Despite Niantic announcing the event months ago, Pokemon Go’s upcoming Wild Area event has until now been opaque to players. The studio initially said it’d be like Go Fest or the yearly Tours, but it gave no further details beyond the date and location: November 16th to 17th in Fukuoka, Japan, followed by the global November 23rd to 24th. Well, we finally have some official information now, and it’s very whelming, both in terms of the event itself and for its offerings, which include the old Origine Forms from the Sinnoh Tour earlier this year.
Before getting into the features, let’s look at the pokemon. As we noted in our list of the best Megas to invest in, Poison is one of the weakest types and Electric is middling, particularly in terms of raiding. That means an event devoted to those types – like this one – is hard to hype, and the only reason it’s getting eyeballs is the introduction of the weaker-than-starter-‘mons Toxtricity. While it’s a bit of a fan favorite, a two-day event mostly devoted to a single pokemon feels like a huge stretch, and the community is calling it out.
Raid-wise, most of the wild spawning pokemon are far past their prime. Gyrados, Tyrantrum, Electivre, Dragonite, and Mamoswine families are reasonably raid-relevant, and for PvP, add Feralagatr, Toxapex, and Poliwrath families. Candy is fine for, say, Venusaur if you’ve got a Shadow or Dynamax you need to power up, so for new players, this event is reasonable, but it really doesn’t belong in the same class as Go Fest.
The “Mighty Pokemon” noted above are a new feature for the event (with a new Safari Ball to make them easier to catch); they’re randomly spawning pokemon that are supposedly guaranteed to have higher HP, defense, and attack, plus higher odds to be XL or XXL. It’s a solid idea, but the relevance for these ‘mon is not high, and storage is already a massive problem for players.
The feature is nice in theory, but the selection and continued storage bloat probably are part of the turn-off factors among veteran players. To note, legacy moves on several pokemon are a nice bonus, particularly for Venusaur as we have the Dynamax version to deal with now, but you can pop in-game and evolve them quickly without needing a whole two-days for that.
While they have no connection to the fairly irrelevant Toxtricity, Origin Forme Dialga and Palkia will be back. Players who have been waiting for the ability to Elite TM Sinnoh Tour ‘mon apparently need to wait even longer, if they’ll get it at all, as Niantic has confirmed that the inability to ETM the Origin Forme’s Adventure Moves is intentional.
Between this decision and the disconnect from the rest of the event, their inclusion and limitations seem out of place, perhaps designed only for revenue generation. Keeping Toxtricity to 4-star local only raids and local-only Dynamax raids may also be a problem, especially given the fact that current players continue to debate the value of the feature in the first place.
Naturally we’ll be covering the event in our Massively on the Go column, but the content seems fairly light, unless Niantic has some big reveal it’s sitting on. As is, Wild Area is looking more like a two-day Research Event that is introducing a new ‘mon that’s basically just for local players – and a new feature for largely junk pokemon.
Wild Area GLOBAL Event!🌲⚡☠️
– Origin Dialga/Palkia will be back with it's signature moves for all
– Toxel and Toxtricity debut (with shiny and Dynamax)
– new feature: Mighty Pokémon:
higher IVs, shiny for 3rd stage available and hard to catch
– New GO Safari ballsIt's FREE… pic.twitter.com/OF08WMkVQc
— G47IX | Pokémon GO (@g47ix) October 1, 2024
