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Pokemon Center Destined Rivals Items Preorder DROP - Experience + Analysis

Earlier today, the Pokemon Center dropped the Destined Rivals ETB, Booster Boxes, and Booster Bundle items. As expected, the queue system went up and was instantly inundated with folks trying to secure the PC exclusive Destined Rivals ETB. Here is my personal experience...

I woke up early and my friend showed me the new ETB artwork. I was under the impression that there would be no drop until later this week. Considering the PC preorder drops tend to occur on Thursdays and Fridays, I would have assumed the same would happen this week, so I didn't pay too much attention. I almost decided to fall back asleep, but then I heard people mentioning a potential drop today. So upon hearing  that, I decided to stay up a bit longer, and I am glad I did! Shortly after, I saw the queue system notifications going off, so I decided to jump on the Pokemon Center website immediately. I was trying to queue up from my phone and PC, hoping to get in from one of those locations. It took around 15 minutes before I was in the website on my phone. I quickly navigated around, but was unable to find the Destined Rivals product. I went from New Releases, TCG section, and just aimlessly wandering about, trying to find it. Then I clicked the product link from a Discord server and was able to find the ETB. I quickly made my order and upon a few error messages here and there, it went through! 

This time, the Pokemon Center website only allowed a limit of 1 per person. I tried to make another order to test this out but was promptly hit with an error message. I then proceeded to find the Booster Boxes and Booster Bundles for this set, but had no luck. Even after using the direct product links, I was hit with "No Product Found" Pikachu message. I eventually refreshed enough times to where the product went live but it was too late... It was unavailable. However, some people managed to secure both items! I guess it came down to luck...

Eventually, the Pokemon Center website logged me out and sent an "Oops something went wrong" message, which I started to assume I had spent too long on the website, and was pushed back out into the queue. 

I saw many folks error out, get sent back into queue when trying to make their order, or hit with a refresh AS they were waiting in queue. Plagued by a lot these issues, the Pokemon Center queue system continues to highlight how it is from perfect. To only way to secure any exclusive product ready to drop is to hit the queue almost immediately when it goes live, otherwise, chances remain low.

My personal experience today was decent. I mean, I managed to secure the PC exclusive ETB for Destined Rivals but many people shared their tumultuous experience today with facing errors and many other issues. 

I truly hope Pokemon Center improves this process, but I also realize that with 2 million+ people waiting in queue (most probably being bots), it will inundate the servers and cause slow down, glitches, and just wild experiences.

Let's hope we there will be another restock soon to give those that were unable to secure another chance. 

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