"[The Post Mortem] Our global Team Rocket vs. Silph Road adventure has concluded, travelers. The Road we love is back. (And the Executives are exhausted, but we hope you had as much fun as we did!)"

#PokemonGO: Aaaand we're back!We hope you enjoyed the adventure, travelers.Now that April Fools day is officially behind us, the Silph Road we know and love is back to normal.What Happened Yesterday?The Silph Road executives hosted a massive, global adventure/mystery game on the Atlas itself.The Plot:The Executives had a meeting with an exciting potential partner for the Silph Road, which ended up being a trap. They were instead kidnapped by a crime syndicate called "Team Rocket" (a criminal organization from the main series Pokemon games) and marooned on an island overrunning with snakes!What ensued was a drama/mystery that unfolded across locations and facilities around the world, wherein we learned more about Team Rocket's plans and helped orchestrate their defeat.Eventually, the executives managed to return to Silph HQ in New York City and a battle ensued against the Rocket leader (Giovanni) for control of Silph Tower.Where Can I Read the Whole Story?Traveler /u/astrocubs put an awesome real-time summary thread together as clues were solved around the world:http://ift.tt/2nxjP2t Niantic fund this or were they otherwise involved?This event was a Silph Road adventure, and we executed it ourselves with a little help from Trainer Tips. Niantic was not involved - and no, we don't all get Mewtwos if we help save Silph Tower. :)Niantic has not reached out to us at this time, but we did not expect them to. The Pokemon Company International would likely not condone a Team Rocket / Mewtwo showdown in Times Square without quite a bit of legal tape. And we wanted to do it anyway.How Long Did This Take To Create?Many, many hours. This was the brainchild of Dronpes and Marco Ceppi, and even our most trusted Wardens and mods were shocked to find their mod positions replaced with Rocket operatives. (Sorry guys. We love you, but wanted you to enjoy the story. :) )Marco and I didn't sleep for the 3 days leading up to the event - working many days and late nights getting things ready: locations, backstories, a Rocket intranet, graphics, new Nest Atlas functionalities, and more.One of my favorite moments from this adventure was last night (while we fought our best to keep the free Silph HQ server online against a torrent of traffic) after Nick's live stream ended and Marco and I were still struggling to get the battle working for more people - Marco actually fell asleep from exhaustion while we were mid-conversation on video chat: http://ift.tt/2n1RR2m (he doesn't know I took that). He had to leave for a flight in an hour, and was dangerously capable of sleeping through it at this point, so I had to ping his phone a bunch to wake him up!Did Anything Unexpected Happen?We knew you travelers would be quick. And we're no greenhorns when it comes to reverse-engineering and looking for clues, and things mostly proceeded as we planned. But... there were still a few moments when both Marco and I went "WHAT, HOW." Let us know if these moments are mis-attributed, travelers:/u/l715 discovered a CSS file name Verkhoyansk leading to early detection of the Siberian research facility.This didn't ruin any surprises, but it did make it particularly easy to find out with 'Pole of Cold' Giovanni sent the Executives to. We'd intended to leave this CSS file above the webroot, as it was a stylesheet used in configuring the Apache directory listings themselves. Seeing that name early was a small surprise for us!/u/ylebre discovered the Johannesburg Hangar.This one shocked us! We couldn't see what link there had been to South Africa in any material. Turns out, this crafty traveler realized one could zoom out the browser and still leave the zoom level and it would make a much larger "scanner" to look for Rocket facilities. Clever. :)Silph HQ was overwhelmed!We actually planned for a very large amount of traffic. We're no strangers to massive traffic spikes. Then Atlas has millions of visitors every month, and it's been a long time since we've had a serious downtime incident on the Atlas due to scaling issues. We gauged participation constantly throughout the day to try to estimate the overall reach of our adventure. But when it came time to battle, tens of thousands of eager trainers rushed to Silph's aid and our websocket-enabled battle ground to a halt. We're learning much from this incident and will apply this experience towards future endeavors. :)How much Dr Pepper was Harmed in the Making of this Event?Dronpes personally put away almost 4 liters. Actually tried a Mountain Dew, for some reason but knocked it off after just one.Did this event make the Road any Money?Hah. Not really. Probably less than 50 bucks in ad revenue on the Atlas, but we aren't running ads on the Silph HQ battle, which is where our traffic is (still) crushing! This was not about money - it was about the community coming together to do something truly epic!Parting WordsAs things draw to a close, I just want to say: we were so proud of this community yesterday. I was all smiles all day.Folks from all around the world helped decrypt ciphers, scour the oceans for boats, solve passwords, hack into Rocket terminals, and more.The aggregate capabilities of the Silph Road community are astounding.We had a blast fighting back against Team Rocket - and Marco and I hope you did to, travelers.In the end, Team Rocket foiled our remote connection, so we called the police. Probably should have just done that from the start. ;)If you had a good time on this adventure, let us know what you enjoyed and what you might love to see done differently in a future adventure!Now. Back to the Silph Road as we know and love it, travelers.Travel Safe,- Executive Dronpes & Marco -p.s. We'll leave Silph Tower up in NYC, and Mewtwo will remain battle-able for a few more days. If it's still crashing on you, try again when less folks are on. We're still actively working on fixing our scaling issues for the websocket battle. It'll be more reliable soon. :) via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2n1FYtc