7-11 Event at Monterrey: A mess that could have been avoided

The point of this post is to try to guess "what went wrong", so that Niantic avoids doing this same mistake again in the future.

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So 7-11 turned their first store into a Sponsored Gym (With several Pokestops nearby!), and a few weeks ago, announced the partnership with Niantic that would spread to Latin-America. It also announced a Countdown that would end today, at 9PM.

The countdown featured the "Raid Boss Rhydon" icon we're all familiar with, so everyone expected a Raid to pop up at 9pm.

I don't have screenshots with exact timestamps, but I'm sure other Redditors that attended the event can compliment the timeline

  • So today at around 7:45PM, a 5* Raid Egg popped up at the store, it was set to hatch at around 8:32PM. Referenced here.
  • At around 8:30PM, all Seven Eleven Gyms nearby started popping up their 5* Eggs, scheduled for 9PM.
  • At 8:33PM, the Raid vanished at the 7-11 Gym where the PVP tournament was taking place, vanished. The Gym was still functional though.
  • At 9:00PM, We expect a Raid to show up, and it does... A 45Min 5* egg spawns. Meanwhile, other 7-11 raid eggs revealed the big surprise: Armored Mewtwo.
  • At 9:03PM, everyone's growing impatient because there Mewtwo raid was everywhere BUT in the "Main Store". Niantic decides to try turning one of the Sponsored Stops into a Gym, which quickly spawns an Armored Mewtwo Raid. The old egg 5* kept counting down.
  • At 9:04PM, a few people manage to get in (dozens, maybe). Some people report that the Gym ate their raid pass but would not let them in the Raid. Most of us? We couldn't load any Gyms or Pokestops nearby. The map went entirely blank.
  • The organizers try to cheer everyone up by doing random contests like "Shiny Pokemon with CP 711" and do some PVP matches in the huge screens they had, but the map was still non-functional around the event area. They also lit up the store, and it looks fantastic! Facebook Video here.
  • At around 9:45PM, the map starts working again, (for some of us anyway), but the "original" Gym with the 5* raid was gone entirely. The secondary gym had no raid.
  • At around 10PM, the map starts working for most, the secondary gym pops up a 4* raid.
  • At around 10:30PM, the original gym shows up with a "normal" Mewtwo (No legacy moves like Shadow Ball or Psystrike). Also, the 4* raid hatches into a Clone Blastoise.

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What I think happened is that Niantic duplicated a Sponsored Stop and turned the duplicate into a Gym, and that somehow corrupted their database for that area.

If you went far enough to not see the 7-11 area on the map, the map would still function, but as soon as you were "close" enough to the 7-11 area, the map would go blank again.

They ended up removing the duplicate Pokestop eventually (it was hard to click but my Go Plus kept spinning it anyway!)

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Now, raid failures aside, the event was fun. The store was very nicely decorated, they had huge screens, and were constantly broadcasting PVP matches on them. They set up a "battle arena" ring.

I got to meet Kieng! The organizers did do some fun contests, and organized some "Want/Haves" trades, as well as pictures with several Youtubers.

I can't stress enough how well decorated and organized the event was, despite game failure. PVP still worked, trades still worked, and that was enough for the organizers to salvage the night, though I admit that I walked out of the event having done zero raids, tired, and frustrated at Niantic.