NetEase Games, the 2nd biggest game company in China, started its North America operations a few years ago, but never had a really breakthrough product. With the impending launch of its new mobile MMORPG, Crusaders of Light, I feel that the situation is about to change for the better. Crusaders of Light is now in the soft-launch phase in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Philippines.
In short, Crusaders of Light is what World of Warcraft would be like if ported to mobile devices. NetEase Games’ internal studios must have picked up tons of hints after years of publishing World of Warcraft in China, but credit must be given to the development team as the user interface is truly designed for mobile devices, with little to no trouble during my few hours of gameplay. Bravo!
As you can expect, Crusaders of Light has a huge lore, a massive open world, all the features you expect (including auction house), dungeons, large-scale PVP, boss raids, crafting, life skills, and many more. The only issue I have is the game’s bad latency, which is perhaps still limited and controlled during the soft-launch phase. I really hope the connection will much better after the global launch.