Honor of Kings is a LoL clone from China that generated the most revenue of any video game in 2022. The developers are now working on Honor of Kings World, an open-world game with AAA budget and stunning graphics.
What is Honor of Kings World? This is still not entirely clear. It is supposed to become a live-service game and offer a large, open game world themed around Chinese mythology:
- The battles look very action-packed in the trailers. You need to actively dodge to avoid heavy attacks from enemies.
- There are at least five different play styles, as the trailers show a swordsman with a sword, a sword-fighting woman with two swords, a cannon shooter, a ranged attacker with a bow and arrow, and a magician. Whether these are fixed classes or characters is still unclear.
- You will be able to glide, swim, and use double jumps in the game world.
- The game world is colorful but very beautifully designed.
- It seems that the game can be experienced alone or in co-op. Overall, it reminds a bit of the “Monster Hunter” series.
For the world-building and story, the novelist Liu Cixin is said to be involved, who wrote the first Chinese cyberpunk novel in 1989 and the sci-fi novel “The Three-Body Problem.”
What’s new? For the first time, a trailer has been released showing multiplayer battles. In the scenes, three players are shown going at the same time. It is unclear whether this already corresponds to the maximum number of players.
Honor of Kings World takes place in the world of the most successful video game of 2022
What game is the new game based on? The MOBA Honor of Kings is the most successful video game in the world (via BusinessofApps). In 2022 alone, it generated 1.65 billion dollars in revenue, far ahead of games like Genshin Impact (1.25 billion), PUBG Mobile (1.12 billion), and Candy Crush (1 billion).
It also has a tumultuous development history. Tencent originally wanted to develop a LoL mobile game together with Riot Games, but they declined. Subsequently, the clone Honor of Kings was created, which later appeared in the West as Arena of Valor. While the mobile game had a mixed reception here, it has been a huge hit in its home country China. In 2020, about 100 million players are said to have logged in per day.
Honor of Kings World is now a completely new game, but it is still set in the same world.
On which platforms will it be released? The new open-world game is set to be released for PC and “other platforms.” A mobile version is considered very likely, as the new game is developed by TIMi.
TIMi is a subsidiary of Tencent and is known for titles such as Call of Duty: Mobile, the mobile racer Speed Drifters, and Pokémon Unite, which was released for Switch and smartphones.
Is it coming to the West? Very likely. So far, all titles from TIMi have been released worldwide, although sometimes under different names. They also announced the establishment of a new studio in Montreal directly when announcing Honor of Kings World.
What do you think of Honor of Kings World? Are you interested in the graphics, the setting, and the battles?
You can find more co-op games here: Top 25 best co-op games of 2023 for PC, PS5, Xbox, and Switch – WE have voted.
