossify no matter what its ostensible label is. Like every other flourishing online game, it’ll never be a finished product.

Is it iOS-compatible?

No, and there are no realistic plans for it. The device is not manageably accommodable because its RAM is not capacious enough to run PRO optimally; additionally, there are too many potential legal pitfalls of obtrusively advertising it on the App Store.

Account

Bans

How could I get banned?

Legally speaking, the staff reserves the right to ban a player’s account at any time as delineated by the ToS; but as it pertains to their code of ethics, they will primarily ban on grounds of PRO’s ruleset.

Additionally, extreme abuse of any of the resources in our official network of services—the forums, Discord, and so forth—can and will evolve into an in-game ban, so minimize any potential improprieties while you’re within PRO’s domain.

I am banned and don’t know why.

If it is just an in-game ban (disjunct from trade and quiet bans), you can log into the website’s dashboard; this should summarize the ban reason, the scope of the ban, and—if temporary in nature—the duration.

For a more elaborate explanation on it and any other ban type, however, you’ll need to post inquiringly on the Discipline Appeals section of the forums.

I feel that my ban was unjust; how can this be undone?

You’ll need to appeal on the forums under the Discipline Appeals section to elicit a reply from the case-relevant banner. Your first respondent is designated as the staff member who banned you, so wait patiently for their response; do not co-opt the rest of the staff about it, as it is not within their jurisdiction to intercede in ban cases.

No one has responded to my ban appeal.

Due to limited staff availaibility and a potentially time-consuming backlog of requests (including other ban appeals), the answerable staff member might not respond to your appeal as timelily as intended. If your thread has been responseless for 24-plus hours, you may bump it by replying to the thread.

Do not try to contact staff about it in private messages or on Discord; that is against the rules, and it is unlikely to expedite a reply to your appeal.

Can my Membership status and account assets be transferred from my banned account to another account?

No. Part of the punitive repercussion of warranting a ban is that you forfeit your account and all its bearings; plus, due to the nature of various gameplay-abusive ban reasons, it’s oftentimes not differentiable as to which Pokémon were obtained scrupulously or illicitly via gameplay abuse, so it is oftentimes in the best interest of the economy that they remain cooped in the custody of the banned account.

If I am permanently banned, can I play again?

It depends on the degree of the ban, which you can check on the dashboard. If it is just an account ban, you are allowed to play on a new account; however, you may be liable to an IP ban upon further infractions.

If you are IP-banned, you are barred from our services as long as it is in effect and thus you’re prohibited from registering a new account on our game.

They are typically warranted by either a wanton extremity of services abuse (such as DDoS attacks) or a recidivistic track record to the point where we feel the user is incorrigible. If one tries to bypass an IP ban on their new accounts, those will be automatically banned upon detection.

Data

Can my account be reset?

No; resetting accounts, in any form, is no longer a service provided by Staff. It was done in the past, under special circumstances, but this is no longer the case. Account resets are not possible anymore. Your only options would be to either create a new account, begin on the opposite server, or transfer your account to the other server (which would leave the exported server on a clean slate).

How can I switch servers?

You can request an account transfer on the dashboard. You’re entitled to one free server transfer every 30 days; additional transfers during that interval will cost 100 Coins.

This process will swap data between servers.

How do I change my username?

You can request an username change on the dashboard for 50 Coins. This will require a manual review by Game Masters, who’ll deem its appropriacy before deciding to approve it.

How do I save my data?

Data saves automatically, with the saving-time intervals variably depending on the scope of the data—Pokémon data (takes the longest), item data, account data, and user-variable data, namely. If you wish to expedite account saves, you can log out of the game or use the command /save in chat; this will forcibly register the data in the database to ensure that your client can load it when it reconnects to the server.

Donations

How can I acquire Membership status?

Main article: Membership

A Membership Medallion must be used on your account to activate the status; that can be procured either by exchanging Coins for one on the Coin Shop (they durationally vary; check the Coin Shop article for more details) or by trading for one from another player. Read its main article for more details on the benefits.

How can I donate for Coins?

From the Coin Shop pane in-game, click on the Get Coins button; this will redirect you to the donations subdomain of the website where you can donate in exchange for Coins. You can use your debit card, Google Pay, or an assortment of transactors including Bancontact, EPS, qiropay, iDEAL, and SOFORT.

Are donations refundable?

You can request a refund within a 30-day grace period of the transaction on the Complaints section of the forums. Refunds are not guaranteed, and you’ll need to provide proof of the donation (preferably with a receipt) in order to eligibilize yourself for one.

For more details, refer to the refund policy on the website.

The Game

Troubleshooting

Downloading-and-installation problems

Why does my anti-virus detect viruses?

It’s most likely a false positive. Some antivirus programs misdetect viruses because of the program’s noncertification.

As long as you downloaded it from an official source such as the main website, you can be assured there is no mal-, ransom-, or spyware within the files.

Log-in difficulties

My client is out-of-date; how do I update it?

You will need to redownload it; you can do so using one of these mirrors. Windows users have an auto-updater, but players with other devices must manually update their clients. There is no auto-updater for Mac, Linux, or Android; the only means of updating your client on these devices, which is necessitated by any client-side changes, is by downloading the most up-to-date version.

When I tried to log in, I encountered the ‘User Already Logged In’ (UALI) error. Has my account been hacked?

Not necessarily; that error message would appear if someone else were in custody of your account, but more often than not, it’s indicative that your account is deadlocked into a server-saving process on the server’s end. This error is onset when the client forcibly disconnects from the server before a saving process can be completed for your account; in these cases, your account is stuck in the server in an infinite loop as it unsuccessfully tries to complete a saving process.

Whenever this is onset, it is advisable to wait for approximately five minutes before attemptingly relogging; otherwise, a server reboot or a password reset may be needed to extricate it. Server reboots will happen either when necessitated by a server crash or in the wake of scheduled maintenance.

Server Downtime

Why can’t I log into the server?

There is a good chance that it isn’t an isolated issue with you; the server could be in an inoperative state and thus globally unplayable for others while it awaits a reboot.

Check the status-checkers for each server on the navigational sidebar; they’ll indicate the current server status. If the status is flagged as ‘maintenance,’ it’s indicative that it is staff-accessibly locked while updates are being performed or that it has been preparatorily locked to clear players before a routine reboot is needed to effectuate server-end changes.

How long will it take for the server to be rebooted?

Unless the server is intentionally kept down while crash logs are being analyzed, there is nothing processually complex about rebooting; it simply requires a staff member with rebooting privileges to access the host PC’s to reboot the software application in PRO. As such, the reboot process is instantaneous in nature when one is around to do so—no longer than 1-2 minutes for that action.

When a staff member will be around to ably reboot it, however, is a fundamentally different question; it also isn’t as case-specifically answerable, because it is typically indeterminable as to how long it’ll take for them to be around to attend to it. It could vary from minutes in the wake of the server crash to a dozen hours later depending on staff availability, so be sure to check the server status periodically—be it via the status-checkers on the navigational sidebar herein or by doing a more practical check in attemptingly logging in.

Who can reboot the server?

Only Administrators and Developers have the requisite host-PC access to reboot the server.

Due to all the server-end data—including all the personal information you’ve submitted to us as delineated by the privacy-policy doctrine—one may have access to by virtue of having the host-PC access needed to reboot it, it is a very trust-sensitive privilege to have; because of that, it’s implausible that anyone outside of the echelon of Administrators and Developers will be conferred access to it.

New Administrators and Developers also will not be appointed solely to privilege more rebooters; that is simply ancillary to their actual role, which will be selected meritocratically.

The status-checker indicates that the server is online, but I still encounter the ‘Can not connect to server error; how come?

Firstly, you may need to do more than looking at the status-checker alone in order to ascertain whether it’s online or not; at times, the server itself can undetectedly freeze whereby the status-checker is unable to discern that it has crashed and thus simply sits on the last online-player count registered in the database.

Confirmatory checks include checking the status-checker repeatedly to see if the user count is fluctuant at all; if not, chances are that it is down. Additionally, you can keep tabs on the official Discord server to see what experiences other players may pool in concurrently; if it has frozen, it won’t take long therein to realize that others are unable to log in.

Otherwise, something on your network or computer’s end may be obstructing your connection to it; if you are using a foreign network, such as at a school, for example, they most likely are filtering out PRO due to its categorization as a game. If you’re on your home network, ensure that there aren’t any inhibitors on your end; add PRO.exe as an exception to your anti-virus and/or Firewall.

Pokémon evolutions

I failed to evolve my Pokémon before level 100; how can I resolve it?

In the past, players could request Staff members to de-level their Pokémon so they can evolve them, however, that service has since been removed. Nowadays, players can purchase a Mysterious Candy to evolve their level 100 unevolved Pokémon. Mysterious Candy will only trigger the evolution if the Pokémon meets all its evolutionary requirements. If the Pokémon evolves through trade or with the use of an evolutionary stone, then you can still evolve them through their normal methods, even if they are level 100.

Content

How many generations are there in the game?

There are multiple facets to that question; all the major ones will be answered herein.

We currently have a quad-regional mainland network; that encompasses Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh, in addition to the Sevii Islands archipelago and expansionary plans for Unova, the Orange Islands, and a custom Staff-made region named Astrella.

Pokémon native to those regions are predominantly obtainable here, while a smattering of post-generational Pokémon can be obtained either as top-tier rares and Membership-exclusive Pokémon in some areas or via Headbutt-encounterable Pokémon.

Are there Legendary Pokémon in the game?

Main article: Legendary Pokémon
They have already been limitedly added; see the subsectional header for specific ones. A smattering of Legendary Pokémon have been made quest-obtainable here, which is the same paradigm intended for further additions of Legendary Pokémon.

Ultimately, it’s planned that all Legendary Pokémon with a base-stat total of minus-600 will be made procurable in one inclusionary scheme or another; however, those that are added to the player’s possession won’t be tradable, nor will they be deployable in ranked PvP matches.

Gameplay Features

Can we breed Pokémon?

No, and there are no plans for it. Given the complexion of a Pokémon MMO, you are to procure the statistically desirable Pokémon through rigorous hunting and via trading; breeding would be the ultimate shortcut to such hurdles, which would undermine the spiritual complexion of an MMO.

You are still able to acquire egg moves by other avenues, but breeding is too economically cancerous and PvE-undermining in nature that it’ll never be added in that form.

Can we use HM02 — Fly outside of battle?

No. Fly exists strictly as an in-battle move, not a navigational agent.

Your closest substitute for Fly’s navigational functions are the transportational systems that exist in-game for intraregional and interregional travel, but Fly itself will not have that out-of-battle functionality.

How do I obtain a Bicycle?

You can obtain a Bicycle by redeeming a Bike Voucher for it; you can obtain the item from Old Biker Steven in a house abutting Vermilion City‘s Pokémon Center in exchange for 60,000. Steven will discount the Bike Voucher price to 40,000 if you show him a Ditto under your OT registry.

Do note that Pokémon Mounts also exist as a functionally identical alternative to Bicycles; they are also acquirable either via the Coin Shop or the Arcanine Mount quest for the eponymous Mount.

When can I trade?

Main article: Trading
Once you have obtained the Rainbow Badge; thereafter, you can trade in any Pokémon Center. The badge requirement only applies to Kanto; in successive regions, you can trade immediately.

Forums

How do I log into the forums? It won’t let me register.

Since your in-game account is universalized for the website, game, and the forums, you can log into the forums using your account’s log-in credentials.

I am unable to post in some sections; how come?

To foster more forums usership and experience before its users engage in certain sections, a select amount of sections will impose an 8-post-count minimum before other sections are postable to you.

You are disadvised to do spam-posting to attain the 8-post count, however; more so, you are encouraged to start by posting your introductory thread, in addition to potentially constructive posts you can make under the Resolution Center.

I can not post an image in my post; how do I resolve it?

An 8-post-count minimum is also imposed for this feature to curtail potential advertisement or spam-bot images. As a workaround, however, you are allowed to upload an image as an attachment to share it; you can use the upload form for it underneath the post-editor.

Community

Guilds

Main article: Guilds

How do I join a guild?

You’ll need an invitation from one of the guild’s Masters or Officers.

To vet for a guild and ultimately contact the appropriate ranks to join one, it is recommendable to browse through the Guilds section of the forums; therein, you can sift through the guilds that are actively recruiting, overview their guild requirements, and contact them to express your interest in joining.

What perks are there of joining a guild?

While guilds currently function primary as social hubs, they’re tangibly beneficial for experience bonuses: the more populated your guild is, the more experience points you’ll gain from training.

Reporting

How do I report a player?

You can file a complaint on the Report Center on the forums. In order to build an actionable case against the transgressor, you’ll need to furnish sufficient evidence of their rule violations—screenshots of inappropriate behavior or admissions to rule-breaking, for example.

Someone is harassing me.

In addition to reporting them on the above-explained medium, be mindful of how you react to them. You are advised to use the /ignore username on them to block off further messages, and it is disadvised to retaliate to them; depending on the degree of escalation, your own behavior might be punishable, and it could undermine your case against the harasser if it appears you are instigating them.

Staff

See Staff for more verbose information.

Are staff members paid?

No. This is a volunteer-driven, fan-made project; as such, all its staff members are unpaid and work on an at-will basis.

How do I join the staff?

Players are selected for staff roles if the staff feels that the individual has shown a level of earnest dedication, maturity, integrity, and skills not only needed to adequately perform the functions of the staff role for the long haul but to also represent the staff professionally.

One way you can register your interest in it by applying for the staff position if it is open; check the Staff Recruitment section of the forums for information regardginly, because all staff positions thereon are subjected to closures depending on how well-manned they are deemed to be at this time.

How can I apply for the Developer/programming position?

In all but exceptional cases, you can not; because of the synthesis of skills required and the integrity-sensitive access endued to Developers, there are no open applications due to the unlikelihood of landing an ideal candidate from outside.

Its members are generally promoted from within, and they earn it by performing their role perennially and unimpeachably, forging a rapport with Eaty and the rest of the staff, and demonstrating their skillsets. If you wish to contribute in a stepping-stone role, you are encouraged to apply to the Content Scripter position whenever they are fielding applications.