No One’s Getting Lucky YET With Pokémon GO

On July 23rd, Pokémon GO fans grew curious and excited when the official Pokémon GO blog announced that Pokémon was able to take on a new trade when traded. The next paragraph revealed that this new trade consisted of becoming a new and sparkly Pokémon A.K.A a Lucky Pokémon. The blog post also made the clarification that “the longer the Pokémon spends inside a Trainer’s Pokémon storage, the higher the chance of them becoming Lucky Pokémon when they are traded.”

If Pokémon GO players were starting to feel lucky just by reading the first lines of the announcement, then the last two lines served as a confirmation that Lucky Pokémon had arrived and was here to stay:  

“It’s time to begin a new journey with Lucky Pokémon! Share a photo of your new find with #LuckyPokemon on your preferred social media channels. Stay safe, and happy exploring!”

—The Pokémon GO team

Isn’t that an invitation to start trading your oldest Pokémon in order to get the Lucky version? Well, many viewed it that way, but it seems that it was not the case. There was no indication of an exact date when the Lucky Pokémon was expected to go live, so many people assumed they were already live. To increase the confusion, there were also in-game notifications announcing the release of Lucky Pokémon. This was, for many, a confirmation of their release.

The text was also accompanied by a photo that showed two people trading their Pokémon, however, the word “Lucky” appeared under the image of the Pokémon, and that is something Pokémon fans had never seen before.

Now, what are Lucky Pokémon? According to the blog post we cited before, a Lucky Pokémon is a Pokémon that, when traded, require less Stardust to power up. This means that they can reach a higher CP much faster than other Pokémon and, of course, Lucky Pokémon are sparkly. We love sparkly, it always means that something cool is happening.

After the disappointing realization that the Lucky versions of Pokémon were not making an appearance, gamers started complaining across the internet and on different social media platforms. Many had traded their oldest Pokémons with the hopes of getting their Lucky versions, only to regret it seconds later after seeing nothing.

The discontent among gamers rose to such high levels that Pokémon GO posted a tweet making the following clarification announcement:

We have to wait for the game to be updated for all users, of course, Pokémon fans wonder how come that small piece of information had not been included in the first blog post announcing the release of Lucky Pokémon.

Now, will Lucky Pokémon become someday a part of PTCG? We would love to have those trading cards of sparkly Pokémon that require less Stardust to power up. We’ll see, in the meantime, we will just have to wait for them to make it into Pokémon GO. What’s your take on their misleading news? Comment below!