Djdfields

I used a Raticate with Bite my first time through. Granted, I was a noob (arguably still am...), but I had literally no issues.

You will spend more time getting the first few badges in Hoenn than leveling the Rattata honestly. Hell, once it's all set and done you will forget about the requirement all together. It's an MMO; things will get grindy from time to time. The fact that you let the least (like... very least by such a long shot) time consuming process in this game deter you is probably a sign that you don't enjoy the game that much.

At your level, go to the grass outside Mt. Silver, then you can head into Mt. Silver and start leveling in the mountainside at around 70. At night time, there are Golbats that level you up super quickly. That was my method at least...

Oh, nice! Didn't see the confirmation, but I figured as much. After playing WoW through multiple launches I've seen how awful things can get when tens of thousands of people attempt to click on the same object at once...

Took me less than two hours to level a rattata to 100. I saw hundreds of people when I got to Hoenn yesterday... I even got a shiny rattata out of the whole thing. With the amount of time it takes to construct a forum post, you could have probably had one at 50 minimum. I almost guarantee the gating mechanism is in place for server stability. If everyone immediately went to Hoenn, the servers would have not been able to handle it. Besides, this is one of the least grindy tasks I've had to deal with in this game...