Pokemon Go Allegedly Plans to Extend Ho-Oh Event

Pokemon Go allegedly plans to keep Ho-Oh around a bit longer in December.

Last month, Pokemon Go announced that Ho-Oh would appear as a Raid Boss for a limited time as a reward for players beating the Global Catch Challenge. At the time, Ho-Oh was one of three non-Mythical Pokemon that hadn't appeared in Pokemon Go and was widely seen as the "missing piece" that needed to be added before Pokemon Go could move on to the upcoming "Gen 3" expansion.

Ho-Oh was set to appear in the game through December 12th, but a new email suggests that Ho-Oh will appear a bit longer due to a recent raid bug. We reported that Pokemon Go had a bug that prevented players from being able to catch a Raid Boss if a member of the Raid Team dropped out mid-raid. By the time Pokemon Go fixed the bug on Sunday, many players had lost out on at least one or more chances to catch the Legendary Pokemon due to the bug. Pokemon Go issued an apology, but some players were hoping for something like a little more substantial...like free raid passes or a longer window to catch Ho-Oh.

On Monday, several players posted emails allegedly written by Niantic's support group that stated that Ho-Oh would remain in the game for a longer period of time. The emails were written as responses to player complaints about last weekend's raid bug. According to the alleged email, Niantic is "extending the deadline for catching Ho-Oh" and that more information would be released soon. Players also received two Premium Raid Passes for complaining about the raid bug.

A Reddit thread contains several screenshots of similar emails sent to other players, so this appears to be accurate. However, since Niantic has made an official announcement, we're encouraging players to take this information with a grain of salt.

It's possible that Niantic will extend the event for another week, or they could incorporate Ho-Oh and the Legendary Beasts into an end of year event, similar to how Pokemon Go released all the Legendary Birds at once for a short period of time over the summer.

Stay tuned for more news about this alleged deadline extension.