The best trainers of Pokémon GO are currently fighting for the World Championship title in London. But one participant is now showing what nasty bugs they have to deal with. We at MeinMMO explain what’s going on.
What kind of event is this? The Pokémon Company, in cooperation with the various Pokémon games, is searching for the best trainers to award them the World Champion title. And Pokémon GO is also part of these tournaments this year.
Currently, the final competitions are taking place in London, and the best trainers from Pokémon GO are dueling in the GO Battle League. One of them is the user ProfessorRexx, who shares his experiences and especially the difficulties of the first day with the reddit community.
By the way: All trainers can also participate in the big World Championship event in Pokémon GO at the same time.
These nasty bugs are troubling the World Championship participants
On August 18 at 10:00 AM German time, the tournaments of the Pokémon World Championship kicked off in London.
However, while Niantic had announced in advance that interested trainers could follow the battles via live stream on Twitch, it is likely that some noticed that there was a long talk before things actually got started.
The presumed reason for this is shared by reddit user ProfessorRexx in his post. He shows in a video how he is trying to defeat another trainer in the GO Battle League and writes:
This is the state of affairs at the international World Championships. The first game started 2 hours late and the games were still unplayable.
ProfessorRexx via reddit.com
What is the reason for this statement? If you take a closer look at the video, it immediately becomes clear that the battle is completely bugged and the game does not respond properly to ProfessorRexx’s interactions. His attacks are not executed during the battle.
Has this problem existed for a long time? Those who regularly engage in the GO Battle League will know the issues surrounding the bugs. Trainers have been complaining about errors such as network interruptions or delays in battles for months, which make PvP battles barely playable.
Again and again, they point this out to Niantic in the comments under Pokémon GO’s Twitter posts, but the problems have not been fixed so far.
However, for such an event as the Pokémon World Championship, everything should ideally run smoothly. After all, it is about the World Champion title, and a bug in the game should not disadvantage any participant.
“For competitions, there must be a local mode”
The reddit users also see it this way and give the post considerable reach. Because at this point, it has already received over 2,400 upvotes and 339 comments (as of August 19, 2022, 1:50 PM). The trainers are heavily discussing the video.
They cannot understand why Niantic has not fixed the known problems long ago or created alternatives to bypass such bugs during competitions. Nevertheless, they show little surprise at the nature of the bugs. One can read the following on reddit:
- ButtonBash: “For competitions like this, there must be a local mode for the battle data itself. Just avoid the internet completely.”
- Zekeythekitty: “Well, time to get a connection cable again.”
- Merlion4ek: “Somehow sad, but you know, now not only current GBL players see a real ‘E-Sport ready’ status of Pokémon GO. Niantic had a full 3 months to fix this. They only fixed lags with fast movement… but weak connections and other bugs are still there…”
- jontslayer: “I don’t understand how the Pokémon Company, especially in their literal presence, allows this to continue to be the norm.”
- aznknight613: “I’m not surprised. Every game in GBL that I played yesterday started with the message ‘Weak connection.'”
And JRE47, a reddit user who has already been actively involved in the changes to the Community Days for the Pokémon GO community and spoke with Michael Steranka (Director, Pokémon GO Live Game), cannot understand this either.
He assumed that playing in a special local mode during such competitions was already standard to counteract such problems, and writes on reddit: “I thought they had done this for other tournaments before this. Why not at the World Championships, damn it?”
One thing is clear from ProfessorRexx’s video – the problems in the GO Battle League need to be resolved promptly to enable decent gameplay. Whether Niantic can find a solution quickly for the World Championship participants remains to be seen for now.
What do you think about the bugs plaguing the participants of the Pokémon World Championship in London? Do you actually play actively in the GO Battle League? And are you following the battles in the live stream? Let us know here at MeinMMO in the comments.
During the live stream, you can also secure various promo codes. Here you can find an overview of all codes and how long they are valid.
