DS/Wii Nintendo WFC services to end

Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection support for Nintendo DS and Wii games will be terminated on May 20, 2014 for both North America and Europe. Online play, matchmaking, and leaderboards for the games end; downloadable content was not officially mentioned, but I assume that will be gone too. All of the most popular online games like Pokémon, Mario Kart, and Animal Crossing are affected. Playing DS and Wii games on 3DS or Wii U cannot be used to circumvent. A full list of affected games can be found here. The DSi Shop, Wii Shop, DS and DSi browser, Wii Internet Channel, Netflix, and YouTube are unaffected. A few additional unlisted games may be unaffected due to having separate servers, but for the most part the service ends.

Catch my drift.

I say Pokémon trading/battling, Mario Kart racing, and brawling will be missed the most--in that order. Honourable mention to Tetris DS.

Catch my drift.

Fans do care and miss it (a handful of ambitious ones are even trying to set up private servers); there just is little fuss. I enjoyed Nintendo WFC during its glory days. Not only do I miss the pain and gain of thousands of robo battles and billiards matches and races, I also miss simply knowing I could hop on if I wanted to. That was important to me. For example, Days of Ruin's ability to upload and download custom maps. During the decline, I connected infrequently: a few marathons a summer, maybe on certain holidays, and there'd be months in between. Which may have been above the mean at the time, but it is well understood that we all collectively contributed to ending it by not using it enough.

Obviously we know why the free service was cancelled. Regardless, there were some grievances I personally harbored. First was Pokémon Black & White 2, marquee games, being granted merely a year and a half window online. Second was the sizable segments of active communities like Pokémon and Mario Kart getting shafted. Lightly related was my pet peeve of online-heavy and landmark game Phantasy Star Online given no respect. Third and most importantly was knowledge of Nintendo WFC being absorbed by Nintendo Network. It may have been foolish of me to believe that meant DS/Wii online play would be around for a long while, when it turned out to be just over two years. Not to say we were duped, but it was an ugh moment.

Like most fans of course, I've accepted the fate of the service. All good things must end, and there is insight lent into the capability and lifetime of such services.

Catch my drift.

Mario Kart hacking was a big problem, although I assumed hacking to be much worse on DS than on Wii. Wasn't encountering a hacker once every three matches or so normal? It may have made online ugly, but at least there were always players online. Some players even did "anti-hacking" to mess with cheaters. Testaments to both games' impact.

Catch my drift.

Only yesterday did it occur to me that this end also meant all Pokémon GTS offers from DS were effectively voided. No doubt there were thousands of outstanding trades from the 9 games, some containing valuable Pokémon. I suppose that affects rarities somewhat, which is interesting.

Catch my drift.

The distinguished Limxzero spake:

Only yesterday did it occur to me that this end also meant all Pokémon GTS offers from DS were effectively voided. No doubt there were thousands of outstanding trades from the 9 games, some containing valuable Pokémon. I suppose that affects rarities somewhat, which is interesting.

Offering: Lv50 Reshiram
Want: Level 9 or under Reshiram

Yeah... showing off your Pokemon for a legitly unobtainable Pokemon, you should get off GTS. Well, hope that taught them a lesson. Some put a valuable Pokemon just to show it off, now they lose it.

On Paint's Discord. Still watching the site at least once a week. Go bother another admin or speak to me on Discord.

That too, although impossible trades were also posted in attempts to clone Pokémon. Same ends. The automatic legitimacy checker really cements this effect as well. As that and firmware improve over time, the less nonsense will go down online for games in general.

Catch my drift.