Pokemon Go's Next Legendaries Available for Limited Time

By Jonathon Dornbush

Niantic Labs will release Zapdos and Moltres, the next two Legendaries coming to Pokemon Go, for limited, weeklong periods, the developer announced today.

In a new blog post, Niantic announced that Moltres will be available starting July 31 through August 7 and Zapdos will be released on August 7 through August 14. The already announced Articuno, available in addition to Lugia for Pokemon Go Fest attendees, has already been released  and is available through July 31. IGN took part in a raid at the Go Fest to capture Articuno.

Niantic's CEO John Hanke also addressed the major technical issues encountered during the Pokemon Go Fest, which IGN's Andrew Goldfarb encountered firsthand at the show. The post explains that the problems with Niantic's "game software caused client crashed and interfered with gameplay for some users. The gameplay issue was resolved with a server configuration change and the crashes were also addressed for many but not all users."

A longer-term issue of "oversaturation of the mobile data networks of some network providers," as well as network congestion, also caused some of the problems players encountered at the show, Hanke explained. This issue required "a second Niantic configuration change." The company also sent information about attendance to network carriers, after which some carriers took action and others "deemed [additional measures] unnecessary based on other infrastructure already in place at the site."

Because of the many issues, Niantic refunded attendees' tickets, gave them $100 worth of in-game PokeCoins, and released some of the event-specific Pokemon in nearby neighborhoods to make catching them easier. More than 69,000 raid battles occurred in downtown Chicago, with over 7.7 million Pokemon caught despite the issues players ran into at the event.

The global rewards released in tandem with Pokemon Go Fest will be available for longer than originally announced. Niantic has more real world events planned for the rest of this year.

For more on the Legendary Pokemon to come, check out IGN's Pokemon Go Legendary Pokemon wiki.

Jonathon Dornbush is an Associate Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter @jmdornbush.

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