Diff - development history - Honor of Kings: World Wiki

11 Overview

44 Honor of Kings: World had a roughly five-year development path from its initial October 2021 reveal to its April 10, 2026 PC launch in mainland China. The project was developed by TiMi Studio Group, went through an engine transition from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5 between 2022 and 2024, received its Chinese gaming license in January 2025, and ran four major closed beta phases before launch. This article documents the verified timeline from primary Chinese sources and trusted English-language coverage.

66 Timeline

88 DateMilestoneNotesOctober 30, 2021Project revealFirst trailer and working title announcedOctober 9, 2022Software copyright registeredRegistered to Tencent Technology (Chengdu)May 31, 2023NVIDIA Computex 2023 revealDLSS 3 and ray tracing support confirmed at the NVIDIA keynoteSeptember 10, 2024Apple iPhone 16 event appearanceFeatured during the iPhone 16 gaming demo segmentDecember 2024 to January 2025Confidential Alpha (保密测试)First internal playable test phase, under NDA, data wipedJanuary 20, 2025Chinese ISBN license grantedISBN 9787498145253, batch 国新出审〔2025〕142号March 18 to 22, 2025GDC 2025 behind-closed-doors demoPress hands-on led by Lead Game Designer Simen LvApril 22, 2025Tencent SPARK 2025 showNew gameplay demo; China public pre-registration opensJune 25, 2025PC Pioneer Test recruitmentRecruitment opens for the 先锋测试 PC-only closed betaJuly 24, 2025PC Pioneer Test beginsFirst PC closed beta servers go liveAugust 20 to 24, 2025Gamescom 2025Public playable demo at Hall 9, Booth B040; Opening Night Live trailerOctober 25 to 26, 2025Chengdu offline playtestIn-person playable at HoK 10th anniversary; Spring 2026 window announcedDecember 15 to 18, 2025SIGGRAPH Asia 2025Tencent presents MagicDawn global illumination technology used by HoKWJanuary 2026TiMi internal reorganizationL1 and L2 Studio Groups merged under Li MinJanuary 5, 2026Mobile tech test recruitmentRecruitment opens for mobile-focused technical testFebruary 10 to 23, 2026Zhengming Test (争鸣测试)First paid closed beta, full platform coverageMarch 2, 2026April launch announcementOfficial announcement of "launching in April" plus iOS pre-registrationMarch 4, 2026Zhengming Test pre-downloadPre-download opens at 17:00 for the paid betaMarch 20, 2026PC date-lockPC launch date officially locked to April 10, 2026April 6, 2026Combat mechanics videoOfficial combat systems explainer video releasedApril 7, 2026PC pre-download opensLaunch pre-download opens at 10:00April 10, 2026PC launchOfficial launch on PC in mainland China; S0 Season opens

99 Development Team

1010

1111 Honor of Kings: World is developed by TiMi Studio Group (腾讯天美工作室群), a first-party Tencent studio. The operating entity is Chengdu Jiaxiangjiyue Technology Co. Ltd. (成都嘉享基越科技有限公司). Publicly credited individuals include:

1212

1313 NameRoleXinping (心平)Producer info boxSimen LvLead Game DesignerGDC 2025 press hands-on; Tencent global pressBig HuangLead Combat DesignerApril 2026 overseas alpha announcement Li Min (李旻)Head of TiMi L1/L2 Studio GroupChinese press coverage of January 2025 reorganizationLi Chao (李超)Head of Tencent Games Frontier Rendering, MagicDawnSIGGRAPH Asia 2025 presentation

1414 Xinping (Li Xinping) was the executive producer and lead artist of record through the launch window. In late April 2026, shortly after the April release, his role was reassigned to project advisor and Li Min took over producer duties directly; Li Xinping subsequently left Tencent at the end of May 2026. Simen Lv, who presented the game at GDC 2025 and is widely cited in English press as the "lead designer," is credited specifically as the Lead Game Designer, not the overall producer. Big Huang is credited as the Lead Combat Designer and was the TiMi spokesperson for the April 2026 overseas closed alpha announcement. Li Min heads the combined L1/L2 TiMi Studio Group that oversees both the Honor of Kings MOBA and Honor of Kings: World after the January 2025 internal reorganization. Li Chao is a Tencent rendering specialist who presented the proprietary MagicDawn lighting solution at SIGGRAPH Asia 2025; Honor of Kings: World is the first shipped title using MagicDawn.

1515

1616 Engine Transition

1717

18-Honor of Kings: World was originally announced in 2021 as an Unreal Engine 4 project. Between 2022 and 2024, TiMi transitioned the project to Unreal Engine 5, and the final shipping version runs on UE5 with the MagicDawn proprietary lighting layer. Some legacy fields still list UE4 as a holdover from the original reveal, but the launch build is UE5. This has been confirmed in multiple 2024 to 2026 press articles and is reiterated in Baike's own primary text.

18+Honor of Kings: World was originally announced in 2021 as an Unreal Engine 4 project. Between 2022 and 2024, TiMi transitioned the project to Unreal Engine 5, and the final shipping version runs on UE5 with the MagicDawn proprietary lighting layer. Some legacy fields still list UE4 as a holdover from the original reveal, but the launch build is UE5. This has been confirmed repeatedly in 2024 to 2026 coverage and in the game's own Chinese-language primary descriptions.

1919

2020 Publicly Named Dev Milestones

2121

2222 Beyond TiMi internal milestones, three public show beats shaped Honor of Kings: World's 2025 marketing arc: GDC 2025 in March (Western press)Tencent SPARK 2025 in April (Chinese market, pre-registration opens), and Gamescom 2025 in August (public playable demo). The October 2025 Honor of Kings 10th anniversary event was the moment the Spring 2026 launch window was locked in. SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 in December provided the first public technical breakdown of the MagicDawn rendering technology that ships with the game.

2323

2424 Pre-Launch Commentary on Cycle Length

2525

2626 The April 2026 pre-launch commentary described Honor of Kings: World as a project with roughly a seven to eight year development cycle at TiMi Studio Group. Tracing that window back from the April 10, 2026 public launch puts internal pre-production in the 2018 to 2019 range, several years before the October 2021 public reveal documented in the timeline above. The longer private runway aligns with the cross-studio art, animation, and rendering staffing that the project has carried, including the frontier-rendering work on MagicDawn that was ultimately presented at SIGGRAPH Asia 2025. Seven-plus years is unusually long for a TiMi project, which is why this framing showed up repeatedly in the pre-launch media tour as a shorthand for 'flagship' ambition.

2727

2828 Engine Discussion in Pre-Launch Coverage

2929

3030 The pre-launch commentary also discussed the project's engine history in public terms that align with the verified transition in the timeline. The original 2021 reveal was built on Unreal Engine 4, and the transition to Unreal Engine 5 was an explicit topic in both Chinese and global pre-launch coverage. Some earlier pre-launch previews framed the engine upgrade as a planned later milestone, which is accurate for the mid-development transition window of 2022 to 2024, but the shipping launch build confirmed by current community data. Treat the 'upgrade to UE5 later' framing seen in some older pre-launch coverage as a description of the mid-development transition rather than a description of the launch build.

3131

3232 Flagship Pressure and Launch Coordination

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3434 The length of the cycle contributed directly to the heavy launch-day coordination visible in the public calendar. A project that has absorbed seven to eight years of internal investment comes under significant pressure to launch with maximum simultaneous reach, which is why the Spring 2026 Release window was locked in at the Honor of Kings MOBA tenth anniversary event in October 2025 and why the PC and mobile China launches were aligned on April 10, 2026 with cross-platform progression ready from day one. See the Cross-Platform article for the shared-progression design and the Mobile Launch article for the post-launch mobile-specific beats tracked in this wiki's region.

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