Honor of Kings Plus ushers new era as global server marks first anniversary

MANILA, Philippines — As Honor of Kings marks the first anniversary of its global launch, the game is celebrating with a major update, renaming the game to “Honor of Kings Plus”. The anniversary update introduces changes aimed at deepening player engagement, enhancing accessibility, and redefining gameplay freedom.

“From when we launched the global version of Honor of Kings, the ethos remains the same — as a live-service game, we need to keep evolving, and offering fresh and innovative experiences to both maintain our existing community and look to drive further growth. Talking to the community — (getting) their feedback — is crucial in helping us identify pain points and suggesting fixes,” Dean Huang, game design lead for Honor of Kings, told PhilStar.com in an email.

The “Plus” update is the culmination of a year’s worth of insights, feedback and development, designed to elevate experience across every level of play.

At the center of the update is Flowborn, a revolutionary new hero who breaks the mold of traditional MOBA roles.

“Unlike any previous hero in Honor of Kings, Flowborn embodies the player themselves. This hero is able to resonate with different emotions, enabling players to acquire diverse skills and weapons. This allows Flowborn to break away from fixed lane restrictions, allowing players to choose their preferred role — Tank, Mage or Marksman — and fight alongside their teammates, providing a more personalized gameplay experience,” explained Huang.

Players can customize Flowborn’s appearance outside of matches and dynamically switch attribute buffs during gameplay. Whether boosting survivability against assassins or increasing mobility for support roles, this system empowers players to make meaningful strategic choices mid-match.

“This concept stems from our desire to break the boundaries of traditional MOBA games and deliver a brand new experience to players. We aim to offer players the joy of true freedom in strategic choice and play style,” Huang added.

Another update is a real-time voice-to-text transcription and translation system. This feature lowers the communication barrier for players worldwide, making teamwork more accessible regardless of language.

“The main challenge we faced is that although players speak the same language (such as Indonesian), people from different regions have distinct local accents and dialects. To achieve accurate recognition, it is necessary to train the system with a large amount of speech data from various regions. Our team spent a significant amount of time collecting speech samples from different local areas to complete the training of the speech AI recognition model,” noted Huang.

There will also be a new Reach for the Stars system that redefines how performance is evaluated. Huang explained how game MVPs will be assessed based on different aspects and not just number of kills but overall contribution, with players even on the losing side possibly earning recognition and rewards for outstanding teamwork.

The reworked systems include more meaningful rewards, streamlined progression, and quality-of-life improvements that reflect the community’s most requested changes.

“Player feedback has been absolutely crucial — there's no overstating how important it is. Whether it comes through customer service, community discussions, or in-game behavior and post-match data, it has continuously guided our update plans. This version wouldn't have been possible without our players' invaluable input,” said Huang.

With the global version’s first anniversary and the original game’s 10-year milestone, Honor of Kings is poised for even more surprises.

“We have some really exciting collaborations lined up, which I can’t wait to see come to life in game. Be sure to stay tuned for more news,” teased Huang.