XDA Developers published an article detailing code changes made in the new Discord Alpha version, version number Discord v16 alpha 7. The latest Discord alpha reveals that the app is working on a collaboration with Pokémon GO, as well as surfacing helpful COVID-19 channels to more users through the Discover feature.
Feel free to join Pokémon GO Hub’s Discord server with more than 20000 players.
🚨⚠️ Disclaimer ⚠️🚨
Please be aware that everything posted here has been publicly reported by data miners (XDA Developers). Information shared through these channels is not affiliated nor approved by Niantic, and is always subject to change. Do not take it for granted, features change and get scrapped all the time. It is very important that you are aware that these things CAN and WILL CHANGE.
Discord and Pokémon GO
A handful of strings found in the latest Discord alpha suggest that Discord could be positioning for a Pokémon GO collaboration:
<string name="invite_pokemon_go_announcements_label_long"> Get latest announcements for Pokemon GO raids in Los Angeles! </string> <string name="invite_pokemon_go_announcements_label_short"> Get latest announcements </string> <string name="invite_pokemon_go_friendship_label_long"> Make new friends who are also passionate about Pokemon GO in your area! </string> <string name="invite_pokemon_go_friendship_label_short"> Make new friends </string> <string name="invite_pokemon_go_strategy_label_long"> Share tips and strategy so you can train the strongest Pokemon! </string> <string name="invite_pokemon_go_strategy_label_short"> Share tips and strategy </string>
In case you don’t know, Alpha version is an early version of a program or application, typically unstable, but useful to show what the product will do. Sometimes this stage is referred to as a preview version.
As evident from the strings above, there is no mention of organizing raids via Discord, but this is, after all, just the first thing discovered about this potential collaboration. Pokémon GO’s focus is moving more and more from outdoor to indoor activities, and we can’t think of a more natural companion to that than Discord.
Recently, raiding from home was teased in an official Niantic blog post, which makes us think that Discord and Niantic are planning something on that topic. This is, of course, pure speculation on our end, but Niantic has avoided implementing an in-game system for messaging and raid organisation.
On the other hand, we know that players heavily use Discord and Discord bots for raids organisation, voice communication and staying in touch with their local community.
If you think about it, Discord is the only gaming oriented widespread communication platform with support for bots, which could make organizing raids super easy if Niantic decides to build a first-party Discord bot for raid notifications.
Speaking of bots, PokeNav has been a popular option among many communities, and it seems that it already has a metric ton of useful features:
Private raid coordination channels, trading requests, cross-server trainer profiles, custom community badges, pokedex support, team management, POI management, notifications, integration with popular community services and more!
One can easily imagine that Discord servers could be used to get updates on nearby raids and organize a small group to perform the raid via voice channels. Discord’s VoIP system is excellent, their server infrastructure is very stable and bot management is relatively easy, both for developers and for consumers.
We’ll see what happens in the future, but we’re excited for the potential outcome of this collaboration.
COVID-19 – Server Discovery
The latest Discord alpha also contains these new strings related to public COVID-19 servers:
<string name="guild_discovery_covid_body">Visit the community-run Coronavirus Discord to talk about COVID-19, and head to [CDC.gov](%1$s) for more information.</string> <string name="guild_discovery_covid_button">Visit COVID-19 Discord</string> <string name="guild_discovery_covid_title">Stay safe and informed</string>
