70 Million Pre-registrations, Topping the Free Chart on Launch Day: Tencent's Big Bet on Honor of Kings' Next Decade
At 7 a.m. this morning, a game went live. Within hours, it had climbed to No. 1 on the Apple App Store's free games chart. It's called Honor of Kings: Game of Wonders ("Wangzhe Wanxiang Qi"). Developed by Tencent's TiMi Studio Group and billed as "made by the original Honor of Kings team," that claim isn't new — what's new is the data: 70 million pre-registrations across the internet (announced at the release date reveal event on August 27), 85 Kings hero characters and 18 "chess players" in the launch version, simultaneous release on mobile and PC, with QQ and WeChat players on the same server. How did they rack up 70 million pre-registrations? Looking back at the timeline, the pacing was remarkably steady. On August 7, the official channels announced that pre-registrations had surpassed 50 million and opened access to the test server. At the release date reveal on August 27, the number jumped to 70 million, topping both the Douyin New Game Anticipation List and the TapTap pre-registration list. Full-channel pre-registration opened at 10 a.m. on September 2, and the game launched on September 10. From 50 million to 70 million took one month and three days. But the more noteworthy thing is this: Game of Wonders' first test was a winter test on December 25 of last year, followed by several more long-cycle rounds of testing, each running close to a month. An auto-battler product polished for nearly nine months before launch — by Tencent's standards, that's not fast. What did they actually change? The auto-battler genre is no stranger to Chinese players. The 2019 wave of "everything can be auto-battler" left almost no survivors. Game of Wonders' approach is to center everything on "hero leveling." Producer Donny's framing at the reveal event was "draw, nurture, then blow up the arena" — draw hero cards, raise their levels through various means, and watch skills and visual spectacle transform as levels climb. The hero level cap is listed as 999, with levels 1, 10, 40, and 100 as key growth milestones. Each match pits 6 players against one another, with an auction phase, a talent system, and roguelike-style event cards. What's genuinely interesting is how they lowered the barrier to entry. Three paths: intimacy relationship progress accumulated in Honor of Kings is inherited with one click; in team ranked play, the whole squad settles based on the team's highest rank, so one player reaching the top lifts everyone; and an AI companion ("Lingbao") provides real-time, hand-holding guidance, plus 1-on-1 human coaches who can see your screen and circle and draw on it to tell you what to pick. In short, Tencent doesn't intend to make this crowd learn a brand-new game. 100 Million RMB and 10,000 Creators Ecosystem investment was the other centerpiece of the event. The company announced a first-phase ecosystem fund of 100 million yuan across nine content platforms, recruiting over 10,000 game content creators, paired with 1,000 "gold-medal" mentors providing hands-on coaching, in collaboration with more than 100 MCN agencies. IP crossovers are already in place with Yuewen Group's Fox Spirit Matchmaker, and there are in-game crossover Easter eggs with the interactive film game Prosperous World. That's a serious budget. But from another angle: a new auto-battler spending 100 million yuan to cultivate its content ecosystem shows Tencent knows full well that for this kind of product, victory doesn't hinge on gameplay depth — it hinges on whether people keep queuing up for new matches. Where are the risks? 70 million pre-registrations is a beautiful number, but it's IP momentum, not retention. The launch benefits include "all chess players redeemable for free" and "50 free treasure-draw pulls." Making all chess players free means first-wave revenue relies mainly on skins and cosmetics, with all the pressure pushed onto long-term operations. Also, the auto-battler genre's ceiling is real. No matter how much it innovates, this category will struggle to reach the DAU scale of MOBAs and battle royales. The user pool Honor of Kings built over ten years is a rich mine — but a mine isn't the same as conversion. One more detail: the PC version requires at least 20 GB of free space, with an SSD recommended. That hurdle will affect efforts to attract PC players; the actual impact remains to be seen in the data. My take At its core, Tencent's Game of Wonders is "second-round cultivation of IP assets." Honor of Kings' decade of accumulated hero familiarity, social relationship chains, and operational muscle memory is the most expensive component of this product. TiMi chose to monetize it by lowering barriers rather than adding depth. This isn't conservatism — it's having done the math on one thing: not many people are willing to relearn an entire system for an auto-battler, but plenty are willing to spend a bit more time with familiar heroes and familiar teammates. Whether it works — we'll know from retention three months from now. Come chat about it on the Gghubs forum! Did you sit down at the table today? Of those 70 million pre-registrations, did you take up one of the slots?