Don’t get spooked by the disappearance of the Global Link this Halloween!

As announced a while ago, the Pokémon Global Link (PGL) will not be able to communicate with the 6th Generation games (or any games for that matter) as of this Monday night, in preparation for the 7th Generation PGL to go live on November 18th. Global Link connectivity will be shut down as of 23:59 GMT (just one day after the UK switches back to said time zone) on Monday, October 31st. For those of you who are too lazy to convert this into your local timezone, here is a handy list of common zones, I’ll let you guess what one you are in.

Pacific Daylight Time (GMT-7) – 16:59, October 31st
Mountain Daylight Time (GMT-6)- 17:59, October 31st
Central Daylight Time (GMT-5) – 18:59, October 31st
Eastern Daylight Time (GMT-4) – 19:59, October 31st
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT+0) – 23:59, October 31st
Central European Time (GMT+1) – 00:59, November 1st
Japan Standard Time (GMT+9) – 08:59, November 1st
Australian Eastern Daylight Time (GMT+11) – 10:59, November 1st

What Is Happening Anyway?

With that out of the way, here is a quick list of the things you can expect to be affected

Affected Games: Pokémon X, Pokémon Y, Pokémon Omega Ruby, Pokémon Alpha Sapphire.
Affected Regions: All of them.
Features Disabled: Pokémon Global Link, Battle Spot Rating Battle, Game Sync.
Things Lost: All Pokémiles stored on the PGL, your Rating (go screenshot it now), any items not sent to your game.
Online Features NOT Affected: Mystery Gift, Free Battle, GTS, Wonder Trade, and everything else I forgot

The notable ones are the loss of Pokémiles and items, which should be sent to your game sometime this week, and the loss of Rating Battle. On the bright side, this means we are really close to Sun and Moon, right?

As a parting gift, the PGL is having a number of sales and events! All things you can purchase with Pokémiles are 50% off until closing, including the item shop and attractions. Ability Capsules can also be purchased for 5000 Miles! If you haven’t already, you can also use Pokémon Bank to collect Regirock, Regice, and Registeel, each with their Hidden Ability. Make sure you get those legendaries and spend your extra Miles before Monday, because after that they will be gone.

What’s Next?

Lastly, if they are going to be taking the service down for more than 2 weeks, I’d hope they have some new features planned for Sun and Moon. These include…

Player Created Competitions – You can set up an online battle competition for you and your friends, with your choice of ruleset! You won’t even need to be in the same place anymore!
Live Tournaments – Of course, if you DO happen to be in the same place as your friends, you can set up a full tournament on the spot! The entry requirements are shared by QR code, and scanning that QR code enters their team into an event with your rules!
Global Missions – Every so often, the entire world will be assigned a task. These can be accessed from Festival Plaza in-game. The first one, set to air in late November, will be “catch a lot of Pokémon”. There seems to be a reward for all participants, so join the fun!
6 Battle Boxes – Self-explanatory, allows for more flexibility when entering the above events.
QR Rental Teams – Ever wanted to use your favorite Pokétuber’s competitive team as your own? Now you can! Teams stored in your Battle Boxes can be assigned a QR code (seeing a pattern here?), which can be scanned by other players to get a “rental” version of your team to use in battles!
New Battle Rules – I won’t go into detail now, but there are a few new sets of rules that can be assigned to battles, including a chess tournament style “My Time” system that records allowable time for each player individually, rather than together.

Are you looking forward to the new online features? Tell me in the comments!

Edited by Jake.