Pokémon Go
Credit: Niantic
And just like that, Team Rocket was gone, as mysteriously as they arrived. Yesterday at 4:00 Eastern, the classic Pokémon anime villains began showing up in Pokémon GO in the form of Pokéstop encounters: certain Pokéstops would appear as “invaded”, and players could head over and battle a Team Rocket grunt and grab one of their Pokémon if they won. Niantic had been teasing it for a little while, so it seemed like this was the dramatic introduction of the summer’s big update. Apparently not, however: they’re gone now.
Had you not told me that Team Rocket was gone I likely never would have noticed: these invaded Pokéstops were incredibly rare, and I only saw one during the single day that they were apparently around. But Niantic confirmed in a tweet that apparently Team Rocket and Shadow Pokémon are in fact not in the game right now:
“Professor Willow has noticed that sightings of discolored PokéStops and Pokémon enshrouded in a shadowy aura have…suddenly stopped?Hmm… This phenomenon keeps getting more troubling the more we investigate it.”
It points to this being some sort of test: either a technical test, a way to gauge player reaction or, most likely, a little bit of both. That would also explain why there were so few invaded Pokéstops around if Niantic was being a little cautious about the system before it let it out of the bag. Other big new features have come with a slow rollout based on trainer-level, but there may have been reasons why this wouldn’t have worked this time around.
Expect them to come back, of course. We’ve already seen a huge number of shadow Pokémon in datamined files, in addition to a whole special research questline that we’ll likely be following as soon as these things release “for real”. As to when that happens, it’s anyone’s guess: it would seem that the game client is ready to handle this, but there is likely still work that needs to be done on Niantic’s end.
At the very least this event gave us a horrifying image of a shadow Snorlax waiting in the woods for something…or someone. Stay tuned, because we’ll likely hear more about this soon.
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Pokémon Go
Credit: Niantic
And just like that, Team Rocket was gone, as mysteriously as they arrived. Yesterday at 4:00 Eastern, the classic Pokémon anime villains began showing up in Pokémon GO in the form of Pokéstop encounters: certain Pokéstops would appear as “invaded”, and players could head over and battle a Team Rocket grunt and grab one of their Pokémon if they won. Niantic had been teasing it for a little while, so it seemed like this was the dramatic introduction of the summer’s big update. Apparently not, however: they’re gone now.
Had you not told me that Team Rocket was gone I likely never would have noticed: these invaded Pokéstops were incredibly rare, and I only saw one during the single day that they were apparently around. But Niantic confirmed in a tweet that apparently Team Rocket and Shadow Pokémon are in fact not in the game right now:
“Professor Willow has noticed that sightings of discolored PokéStops and Pokémon enshrouded in a shadowy aura have…suddenly stopped?Hmm… This phenomenon keeps getting more troubling the more we investigate it.”
It points to this being some sort of test: either a technical test, a way to gauge player reaction or, most likely, a little bit of both. That would also explain why there were so few invaded Pokéstops around if Niantic was being a little cautious about the system before it let it out of the bag. Other big new features have come with a slow rollout based on trainer-level, but there may have been reasons why this wouldn’t have worked this time around.
Expect them to come back, of course. We’ve already seen a huge number of shadow Pokémon in datamined files, in addition to a whole special research questline that we’ll likely be following as soon as these things release “for real”. As to when that happens, it’s anyone’s guess: it would seem that the game client is ready to handle this, but there is likely still work that needs to be done on Niantic’s end.
At the very least this event gave us a horrifying image of a shadow Snorlax waiting in the woods for something…or someone. Stay tuned, because we’ll likely hear more about this soon.
