Everything About Pokémon TCG Live's Beta Release

Hello everybody. I'm Rodrigo, and I come to bring news about Pokémon TCG news, curiosities and the like.

On 11/15/2022, the Pokémon TCG Live beta was made available worldwide, which is available on Windows, Mac, iOS and Android platforms.

But is it worth converting your PTCGO data? What's going on with the game in terms of rewards? Bugs? Valid or invalid card recognition problems?

We'll address all of this, but first, let's guide it in stages so that you can understand the panorama, and then we'll get to these points.

The Pokémon Trading Card Game Live (PTCG Live) is a proposal by the Pokémon Company to reformulate the online game that has been available on PTCG Online (PTCGO) since the Black/White era by redeeming codes that came in booster packs. This server was only legal on PC platforms and not for mobile, at first.

With this new format, the idea is to cover the most diverse platforms possible in all the systems that PTCGO didn't have, and try to improve the game's interface in general, such as changing avatars, reformulating the duel layout, etc.

PTCG Live was restricted to Canadian servers when the Pokémon Company first announced this endeavor about a year ago. And that for people who were going to access the download at the time, many managed to use a VPN.

What changes in the information is that it's now out globally, even though it's a beta version.

When you convert your PTCG Online account to Live, be aware that you will not be able to go back to the old server, so think carefully if you really do.

I will mention the beta problems in the next topic, but first, let's contextualize about what will change in the new interface.

Daily Rewards

In PTCG, we have the “daily” bar of the season (lasting 20 days) where you have 3 levels of filling rewards and activities done that if fulfilled, in each level, you receive a free card, the level being easy with charge faster, level two with a medium load and difficulty with “pairing” your level with an online player, and level three that takes a long time to load, with a reward of a Full Art card and the server puts you with strong players in most times (although the matchmaking is unfair by the game's Artificial Intelligence, who said that in Live this was corrected).

This is the PTCG Online model with daily versus (which we currently use):

Scale versus Level 1

Decks and Boosters

When converting the account, you used to get the Battle VIP Pass FST 225, but apparently there are bugs where you don't get that card (this was about a year ago). Currently, those who convert their account will have free access to Metagame decks, with decks in the Standard format such as Lugia V, Blissey V, Mew VMax, among others.

Booster packs will be uniformly standardized to 5 cards. The Americans will lose the 11-card advantage they always had.

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Online Tournaments

For those who participates in online leagues like Team Challenge and Limitless, the ideal is to use PTCGO.

Official links to download PTCG Live

You can download the Pokémon TCG Live through Google Play here.

And on the official website of the Pokémon Company, you can download it here.

Bugs

There were reports from many players that the card Forest Seal Stone, from Silver Tempest, was considered a “banned card from the server”, and it shouldn't be labeled as banned.

There are also reports of bugs with the non-accounting of gems after the conversion of closed boosters in the account, kind of forcing the person to have to open these boosters in PTCG Online.

In addition, there are reports of non-recognition of rewards on conversion, such as the aforementioned Battle VIP Pass FST 225.

Conclusions

It's an exploration time to get to know the game carefully as it's in beta phase. So don't despair in converting your account to Live since things are still getting adjusted.

In order not to risk losing everything I built, and the cards I collected, I would stay in PTCGO as long as I can until the day the Pokémon Company decides to bury the old platform instead, when there are no means to play Online anymore.

If you want to use Live to get to know the game, you can try to make another account, another email that doesn't link anything with your main account. But I think it's best that you let the most anxious people who made the conversion be your game quality parameter sources, so you don't risk the account you worked so hard on for years.