Honor of Kings: World

Overview

Honor of Kings: World (王者荣耀·世界) is a free-to-play open-world action RPG developed by TiMi Studio Group and published by Tencent Games. The PC version launched on April 10, 2026 in mainland China, with a mobile release scheduled within the same month. Built on Unreal Engine 5 with Tencent's proprietary MagicDawn global-illumination solution, the game turns the hero roster of the Honor of Kings MOBA into a cooperative action RPG set on the King's Continent. Players take on the role of the Child of the Primal Flow (元流之子), a student of Jixia Academy whose bracelet lets them resonate with the combat styles of legendary heroes through the Resonance System.

At a Glance

Launch Status and Current Content

The PC version of Honor of Kings: World went live on April 10, 2026 after a March 20, 2026 date lock. The April 10 launch opened the S0 Season (Jixia Chapter), the game's first live-service season. A mobile launch (iOS and Android) is scheduled within the same month of April 2026, with exact dates to be announced. The PC version uses a standalone Tencent launcher; pre-download opened on April 7, 2026 at 10:00 local time. There is no Steam or Epic Games Store listing as of launch.

According to Baidu Baike's primary text, the current playable region at launch is the Jixia Academy area and its surrounding plains, which represents roughly one tenth (1/10) of the full world map as designed. Additional regions including The Misty Marshes (云梦泽), the Northern Wilds / Great Wall region, Wolf Banner tribal territory, and other areas are planned for post-launch rollout. See Content Roadmap for the long-term content plan.

Launch Reception

Launch-week reception was mixed. The TapTap player score stabilized at 6.9 out of 10 across 3,923 reviews within 48 hours of launch, drifted to 6.1 out of 10 across roughly 8,160 reviews by April 19, 2026, a modest opening for a flagship Tencent release. Chinese critics including 17173 praised the combat feel, the cosmetic-only monetization model, and the visual design, but flagged PC optimization (especially crashes on Intel 13th- and 14th-generation CPUs), the absence of a minimap, forced backtracking after combat, and an initially unskippable prologue as the main launch-day complaints. TiMi responded with an emergency day-one hotfix that added a prologue skip option and an official "师姐问答" Q&A thread committing to controller, shader, and keybinding fixes in upcoming patches. See Launch Reception for detailed reviews and Day One Patch for the hotfix timeline.

Setting

The game is set on the King's Continent (王者大陆). The player character is an original custom avatar called the Child of the Primal Flow (元流之子), a new student at Jixia Academy who wears a bracelet that resonates with Flow energy. Jixia Academy is led by the Three Sages and has three specialist branches: the Martial Way (武道), the Magic Way (魔道), and the Mechanism Way (机关). The player joins an in-world adventuring squad called the Jixia Star Team (星之队) and investigates mysteries tied to the Flow and the ancient past of the continent.

Launch Hero Roster (S0 Season)

Honor of Kings: World launches with 11 playable Resonances (共鸣), the game's term for combat styles. Each Resonance rebuilds an Honor of Kings MOBA hero (or, in one case, an original HoKW-only character) as a full ARPG moveset. Players equip two Resonances at once and swap between them in real time. The verified S0 launch roster confirmed by Baidu Baike primary text is:

Leng Chun is the first character in the Honor of Kings franchise created exclusively for Honor of Kings: World and is not part of the MOBA roster. See Leng Chun for her dedicated page.

Core Combat: The Resonance System

Honor of Kings: World's core combat mechanic is the Resonance System (共鸣). Each Resonance falls into one of three roles:

• 对抗 (Confrontation / Duikang) Frontline bruiser-tanks who draw enemy attention and absorb damage

• 强攻 (Offensive / Qiangong) High-burst window-seeking damage dealers, melee or ranged

• 辅助 (Support / Fuzhu) Buffs, group crowd control, healing, shielding

Players equip two Resonances at once and swap between them in real time with no animation lock. Cross-Resonance combos chain, for example using Sun Bin's Time Flow (时光流逝) to slow a boss into a break window and Temporal Wave (时之波动) to convert incoming boss damage into ultimate charge that Sun Bin can then donate to a teammate's Resonance. This cross-Resonance cooperation is the verified differentiator from single-character action RPGs and from Genshin Impact-style team rotation.

Combat Feel

Each Resonance has a basic attack string, three active skills on short cooldowns, a dodge or evasive, and an ultimate. Bosses use a posture / stance meter; sustained pressure opens a break window during which the target takes increased damage. Certain boss attacks glow red and must be interrupted using the 红光妖反 (red-light counter) technique (demonstrated against the Crimson Divine Beast and in Gamescom 2025 footage). Perfect dodges grant invincibility frames and a counter window. Kai's kit is built around parrying enemy strikes. Full details in Combat System.

Monetization

Honor of Kings: World uses a free-to-play model with cosmetic-only monetization. There is no character gacha. All balance-affecting resources (Resonances, Talents, Huanling companions, equipment) are earned through gameplay. The cash shop sells outfits, skins, housing decorations, and seasonal passes. Examples of priced items confirmed by Tencent's official world.qq.com storefront include the S0 battle pass (68 CNY Basic / 168 CNY Deluxe), the monthly pass Xi Yue Zhi Li (汐月之礼, 30 CNY), and Mythic-tier Heavenly Reward (天赏) outfits sold via the cosmetic pity banner at approximately 15 pulls per Mythic skin. Characters themselves are sold as one-off direct purchases at roughly 398 CNY each, and are also earnable through story, exploration, and event content. See Monetization for full details.

Technical Specifications

The PC version supports NVIDIA DLSS 3 and ray tracing as originally announced at Computex 2023. Tencent's in-house MagicDawn global illumination solution (first presented at SIGGRAPH Asia in December 2025 by Li Chao of the Frontier Rendering team) powers the dynamic time-of-day lighting, volumetric clouds, and cross-platform visual parity. See System Requirements and NVIDIA Partnership.

Development

Honor of Kings: World was first revealed on October 30, 2021. The software copyright was registered in October 2022. Development restarted between 2022 and 2024 with an engine transition from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5. The Chinese regulatory license (ISBN) was granted on January 20, 2025. Public-facing milestones included GDC 2025 (March 2025), Tencent SPARK 2025 (April 22, 2025), a Gamescom 2025 hands-on demo (August 2025), a Chengdu offline playtest tied to the Honor of Kings 10th anniversary (October 25-26, 2025), the Spring 2026 window announcement (late October 2025), and the paid Zhengming Test (争鸣测试) which ran February 10 to 23, 2026. PC pre-download opened on April 7, 2026, and full launch followed on April 10, 2026. See Development History for the full timeline.

The game's credited producer on Baidu Baike is Xinping (心平), an in-Tencent designer handle. Simen Lv is publicly credited as the Lead Game Designer and is the main spokesperson for English-language press. Big Huang is credited as the Lead Combat Designer. Li Min leads the combined TiMi L1/L2 Studio Group that oversees Honor of Kings: World as part of TiMi's January 2025 internal reorganization.

What Carries Over from the MOBA

Honor of Kings: World does not inherit MOBA progression, item purchases, or champion balance. Every hero is rebuilt from scratch for action RPG combat. The only social element that carries over from the original Honor of Kings MOBA is friend list intimacy (亲密度). Players do not need to have played the MOBA to play Honor of Kings: World.

Further Reading

• Story and protagonist: Son of Primordial Flow

• Setting: Primaera and Jixia Academy

• Launch roster hub: Heroes

• Systems: Combat System, Resonance System, Talent System, Gear System

• Launch status: Season 0, Launch Reception, Day One Patch

• Beta history: Closed Beta Tests

Mobile Launch Confirmed: April 17, 2026

On April 10, 2026, Tencent officially locked the mobile launch date for Honor of Kings: World to April 17, 2026, ending weeks of speculation after the PC launch. The announcement was carried by IT之家 on April 10, 2026 citing the official Weibo and TapTap posts, and was mirrored in an official TapTap moment the same day. The day-one Q&A thread on April 11 cross-referenced the mobile date.

Mobile pre-download opens at 8:00 AM Beijing Time on April 15, 2026, which is the same calendar day this section was written. The iOS client is approximately 28 GB and the Android client is approximately 25 GB. Cross-save and cross-play between PC, mobile, and Tencent Cloud Gaming are enabled from day one, which means a player who started on PC on April 10 can resume the exact same progression on mobile on April 17 without re-grinding.

Tencent has framed the one-week stagger between PC and mobile as a deliberate window for PC players to progress through the opening Jixia Chapter content while the mobile build receives final performance optimization. The mobile client targets devices running iOS 15 or later and Android 11 or later, and TiMi has said the build is tuned for Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 class silicon at the recommended tier.