Fantasy Westward Journey (simplified Chinese: 梦幻西游; traditional Chinese: 夢幻西遊; pinyin: Mèng Huàn Xī Yóu) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed and operated by the Chinese company NetEase. It was released for the Microsoft Windows platform in December 2001.[1] The game is the most popular online game in China as of May 2007 by peak concurrent users (PCU), with a peak count of 1.5 million.[2] Registered users reached 25 million by April 2005,[3] with 576,000 peak concurrent players on 198 game servers, which was considered the fastest-growing online game in China at the time.[3] Average concurrent users was reported in August 2006 to be around 400,000.[4]
The game uses the same engine as Westward Journey II, albeit with a distinctively different graphical style. Both games are inspired by the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West. Together with Westward Journey II, it is one of the highest-grossing video games of all time, having earned an estimated $6.5 billion in lifetime revenue as of 2019 and having 400 million users as of 2015.[5]
In July 2006, administrators at NetEase dissolved a 700-member in-game anti-Japanese guild and locked the account of its founder for having an anti-Japanese username.[6] A mass in-game protest took place days later on July 7, the anniversary of the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War, with up to 80,000 users joining the online protest on one of the game's servers.[7]
Total registered users of Fantasy Westward Journey had reached 310 million as of 2015.[8]
A mobile version of the game was released for the Apple iOS and Google Android operating systems in 2015. It had grossed over $800 million in China alone by 2016.[9] In 2017, it grossed $1.5 billion worldwide,[10] bringing the mobile version's total revenue to approximately $2.3 billion by 2017.
Fantasy Westward Journey launched its first 3D animation in 2015. After release on the Chinese mainstream online video platform, it successively launched on several Chinese TV stations.[11]
