Newsletter 
Pokemon GO players who favor the second generation of Pokemon can now get one step closer to obtaining their favorite stable of legendaries by nabbing Lugia’s rival, Ho-Oh, the legendary bird of happiness, but they’ll only have until December 12 to do it. Ho-Oh’s surprise appearance is a worldwide affair, in celebration of all of players’ hard work to reach 3 billion Pokemon caught during last week’s global challenge. Players will find Ho-Oh’s powerful fire attacks to be a challenge, but it should be a fair fight for a gaggle of trainers with strong water-type Pokemon, such as the easily obtainable and extremely potent Vaporeon or a well-trained Blastoise or Feraligatr.
This development comes just a bit after the 48 hour window to catch Farfetch’d worldwide had faded. There was no formal announcement or any lead-up or fanfare; trainers simply started receiving notifications that Ho-Oh was around, and the official Pokemon GO Live Twitter account sent out a Tweet to let the community know about it. The appearance of Ho-Oh is a major happening, and seems to serve as a sendoff for the recent event. This most likely means that there won’t be any further business regarding the global catching challenge, aside from the YouTube show that it celebrated the launch of.
The global challenge mentioned in the article took place last week, lasting until November 26. Players worldwide had about a week to catch 3 billion Pokemon, unlocking different reward tiers along the way. It was slow going at first, but players eventually prevailed, first unleashing bonus XP and Stardust, which will last until December 1, and eventually giving East Asian players a chance at Kangaskhan and unleashing Farfetch’d around the world. Both of those happenings lasted only 48 hours from unlocking them, and are long over with now. Ho-Oh will be out and about for an entire two weeks, alongside the legendary dogs from the same generation. Once the dogs have completed their rotation and Ho-Oh has ceased appearing, the only second-generation legendary Pokemon left will be Celebi. Given its special, mythical nature, it may end up being saved for a special event later on. A similar fate likely befell Mew, who has yet to appear in the game despite being a first-generation legendary Pokemon. Just as Celebi is the guardian of time and of the forest, Mew is thought to be the genesis of all Pokemon. The game seems to be following a thread of having the most special legendary of each generation not make an appearance, which likely means that we won’t be seeing the likes of Deoxys or Arceus at the same time as their contemporaries from the same generation.