Is NetEases Online Game Westward Journey Wai Zhuan in Trouble?
On July 15, NetEase (NTES) announced its finalized plan to cut 18 of the 32 servers in its 2D game Westward Journey Wai Zhuan (WJWZ). Players in these 18 servers will be assigned to the 14 remaining servers. In the past, such a drastic reduction of server capacity has rarely happened to successful online games in China. Is WJWZ/NetEase in trouble? Here are my findings and thoughts: Official annoucements disclosed negative signs. In its official announcements (1, 2, 3), NetEase admitted that the user numbers in many servers are not enough to maintain a good user experience in WJWZ. In addition, due to the lack of advertisements of WJWZ, the game has experienced difficulties in attracting new users. Finally, NetEase announced that it will not launch provincial servers for a while. Such servers are widely used in popular online games: They improve user interaction and access speed by allowing users in one province/city to aggregate in the same local server. This pause in WJWZ indicates it
