Pokemon Go’s Mega Mawile Change Has Players Worried About Raid Day

Pokemon Go will kick off its Mega Mawile Raid Day event in just a couple of hours with players able to catch Mega Mawile for a limited time. It’s a pretty tame, routine event for the most part, or at least it seemed that way whenever it was first announced. Just a day before Mega Mawile Raid Day got underway, however, Niantic announced plans to test a new change involving the number of raid battles players get to participate in during the event, and players aren’t too happy about the idea.

Much of the frustration around the Mega Mawile Raid Day change stems from the fact that players aren’t even quite sure what’s happening due to the way Niantic worded its message. On the eve of the event, Niantic said it’d be “doubling” raid battles per gym in select locations.

“Trainers, we will test doubling the number of Raid Battles per Gym on October 12, 2024 during Mega Mawile Raid Day in select locations globally,” Niantic said.

Does this mean that the raid times are being halved and that new raids will be spun up quicker than before? Will raid timers stay the same and there will instead just be twice the number of raids going somehow in certain gyms? Further, how are players supposed to know where these changes are taking place if specific locations aren’t known? If someone’s looking to do a Mega Mawile raid and they see that a raid timer has been halved but aren’t privy to the information tweeted above, it’s not difficult to see how this could be problematic for players.

“The fact no one is 100% sure what they mean by this because of the bad phrasing, is just a bad omen it’s gonna go horribly wrong,” one player pondered over in a Pokemon subreddit where Pokemon Go players discussed the change. “They might as well announce the makeup day already.”

The other very valid point of concern with this change is that this isn’t happening during some free, one-off event that players knew would be altered ahead of time. Event tickets are being sold for the Mega Mawile Raid Day just as they have been for pretty much every scheduled Pokemon Go event like this one, so many players have already paid for tickets and set aside time for the raids which now might not look as they expected. These sorts of changes have been tested before, so it’s reasonable to expect Pokemon Go players to be flexible to a degree, but the point of contention this time is how unclear Niantic’s phrasing is without any clarification offered afterwards.

When Does the Mega Mawile Raid Day Start?

Uncertain changes aside, the Mega Mawile Raid Day event in Pokemon Go will continue regardless. There’s a decent chance your area won’t be affected anyhow (but who knows since that wasn’t specified), so if you’re still planning on catching Mega Mawile, when can you expect to do so?

Pokemon Go‘s Mega Mawile Raid Day event starts at 2 p.m. local time, Niantic has confirmed. It’ll run for three hours after that, so 2-5 p.m. in whatever time zone you’re located in. Event tickets are sold for an even $5 and include eight additional Raid Passes, better chances at getting Rare Candy XL from Raids, more XP from Raids, and twice the Stardust, too. Those bonuses will extend a bit beyond the 5 p.m. cutoff and will instead be live until 10 p.m. so that you can make sure they’re used to their fullest potentials.