I'm sure most will agree that the general quality of Wi-Fi and YouTube battlers is lower than that of Smogon PO players. The usual pattern is for a player to start on Wi-Fi and eventually move fully onto PO battling as they become more experienced. I personally get a lot better matches when playing on the simulator, although I feel the animation of the DS battles is a necessity for increased entertainment factor.
Usually, I use Pokémon Online purely for team testing and Wi-Fi for making videos and "actual" battling. I almost never participate in any serious Smogon tournaments, which is unusual considering my background. Unfortunately, the quality of most of my Wi-Fi matches is quite low, meaning I end up deleting over half of them. To make a comparison, below are two PO logs I have saved, animated using aeo's replayer. The first is a DPP OU match vs my friend BKC. The second is a BW OU battle against fellow Smogon moderator TheFourthChaser.
These two matches are of much higher quality than almost every Wi-Fi battle I've ever had. Keep in mind that these were just picked from my recent logs; it's fairly common for me to have some solid matches on PO.
Anyone have any thoughts on this? Which do you prefer, and why do you feel that way?
