It’s no secret that the Unite Guide has gone through a lot of changes this year.
From its humble beginnings as a google doc passed around the Pokemon Unite Discord Server (that you really should join if you haven’t already) to the site you’re currently on we’ve come a really long way, but we’re not done yet.
Of course, none of this could have been possible without you -our readers. At the end of the day our meta advisors put in the grind and hard work to make these guides for you and we thank every single one of you for coming on this journey with us and making it possible.
Honestly it’s a little hard for us to believe less than a year ago, we were still using that google doc to provide the most up to date builds and strategy guides!
Join us for a fond look back at the history of the guide from its early days, the transition from document to site and a look at what the future holds. (Oh, and we’ve also made social media accounts so join us on Facebook and Reddit if you want to stay up to date when we publish new content or update our guides.)
Since we’re Data Nerds here, we’ve also included some of our site data, reviewing and analyzing the traffic we’ve had since we re-launched the site in August!
Remembering the OG: There for Players since (almost) the Very Beginning
Although our guide did a lot of growing up this year, it’s been a labor of love basically since the release of Pokémon Unite.
The original document was started by our very own Chunkymilk back in Oct 26, 2021, just three months after the initial launch of the game.
Chunky, who remains a major contributor to this day, saw a need within the community for easy to read builds and strategy guides for Unite’s growing roster. Turns out there’s only so many times a day you can tell people what items to run on Lucario before you think “Somebody should write this down.”
Chunky reached out to Joe, another one of the discord’s active community members (read: another member who couldn’t help compulsively answering the same questions all day long.) about putting pen to paper and the rest is history.
Eventually marteen was brought on along as a main contributor with some rotating guest contributors who have helped to fill in any gaps as needed.
If you’re new to Unite, haven’t been to the Discord or have only found us since our website days, it’s worth noting things are a little different ‘round these parts from how they used to be. Back then if you were reading the guide you came there from the discord, so it was written with the assumption that you were at least familiar with one, if not all of the contributors and their sense of humor.
The guide was originally made for the audience of the discord and was full of memes, crude jokes and general tomfoolery. Back then you could call a build “uwu sh–” and everyone knew what ya meant.
Eventually as the guide’s audience and the game’s roster grew the team came to realize the Google Doc maybe wasn’t the best format to be serving this info. Google Docs is not the most mobile friendly and sometimes you were looking for this info as a game was queuing up, meaning you needed easier navigation (or just the ability to save a Pokémon in a bookmark.)
Much like the pocket monsters in the game, the team knew it was time to evolve.
The Evolution: From Document to Website
The decision to go from a google doc that was passed around between those-in-the-know to a true blue website happened in early 2023. After an intense game of rock, paper, scissors; the loser (Joe) had to pony up for hosting and figure out how to actually make the site.
The domain was bought on March 22nd 2023. Instead of boring you with all the details of development, we’ve decided it’ll be more fun to just search up “Joe” and “Website” in the Discord history and let you read between the lines.
Although making a website meant that Joe would have to teach himself web development while helping maintain the content of the guide, it was a project he took upon himself and worked on tirelessly.
With much hard work and perseverance, the Guide website came together quickly and easily!
The V.1 Site officially launched on June 22nd 2023. Exactly three months after the purchase of the domain.
The transition from document to site was complete!… though not quite right. The V.1 site turned out to be temperamental, hard to edit and ended up eating hours per Pokémon on formatting alone.
That July, the last piece of the puzzle was found. Joe made an offhand comment in the chat about the site having cost him “3 of his 9 lives.” to put together, some psychopath in the chat saw that and thought “I bet rebuilding their site from the ground up could be fun.” and two weeks later on the first of August the current version of the site (V.2) was launched!
When asked about the relaunch, the team agreed they felt an emotion that could only be described as “Where the $#!& was this guy 3 months ago?”
Talkin’ About Today: The Guide, the Game and the Goings On
We’re not going to waste too much time chatting about how things are today. You’re here reading this and we’re writing it so we think things are going swell. We’re really proud of how the website has turned out after that journey we started early 2023.
That said, nothing in life is ever finished, and that’s doubly true when you’re producing content about a MOBA. The gamestate is constantly changing, new Pokemon are arriving on Aeos Island and new items and patches and and and… well you get it.
We’re still in the process of bringing every single Pokémon’s in-depth guide content up to the new standard that we’ve set for ourselves, so some of the older guides might feel a little content light but we stand behind every build we recommend.
The items and move selections in these guides are always up to date, oftentimes within hours of the patch or Pokémon arriving.
We work with the unite Mathcord, Unite-DB and playtest to ensure we’re getting the best info to you and we’re confident using these builds will give you an edge in the majority of scenarios while playing your favorite Pokemon.
We’re working to get all our legacy guides up to scratch content wise, and while we’re on the topic of what we’re working on….
Looking to the Future: 2024 and Beyond!
We’re absolutely buzzing with anticipation for the adventures ahead at Unite-Guide.com, and we’re eager to give you a sneak peek at some of the cool stuff we’ve got in the pipeline.
Top of the list, we are going to continue with our transition away from the official Unite Roster images over to our hand-drawn doodle aesthetic for the top level roster pages. We like the look of notebook doodles and feel that it better captures the essence of the guide. This guide basically started as some notes kept between friends and we think this style is a fitting tribute to that.
Another exciting development we’re inching closer to (actually, it’s what you’re reading this very moment) is our brand-new blog section. Here, we’ll be spilling the beans on the latest news, tossing out extra strategy tips, voicing our take on the game’s dynamics, and jotting down other musings that matter.
Take our Playstyle Guide, for instance. We will be breaking it down from one colossal page into bite-sized blog posts that zero in on each playstyle. This way, you can easily scout out the strategies that match your preferred way to game, and we get to update and expand on content in a snap.
Also, Draft is coming to Unite and we’re all beyond excited for this change! It’s especially exciting that the matchup sections we built into the site will finally be more than just some pretty pictures!
Stay tuned for a Drafting Strategy guide sometime before the official release of the format.
We can’t wait for the year to come and we hope you all stick around with us! Ever since V.2 of our site went live, we’ve been keeping tabs on our traffic stats, and guess what? We think you might get a kick out of some of the fun facts and figures we’ve gathered. Stay tuned for those insights and more!
Unite-Guide.Com’s “Year End Review Report”
If you’re having trouble viewing this report on a mobile device, your screen size may be too small to render it. Try looking at it again on a computer later. Sorry. We didn’t claim we got THAT much better at this.
