The online part of Pokémon Sword and Shield will be temporarily interrupted this week on Wednesday or Thursday depending on your location, with planned maintenance and tweaking taking place.
As spotted by Serebii.net, online features for the latest entry in the Pokémon series will be disrupted between 5:00 and 8:00 GMT on Thursday 5th December. According to Nintendo itself, "during the maintenance window, all network services will be unavailable" so anybody enjoying raids in the Wild Area will have to find another way to pass the time for those three hours.
Here's a handy little table we've put together to work out when you won't be able to venture online in Pokémon Sword and Shield this week:
| Timezone | Start | End |
|---|---|---|
| PT | Wed 4th Dec, 21:00 | Thu 5th Dec, 00:00 |
| ET | Thu 5th Dec, 00:00 | 03:00 |
| GMT | Thu 5th Dec, 05:00 | 08:00 |
| CET | Thu 5th Dec, 06:00 | 09:00 |
| AET | Thu 5th Dec, 15:00 | 18:00 |
Exactly what changes will be made under the hood is anyone's guess, although rumours abound that Game Freak may use the downtime to patch a Raid exploit which allows players to change the clock on their Switch to earn Watts and farm Gigantamax Pokémon.
Whatever the changes, you won't be able to play online for three hours, so if you're awake during that timeframe, you'll have to keep yourself occupied offline or in another video game for a while. Plenty to choose from, to be fair.
Let us know what you think Game Freak will be tweaking in those 180 minutes below.
[source twitter.com, via nintendo.co.jp]
Comments 31
I really hope they fix the stamp search and party queue system. Stamps are such a poor way of searching for raids, especially when they can’t easily be refreshed.
What online features?
Does this mean they're going to fix Y-Comms?
But will they be any better than they are now? Haha just kidding, I know they won't be
Pull the game from the store shelves and online marketplaces.
lol this whole game should be under maintenance.
I wondered how long it would be until the negative posts started appearing. I am now changing this to how long until the positive comments start
I assume they will fix time and date exploits. Unfortunately
Well, at least they've not put the maintenance anywhere near the release of a Pokémon/form. That would be shooting themselves in the foot.
When is Gmax Snorlax out again?
Hopefully removing that guy with the Solrock from Raids.
RIP time travel watt farming
I must have bought a different game to everyone else. Im really enjoying it so far. My only gripe is I'm currently stuck in a never ending loot box hole trying to get some un-nicknamed Pokémon out of mystery trade. I finally got a Charmander yesterday but it has a Japanese nickname already. Having a naming limit is dumb but it keeps ownership going.
I was wondering do we need to be online for a chance to encounter gigantamax butterfree and the other pokemon more?
@Xaessya @graysoncharles you're both forgetting the div who rocks up to those raids with his Magikarp.
@VenomousAlbino @graysoncharles @Xaessya Solrock and Karp are fine. Karp especially as he's fairly fast, actually attacks, and has a Focus Sash for not dying. Helping Hand Eevee and Wobuffett can go die in a fire.
@VenomousAlbino Magikarp is actually one of the best AI partners. It only knows attacking moves and rocks that Focus Sash
As a legitimate question, what are the online features?
"Exactly what changes will be made under the hood is anyone's guess, although rumours abound that Game Freak may use the downtime to patch a Raid exploit which allows players to change the clock on their Switch to earn Watts and farm Gigantamax Pokémon."
...
...wait, that means- OH SHOOT!! (grabs Switch)
If the handheld main series games and Yo-kai Watch series have taught me anything it's never mess with the clock or else you won't be able to do daily events for around two days(I think).
So my first guess is that the Raid glitch is going to be fixed. Along with that, there's apparently an exploit with Dynamaxing and Choice Items. Namely, if you're Dynamaxed you're not locked into the one move limitation of the choice item. That seems unintentional.
@Mqblank
Pointing out the existence of negative posts doesn't negate the points they make.
Guarantee that this means closing the Raid glitch and not any actual quality of life improvements. Bet it'll run indistinguishably from before. Don't get your hopes up, people.
They definitely need to improve the online features. I really enjoyed the game, but the online features were too cumbersome and exploitable (constantly opening and closing raid rooms after changing your system's clock...) to invest time in.
I did use wonder trade though. I love nick-naming a Pokemon and then trading it to a random. To anyone who got a Yamper named Stubbs...that was probably me...
Oh, no! You mean I can't experience frame rate drops and stutters in the Wild Area or wait for three minutes only to have nobody join me in a raid battle?!
Heaven forfend.
Wow nintendo's online features are so poor I'm not sure anyone would notice. Even the system is poor nevermind the actual performance. Why do we need stamps to battle/trade with friends, we can't just add a friend and see them permanently... Not to mention max raid battles and the lack of refresh. Seriously Nintendo get someone else to manage your online!
I really doubt the exploit will get patched, the last time the services went under maintenance it didn't affect it, not to mention that it can be done offline as well.
@Gravitron From what I'm hearing on the grapevine they didn't, people are still using the exploits without issue.
I saw right after midnight (ET) a notification popped up in the top-left corner of the screen similar to when your friends go online. I wonder if they'll implement similar notes when doing maintenance on other games.
can't fix the raid hack as it would require a software patch, and not everyone will hurry to update the game.
@tabzer Funnily enough a software patch WAS released before the servers went down but it didn't affect either exploit.
there was a firmware patch but no software patch
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...