"Today, unfortunately, is the last day of my Pokemon Journey after 15 years."

Recently I finally started playing Pokemon Sun, and I've been enjoying it quite a bit. This is my 1st time since Pokemon Black due to life and time and other reasons. It felt great to finally delve back into a Pokemon game and get that same great feeling I had back when I used to play all the time.I started playing December of 2002. I was 7 years old. I got Pokemon Sapphire for Christmas and thus started my long and crazy journey of Pokemon. My Sapphire save files time clocked in at 999:99 by the time I was done with it. I've never played anything like it before and I could not wait to get more. So when Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green came out, I had to get both. I grabbed my brothers GBA and our Link Cable and started transferring all of my old Pokemon to Leaf Green including my 1st ever starter, a level 100 Swampers named Gregg. After another 999:99, the Nintendo DS came out and with it, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, and the release of so many of my favourite Pokemon. Roserade! Rhyperior! Magmotar, Dusknoir. Many many Pokemon interested me this generation, and although it was not my favourite Pokemon game, I loved it. And again, I played it until I've seen every corner of the game. I was so glad to find out that we could transfer all the Pokemon from the last generation up, and although it was a gruellingly slow experience, I traded every one of the Pokemon I've gotten in Sapphire, Ruby, Leaf Green and Fire Red up to my Pokemon Pearl. I had roughly 90% of the national dex finished and it was around the end of this games lifespan that I started getting interested in competitive Pokemon. So when Pokemon Black and White was announced, I decided that's when I would get into the deeper mechanics of the game. It also helped that I was now over twice as old as when I started at being 15. I finally invest some time in research discovering what Ev training was, what IV's were and how good spikes were. I spent hours and hours breeding and training. I had at least 3 boxes of EV trained Pokemon. Each spending hours to get trained to max. I even found my 1st shiny this generation and decided to look more into how to acquire more.After this, my life got busy. I was in high school and had a lot of homework and Pokemon started to back seat a bit. When I graduated and started working, I basically stopped playing it, but never stopped loving it. I purchased Pokemon X when it came out, and grabbed the PokeBank so I could continue to keep all of my beloved Pokemon that I've spent so much time on both collecting and training. I went through the process of transferring all of my Pokemon from Black, then the Pokemon that didn't fit on Black, from Pearl to Black THEN to the PokeBank.I didn't play X as much as a thought I was going to despite my desire to so I never transferred my Pokemon out of my bank. I fell out of Pokemon for the most part. Now with Ultra sun and moon coming out, I figured I would get back into the series since I've had more free time nowadays. I pick up and beat Pokemon Sun in about 2 weeks. It was a blast. I was so excited to transfer all of my Pokemon, see my favourites, challenge the Battle Tree and reconnect with this fandom I've been out o for a few years.Unfortunately, that's not what happened. I paid the $5 to access my PokeBank again, and to see all of my old friends. I was horrified to find it was empty. Surely there was a glitch of some sort! Or I'm on the wrong account maybe? somehow? I call up Nintendo support and to make a long story short, there's nothing they can do. Apparently, if you don't pay the subscription for PokeBank every year, they delete all your Pokemon. No warning, no e-mail, no nothing. They just delete them without your knowledge or notification in any way. So there I sat. Staring at all 100 boxes empty. No event Pokemon, no shiny's, no legendaries, no EV trained, and most of all no Swampert named Gregg that I got on Christmas of 2002 when I was 7 years old.I'm 22 now and I'm crying as I type this. That's a lot of memories as I'm sure you all know. Sorry for the wall of text. I might just be typing this to help deal with this loss, and I know it's silly to call virtual monsters disappearing a loss, but it feels like it. It feels like I lost a huge chunk of my history. A huge chunk of who I am. I don't think I'm going to keep playing after this. Starting 15 years of progress all over again knowing that it will never be the same... So goodbye Pokemon. I loved it.TL;DR | 15 years worth of Pokemon are gone because Nintendo didn't send me any notification or e-mail or anything that my Pokemon would be deleted if I didn't pay for my PokeBank subscription. And I'm honestly devastated and brought to tears. I've transferred every Pokemon I've ever collected since 2002 just to lose them all to this. I cannot see myself continuing to play Pokemon.EDIT : There's apparently some ambiguous grace period you have to collect your Pokemon before they are deleted. Some accounts online say a year, while others are saying only a few months. There's no official word from PokeBank on how long this grace period lasts, they always say some vague responses like "some time". If this makes you distrust Pokebank, please take your Pokemon out. via /r/pokemon http://ift.tt/2yE4mXU