Revision 12

Overview

Honor of Kings: World has progressed through several closed beta phases in China and, in April 2026, opened its first-ever closed PC alpha test for overseas players. These tests have served as major milestones for gathering feedback, stress-testing infrastructure, and iterating on combat systems. TiMi Studio Group has conducted the Chinese beta phases under NDA with data wipes; the overseas alpha opened registration through the official honorofkingsworld.com site.

Beta Timeline

July 2025 PC Pioneer Test

The Pioneer Test (先锋测试) was the first PC-only testing phase and one of the most significant pre-launch tests. Recruitment ran from June 25, 2025 through mid-July via WeChat and QQ login through the "Dongfang Yao" application, with selection based on hardware, region, and prior Honor of Kings activity. Players who had participated in earlier closed beta phases were automatically qualified. The test servers went live on July 24, 2025, and the test ran for several weeks under NDA and with data wipes at the end.

Published PC Hardware Requirements

TiMi published PC hardware targets ahead of the Pioneer Test. These are the most concrete hardware figures that have been made public so far:

The RTX 2060 floor confirmed that ray tracing would be available on older RTX hardware at reduced quality. The 16 GB RAM minimum reflected the world-streaming demands of Unreal Engine 5 Nanite geometry and Lumen lighting.

February 2026 Paid Closed Beta

A fourth phase of closed beta testing ran from February 10 through February 23, 2026 in China. This phase was a paid, NDA-gated test across PC, Android, iOS, and Tencent Cloud Gaming. Mobile floor requirements were published as Snapdragon 865 or newer on Android and iPhone 11 or newer on iOS. The test was data-wiping, and TiMi explicitly locked content under NDA to reduce leakage ahead of the global launch window.

Press Demo Builds

In addition to player-facing beta tests, TiMi has provided press demo builds at major gaming events. The GDC 2025 Showcase in March 2025 offered a behind-closed-doors PC presentation with a hands-on session for attending journalists, led by lead designer Simen Lv. The Gamescom 2025 Showcase in August 2025 was the first public hands-on demo, with cooperative boss battle sessions available on the show floor at Tencent's Booth B040 in Hall 9, accompanied by an Opening Night Live trailer debut. The Gamescom build supported both mouse and keyboard and controller input.

Overseas Closed PC Alpha Test (April 2026)

In early April 2026, Tencent and Level Infinite announced the first-ever overseas closed PC alpha test for Honor of Kings: World. Registration opened at honorofkingsworld.com for players in North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia. The alpha is an English-only PC build; test dates have not been publicly announced as of the registration opening.

Big Huang, lead combat designer at TiMi Studio Group, framed the alpha as "our first opportunity to get player feedback at scale that will help us shape the future of Honor of Kings: World" in the announcement cited by RPG Site. The alpha is intended to test core combat, progression, and social features ahead of the global Spring 2026 launch.

Community Feedback Impact

TiMi has publicly acknowledged iterating on the game between test phases based on player and press feedback. Common themes from hands-on coverage and beta reports include refining the feel of Flow Styles style switching, improving boss encounter camera behavior, adjusting early difficulty curves, and simplifying some of the progression systems that had been overly complex in earlier builds. Specific numerical tuning and pre-launch content cuts have not been disclosed.

Important Note on Leaked Data

Various third-party sites have published alleged gacha rates and pity thresholds attributed to the Chinese beta tests. These figures are identical to Genshin Impact's gacha system and have not been officially confirmed by TiMi for Honor of Kings: World. Because TiMi's stated monetization philosophy is cosmetic-focused and "nothing pay-to-win," readers should treat any specific pull-rate numbers circulating online as unverified until Tencent publishes an official monetization document. See Monetization for the current public position.