The 2024 Pokémon World Championships Celebration Actually Seems Mostly Good...?

Dreams *do* come true!

Awww! It’s got a snorkel!

From August 16 to August 18, Honolulu, Hawai’i will be hosting the Pokémon World Championships. The three-day event, officiated by Play! Pokemon, a subdivision of The Pokémon Company devoted to hosting the Pokémon World Championships, will feature tournaments for the Pokémon Video Game Championships (VGC), the Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG), Pokémon UNITE, and yes—even Pokémon GO!

The tournaments themselves are the main draw here, and the proceedings will be streamed live on Twitch. At least as far as PoGO goes, there will be an in-game celebration event to coincide with the real-world exhibition of battling prowess. Let’s take a look at the upcoming 2024 Pokémon World Championships Celebration and review the offerings:

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Avatar Items to Celebrate

We’ve got a new T-shirt, folks! Attendees of the in-person event in Honolulu will be able to get a special blue T-shirt with Pikachu in a snorkel and flippers by completing a scavenger hunt. Whatever that means. If you’re a schlub like me watching from home, you can watch the official stream and receive a code to redeem to get a free version of the T-shirt in white.

The one unfortunate aspect of having to watch on Twitch to obtain the code is that you get a slew of annoying viewers constantly spamming a command to get the code, often times when it is plainly visible there in the dang chat. Come on, people! Open your eyes and wait five seconds! Still, it’s a small price to pay for a free avatar item. I, for one, appreciate the gesture. Besides, some of these spammers might actually stick around for a bit and learn to enjoy battling. You never know!

Pokémon Debut

Three guesses. Yep, it’s the Pikachu from the T-shirt. If there’s one truism to be learned from Pokémon GO, it’s that you can never have enough costumed versions of Pikachu. As it’s Pikachu, it can be Shiny, and it looks ridiculous. I give it two flippers up!

Event Bonuses

As a function of the event, you can make up to five Special Trades each day. Perhaps more significantly for PvP enthusiasts, you can use a regular Charged TM to help a Shadow Pokémon forget the Charged Attack Frustration.

For the uninitiated, Frustration is a useless move, and a Shadow Pokémon that knows Frustration therefore has one less spot open for a worthwhile Charged Attack. Being able to TM away Frustration is therefore pretty much essential for being able to use a Shadow Pokémon in competitive play. Naturally, Niantic makes it so that you can only accomplish this a few times a year and for short windows, at that. The system is begging for an overhaul, but in the meantime, I and others like me will take what we can get.

Wild Encounters

The World Championships event is a PvP-focused event, and thankfully, there are meta-relevant spawns to be had. Carbink, Fletchling, Grubbin, Lickitung, Mankey, Mareanie, Marill, Paldean Wooper, Skarmory, and Swablu, whether as they are or in their evolved forms, are highly useful, especially for those just beginning their PvP journeys. W, as the kids say.

Field Research Task Rewards

Mareanie, Mienfoo, Swablu, and World Championships 2024 Pikachu will be potential rewards for completing Field Research tasks. Since Mareanie and Swablu will already be in the wild, and generally speaking, the Individual Values (IVs) which affect stat product are better for wild encounters than they are for task rewards re Pokémon to be used in Great League, these Research rewards are actually less attractive than their randomly spawned counterparts. They still can be Shiny, though, and at the end of the day, they’re still better than Yungoos.

Consequently, Mienfoo and Pikachu, gimmicks that they are, have the bigger appeal here, especially now that Mienfoo can be Shiny. As the saying goes, Shiny trash is still Shiny, so if you want to grind for those sparkles, have at it!

Paid Timed Research

If there’s a real demerit to be found here, it’s that there’s paid Timed Research. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again—I don’t like the idea of paid Timed Research which can expire before completing it and bar you from claiming one or more rewards. If anything, it should be untimed Special Research. Assuming you don’t already have a Great League-eligible Cresselia, this is your ticket (five U.S. dollars, please). Otherwise, it doesn’t appear to be worth the investment. L, as the kids also say.

Raids

Lickitung, Mienfoo, and Snorkel-chu make a reprise here. Also available as Raid Bosses are Diggersby and Galarian Stunfisk. No major quarrels here, although Diggersby is a bit of a weird inclusion, incapable of being Shiny and guaranteed to be suboptimal without being encountered as a Bunnelby in the wild. Far be it from me to question fans of the Big Chungus itself, however. This is a judgment-free zone.

Shadow Raids

In one-star Raids, you can expect to see Shadow Dratini, Shadow Gligar, Shadow Magnemite, and Shadow Wooper. In three-star Raids, you can expect to see Shadow Kirlia, Shadow Sableye, and Shadow Wobbuffet. I’m not a huge fan of Shadow Raids. The floors for the IVs are worse than what you can expect to find in encounters with Rocket Grunts, and the higher-tier Raids are difficult if not impossible to complete as a solo player. That said, if you’re desperate for one of the Shadow versions of these Pokémon, you might get some value out of these. All but Shadow Kirlia and Shadow Wobbuffet can be Shiny, too. Could be worse.

Featured Attacks

Lickitung caught during the World Championships event will know Body Slam. Also, you can evolve a Fletchinder into a Talonflame that knows Incinerate, a Grubbin into a Charjabug that knows Volt Switch, a Swablu into an Altaria that knows Moonblast, and a Quagsire that knows Aqua Tail. Normally, these moves would only be accessible by virtue of a Community Day or by using a coveted Elite Fast TM or Elite Charged TM, so this is another nice gesture by Niantic.

I should also mention that Mienfoo caught during this event will know the move Hi Jump Kick. Is this useful knowledge? LOL, probably not.

New Avatar Items

The swag is honestly one of the best parts of Pokémon GO these days, and assuming these are free new options, it’s a pretty nice haul. There’s an animated ukelele pose, a bucket hat, and an “aloha shirt.” You too can look like an obnoxious Hawaiian tourist!

PokéStop Showcases

OK—again, not a feature unique to this event. Even if there are event-themed Pokémon to be entered into the Showcases, marketing them in this way feels a bit dishonest. It’s a bit of a quibble over semantics, but with this company and its questionable communications, you can never have too much scrutiny.

GO Battle Week: Shared Skies

This is a PvP-inspired event, so naturally, battling is a component. For the corresponding mini-event in GO Battle League running from August 16 to August 20, the following perks will be available:

Bonuses

The hook here is 4x Stardust from win rewards. For the casual battlers, free Timed Research will be available, with rewards from completing the tasks including a wig avatar item inspired by Lana from the main-series games, assuming you haven’t already earned it by hitting Ace rank. One particularly nice element of GO Battle Week is that the Pokémon you encounter as win rewards will enjoy a wider spread of IVs more conducive to use in PvP. All in all, pretty solid prizes herein.

But yes, no GO Battle Week would be complete without an expanded number of sets you can play per day. Up from the standard five, you can play a total of 20 sets—100 battles! Owing to the present state of the game, you may consider this less of a “perk” and more of something to be outlawed by the Geneva Conventions, but it’s ultimately your choice. Go with God, Trainer.

Active Leagues

The active leagues at this time will be Great League, Ultra League, Master League, and for some reason, Catch Cup. At least the last one is optional. Bullet dodged.

Pokémon GO Web Store—Special Boxes

For US$9.99, you can purchase the TM Fanatic Box, which contains 15 Fast TMs, 20 Charged TMs, and one Star Piece. For US$19.99 (or the equivalent pricing in your local currency), you can buy the TM Elite Master Box, which features two Elite Fast TMs, two Elite Charged TMs, six Fast TMs, and six Charged TMs. Eh…

I’m not going to argue that there isn’t value here, particularly on the side of the TM Elite Master Box. Elite TMs are, as alluded to above, a coveted resource for those who do PvP. The TM Fanatic Box is a bit less defensible. Standard Charged TMs are pretty coveted in their own right as a way to change a Pokémon’s moveset, but mostly because 1) Niantic makes them artificially scarce, and 2) some Pokémon’s pool of available moves is so expansive that you could potentially expend upwards of 10 TMs trying to get the one move you want, as the game chooses the new move to be assigned at random.

If this sounds like an absurd waste of resources, it’s because it is. Much in the way having a Pokémon forget Frustration needs an overhaul, the TM system deserves its own makeover. That or Charged TMs need to become way more plentiful. People shouldn’t be forced to pay real money just so they can give their Poliwrath Scald, for example. It’s BS.

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Nothing says celebrating the best talent the Pokémon GO competitive scene has to offer like microtransactions! Amirite, Trainers?

There’s room for optimism here if you’re a Pokémon GO player, especially one who regularly battles. The base content of the 2024 Pokémon World Championships Celebration without paying for Timed Research or a TM box is overall quite solid. There are new avatar items and a new pose, as well as a new costumed Pikachu and a new Shiny in Mienfoo. The spawns are way more interesting than your standard, non-event Route 1 fare (sorry, Patrat). Being able to make your Shadow Pokémon forget Frustration is a godsend, and being able to evolve Pokémon that know certain “legacy” moves is also convenient. The extra Stardust from battle win rewards and the ability to play more than five sets are also nice boons, even if 20 sets seems like a bit much even for the most avid battlers. The paid content is a bit lackluster, but then again, I’m a bit biased on that front as someone who doesn’t put money into the game anymore.

So, yes, I’m encouraged by this event. What would be even more encouraging, though, would be more vibrant open league metas and more creative limited metas in GO Battle League. The season of Shared Skies hasn’t been abjectly terrible, but it hasn’t felt all that inspired either. Recent formats like Fantasy Cup and Fossil Cup don’t help, being structurally deficient on top of featuring a lot of the same Pokémon just in different iterations. Fantasy Cup put Dragon-type, Fairy-type, and Steel-type Pokémon together when Steel-type Pokémon resist Dragon-type and Fairy-type moves and when Steel-type moves are super effective against Fairy-type Pokémon. Fossil Cup features Rock-type Pokémon, which take super effective damage from both Steel-type and Water-type moves. These groupings fundamentally make little sense, even if they have thematic relevance. It’s not their first go-around, either. Pokémon GO is trotting out the same imbalanced formats it has used in past seasons. Is it a lack of creativity or laziness? A bit of Column A and Column B?

This is all to say that one good event does not make up for a half-hearted commitment to competitive play. We’ve discussed in this space how Niantic only seems so committed to PoGO, so if that’s the case, they’re super not committed to PvP, a format they don’t seem to fully grasp. Maybe they’re not motivated to understand it better because it’s not an inherent revenue generator for their company, but whatever informs their inaction, if they are hoping to raise the profile of Pokémon GO as an esport with this in-game event and by association with the World Championships, they’re doing so on top of a shaky foundation. A shaky foundation made all the more tenuous by the ongoing performance issues plaguing GBL.

GO Battle League is the main reason I still play Pokémon GO. The walking component is also critically important considering I sit at a desk 40 hours a week with a commute four of the five days, but without a reason to grind for resources, to Best Buddy Pokémon for that extra level up, to search for the best version of Pokémon with the best possible stats, the motivation wouldn’t quite be the same. In saying this, I admit my relationship with GBL is, to put it mildly, complicated. Maybe at some point I’ll explore it in greater detail here on The PoGO Journal, but while I enjoy the theory behind battling and coming up with different teams and strategies to find success, at the same time, I also feel a sense of anxiety each time I queue up and get ready for battle. When I win, I’m frequently more relieved than unabashedly happy. When I lose, it can put me in a bad mood for hours after the fact. It’s a real rollercoaster of emotions.

Overall, Pokémon GO is a huge time-sink for me, and I’m not even among the most dedicated players out there. For the kinds of Trainers who qualify for Worlds, they’re exemplifying a real commitment to Niantic’s stated goals. They’re the kinds of players you want as ambassadors for your brand, getting out and catching Pokémon, meeting up with others to complete Raids, and hatching Pokémon from Eggs. They have a vested interest in seeing the game not only survive, but flourish. By playing PoGO as completely as they do, they’re serving as an inspiration to other would-be competitors or those simply looking to improve and learn about Pokémon. If more of them were to receive enthusiastic backing from the developer behind the game, their stories could be great marketing amid repeated bad press and customer dissatisfaction.

If Niantic truly wants to profit from their blood, sweat, and tears, however, it has to rise to the occasion. The 2024 World Championships Celebration event is a good potential steppingstone on the uphill path to esports relevancy, but John Hanke & Co. need to pave it with more than just good intentions. The upcoming Season 20 of GO Battle League isn’t necessarily make-or-break for Pokémon GO, but in the face of declining engagement, it does feel critically important. Time to put up or shut up, Niantic.