Turning successful MOBAs into a potentially successful MMO spinoff – this is the goal currently being pursued by 2 studios. While the LoL MMORPG may still take many years, the competitor from China is already impressing in the playtest.
What kind of competitor is it? From May 21 to 27, the first playtest for Honor of Kings: World took place on Steam. This online action RPG is based on the MOBA Honor of Kings, which has been extremely popular and successful in Asia for many years. The franchise is backed by Tencent, one of the largest gaming companies in the world.
The parallels to Riot Games’ LoL MMORPG are quickly evident:
- The starting point is a long-successful MOBA that has established a broad universe with countless characters, factions, classes, creatures, and more.
- It is an ambitious MMO spinoff that aims to meet fan expectations and attract new players into the universe.
- Behind the project is a company that can easily invest a sufficient amount to realize such an ambitious MMO with high quality.
While the LoL MMORPG had to initiate a restart of its development after Greg Street left in March 2023, distributing new information only in homeopathic doses since then, Honor of Kings: World has already been released in China. The global launch in the West is expected this year.
After the exciting report from my colleague Cedric on the Chinese version, I dived into the current playtest with great curiosity in recent days and had to realize: Despite not knowing Honor of Kings, I find the open-world spinoff a lot of fun. And it already beautifully shows us what we could potentially expect from the LoL MMORPG.
Karsten doesn’t particularly enjoy MOBAs. Sure, he has played League of Legends, DOTA 2, and Heroes of the Storm. But after one evening on a lane, it usually takes months until he feels like playing one or two games again. However, he likes the Runeterra universe, thanks to the animated series Arcane and the card game Legends of Runeterra.
MOBA as a foundation for an MMO? It can work!
We have already reported on how Honor of Kings: World fundamentally presents itself and that it is not actually a real MMO. However, I was surprised during the playtest at how well the MOBA universe works as a foundation for the online role-playing game. Especially since I had no previous connection with Honor of Kings at all. For fans of the franchise, this should certainly be a great deal of fun.
The wide variety of champions provides, for example, a wonderfully versatile class system where I can combine very different playstyles and roles. Currently, I focus on an offensive playstyle where I merrily torment my enemies with sword, spear, and hammer skills, only to switch styles when needed and deal massive area damage with magical lotus orbs.
However, I could also adopt a more defensive variant, focusing entirely on parrying attacks, and take along a bow that fires enchanted arrows or a wand that annoys enemies with ice spells. The multitude of builds and playstyles made each visit to the PvP arena a little surprise: What awaits me this time?
A video preview of Honor of Kings: World can be found on the YouTube channel of MeinMMO:
I also really like the presentation of the story, combats, and world. Honor of Kings: World puts on a fireworks display of elaborate in-game sequences in the first few hours of gameplay, showcasing champions, antagonists, and special regions.
In this, Tencent flexes its financial muscles, particularly with the visual splendor of the world, the smooth movements of the characters, and the English-voiced dialogues. One can tell that this is a prestige project for the Chinese corporation – similar to the LoL MMORPG for Riot.
And indeed, I can imagine all of this in a similar form for the LoL MMORPG, with places like Piltover or characters like Jinx, Heimerdinger, or Ashe.
At the same time, I hope that the online role-playing game for Runeterra can shine in areas where Honor of Kings: World can occasionally annoy me. The game unfortunately still shows its Asian roots strongly. I’m just not a fan of free-to-play games with gacha systems, battle passes, and in-game shops. The excessive number of currencies, resources, and reward systems also tires me out.
Much of this strongly reminds me of Where Winds Meet, which initially restricted players with daily progress limits. Honor of Kings: World also has a world level and a main questline linked to your leveling progress. This is complemented by various activities that consume a type of stamina. If this stamina value reaches zero, you can no longer play the corresponding content.
At least during the playtest, these systems did not hinder me up to level 21 to the point of annoyance. But it was similarly the case with a preview version of Where Winds Meet. The release version, however, proved to be significantly more restrictive, with days-long blockades of progress. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that this will not be the case in the Western version of Honor of Kings: World.
A first conclusion: We want to delve deeper into the specific strengths and weaknesses that we’ve noticed during the playtest of Honor of Kings: World in future articles. But I can already tell you that I was positively surprised by the MOBA spinoff, and that I will certainly play it with some joy upon release to pass the time until the LoL MMORPG arrives. And that, even though I am skeptical about the new MMO-lite trend: 2 games from China show the future of MMORPGs, which our expert does not like at all
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