With Honor of Kings: World, an MMO Lite is being released this year in the West that could retrospectively rank among the highlights of 2026. MeinMMO summarizes for you after the recent playtest why it’s worth diving in.
An online role-playing game from China, by the mega-corporation Tencent? The extremely successful MOBA Honor of Kings in Asia forms the foundation? There are also Gacha systems, battle passes, and in-game shops within the free-to-play model? The potential “red flags” from a Western player’s perspective are numerous in Honor of Kings: World. We were also initially skeptical about whether this could work for us and HoK:W.
However, several MMO enthusiasts from the MeinMMO editorial team have been able to play it and discover various strengths in the world of Primaera that make Honor of Kings: World worth playing. The following pages will discuss these strengths. We will address the observed weaknesses in a subsequent article.
A video preview of Honor of Kings: World can be found on the MeinMMO YouTube channel:
Strength 1: The Breathless Start
Honor of Kings: World does not begin with character creation or shallow quests that gently introduce you to the world and its rules. Instead, it hits hard right from the start. A well-staged, minute-long sequence seamlessly transitions into gameplay. After a few meters, you already stumble into the first enemies.
In passing, you learn the basics of the controls, while short cinematic clips continuously drive the events forward. Each fight is more spectacular than the previous one. It takes only a few minutes before you stand before the first boss, who already possesses a variety of attack maneuvers.
This duel eventually culminates in an epic battle that finally leads you to character creation. Only now does the game give you a little time to catch your breath and lose yourself in the numerous options of the editor. As is common in many Asian RPGs, you can also customize almost everything in HoK:W and shape a hero according to your desires.
We really liked this introduction, even though at first you don’t quite understand who is fighting whom in detail and why. After character creation, there is another relatively linear phase in which you accompany NPCs, engage in dialogues, and learn more about the world. However, it doesn’t take long before you are released into the open world of Honor of Kings: World.
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