Arena of Valor

Arena of Valor (), formerly Strike of Kings, is an international adaptation of "Honor of Kings" (), a multiplayer online battle arena developed by TiMi Studios and published by Tencent Games for Android, iOS and Nintendo Switch for markets outside Mainland China. As of September 2018, the game has grossed over outside China. "Arena of Valor" was one of six Esports video games featured at the 2018 Asian Games, 2019 Southeast Asian Games, and 2021 Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games as part of the demonstration sport.
Gameplay.
"Arena of Valor" is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game developed for mobile. The overall gameplay of "Arena of Valor" highly resembles "League of Legends", a MOBA game on PC developed and published by Riot Games, which is also a subsidiary of Tencent.
Players control characters, referred to as heroes, and each of these heroes have a unique set of abilities. Heroes start the game at a low level, and can earn gold and experience (XP) in various ways: Killing non-player creatures such as minions or monsters, defeating other players, destroying structures, passively through time and through special items that can be purchased through the shop. Earning experience unlocks and augments abilities, making the hero more powerful. Items purchased in the shop do not carry over matches, and therefore all players are on equal footing at the start of every match.
Matches give players rewards, such as gold, which can then be used to buy a variety of heroes or arcana. In addition to this, players can play a 'Ranked' match type, which allows them to be matched with players who are at their skill level and be assessed through in-game 'ranks'. Stars are earned for a victory, and lost when the player loses.
Game modes.
There are various game modes in "Arena of Valor", with "5v5" most commonly referred to as Grand Battle or Ranked Match, played on the Antaris Battlefield and being the most popular. Players compete in these matches which on average last for around 12 – 18 minutes. Players aim to destroy enemy turrets on the map and securing objectives such as killing Abyssal Dragon and Dark Slayer, with the victory condition being to destroy the enemy core.
Black City Arena is a 1v1 game mode with only one lane, two brushes at the left and right side of the horizontal battlefield, an HP pot, one tower and one core for blue and red.
Shadow Duel is a 3v3 game mode on Flatland Battlefield, using a much smaller map. In this version of the game, there is only one turret and a core base for both team. These games are designed to be much quicker, and typically last for 4 – 6 minutes.
Abyssal Clash is a 5v5 game mode where players are given randomly selected heroes. Players may choose to re-roll once and receive a different hero. The game map, Abyss Canyon, only has one lane, with two turrets and a core base connected at either end of the lane. There are certain restrictions which do not appear in the default 5v5 mode: Items may only be purchased before leaving the base or upon death and hero healing at the team base is disabled. There are health regeneration runes that appear next to each turret, which provide heroes with a small regeneration effect.
Hook Wars is one of the arcade game modes. The game map, Treasure Bay, is made up of two large connected vessels. Despite this game mode is also 5v5, there are no minions, turrets or bases in this mode. Each player is able to use a Hook as a special ability, which can grab an enemy on the opposite boat or from long distances. Players aim to capture the Control Zone, located at the center of the map, and hold the zone for a certain duration (until the counter reaches 100%). The capture rate increases with the number of players standing within the zone.
Football Fever is a 3v3, arcade game mode. The game map, Fantasy Island, is similar to a real-life football field with a summer-beach atmosphere. To achieve victory, you have to score a certain number of goals with a unique Talent called Kick, which is a solely linear ability, but it can be dragged. Using this ability will kick the ball over a long distance in the direction indicated.
Death Match is a 2v2v2v2v2 arcade game mode on a game map known as Death Realm. Unlike the conventional 5v5 map, different spawn points are belonging to the different teams on the map, as well as different stage events that occur at fixed intervals including different monsters that give the various type of buffs. The five teams face off against each other on the battlefield. Players gain points by defeating heroes from the other teams. The timer for the stage is fixed at 8 minutes. Once the 8 minutes are up, the teams are ranked according to their total scores, and the map scores are shown from 1st place to 5th place.
Gladiator's Summit is a 5v5, arcade game mode. The freedom of hero choice is limited in this mode due to that players receive a random hero at the beginning of a match with one chance of an exchange. The cooldown for talents and abilities are reduced by 70% and there is no mana cost or energy cost for all heroes.
Mayhem Mode is a 10v10, arcade game mode. The game map, Horizon Valley, is the bigger version of Antaris Battlefield. The players can upgrade their heroes expertise with Astral Coins to enhance the heroes active, passive skills and attributes. 
Duo-Race is a co-op racing mode. Each team has two players, racing against four other team's. The first team that finishes two laps wins the race. Players can transform into a vehicle temporarily and drive together with their teammate during this mode.
Hero types.
There are 108 heroes in "Arena of Valor" as of April 10, 2021. "Arena of Valor" divides the heroes into numerous categories that each play different roles. The most notable difference is the type of damage a hero deals - some heroes deal physical damage, which can be countered by the armor stat, whilst other heroes deal mainly magic damage, which is countered by the magic resistance stat. Some heroes deal both types of damage, and some deal 'true' damage, which cannot be countered by either armor or magic resistance. All heroes are classified as one of six categories, with some heroes overlapping multiple categories.
Players can purchase items, which make a large impact on the hero stats and playstyle. An example of this is Zephys, a dual warrior/assassin class. He has a passive ability that increases damage reduction against incoming damage based on a proportion of health lost. If only offensive items are bought, he will deal a lot of damage but will have a low amount of health and defense, which impact survivability. If Zephys purchases a mix of offensive and defensive items, he can take damage for the team while still dealing a noticeable amount of damage. If Zephys buys only defensive items, he can boost his damage reduction passive to its maximum potential, being literally almost impossible to die in most circumstances like a Tank class character, but will deal drastically lower amounts of damage.
This kind of playstyle can be applied to all heroes, allowing tanks to act as warriors, mages to act as supports, and vice versa.
History.
Pre-release.
After Tencent fully acquired Riot Games in 2015, Tencent asked them to make a mobile version of "League of Legends", as multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games were very rare on mobile at the time, with "Vainglory" by Super Evil Megacorp (which was formed by ex-Riot Games employees) being the only notable title. Tencent wanted to seize the opportunity to dominate the mobile market because there were not any strong competitors aside from "Vainglory". However, Riot Games declined due to mobile game was not commonly seen as the platform for competitive games, and claimed that the gameplay of "League of Legends" could not be replicated on smartphones. Be that as it may, Tencent was still determined to launch a MOBA game on mobile. After receiving the refusal from Riot Games, Lightspeed & Quantum Studios and TiMi Studios (both of which are Tencent's internal video game development studios) raced to develop a MOBA game that fit the bill, resulting an internal competition. 
Lightspeed & Quantum's "We MOBA" and TiMi's "League of Kings" (rough translation from 王者联盟 "Wángzhě Liánméng") were launched on the same day, on August 18, 2015. A month later, "We MOBA" was already the third most-downloaded mobile game on Apple's iOS worldwide, according to app analytics firm App Annie, while "League of Kings" was nowhere near "We MOBA". "League of Kings" was then taken down for an overhaul, and was relaunched on October, 2015. TiMi Studios used "League of Legends" as a base model to overhaul "League of Kings", resulting in both game having a lot of similarity. TiMi Studios also implemented 5v5 game mode into "League of Kings" due to the game previously having poor reception with 3v3 concept. This time, "League of Kings" successfully overtook "We MOBA" and won the internal competiton. Tencent relishes and invested additional resources into "League of Kings" to ensure its success.
Nevertheless, Riot Games deemed that the design of characters and abilities in "League of Kings" were "blatantly ripping off the intellectual property of "League of Legends"" after they discovered how the game was produced, and reportedly brought these concerns to Tencent. Tencent responded that they would change its own game enough to sell as a standalone product with no relation to "League of Legends". Despite this, "League of Kings" had already gained massive popularity in China at this point due to the game was advertised as "mobile version of "League of Legends"" through social media and word-of-mouth marketing. Tencent felt that it was too late to make huge changes to the game, so they renamed "League of Kings" (王者联盟 "Wángzhě Liánméng") to "Honor of Kings" (王者荣耀 "Wángzhě Róngyào") on November 26, 2015, and it only went through necessary changes. The international release of "Honor of Kings" was cancelled, and the game would have a western twin for markets outside Mainland China which is rebranded and featured different contents, leading to the creation of "Arena of Valor", which also served as a respond to Riot Games's complaints of "potential intellectual property infringement".
Development.
"Arena of Valor" was developed by TiMi Studios with the same engine and user interface design as "Honor of Kings" and published by Tencent Games for the western market. "Arena of Valor" originally was named as "Strike of Kings", and was intended to be identical name to "Honor of Kings", but Tencent thought the name might not be suitable to appeal Western audience. Moreover, the difference of contents featured in the game made Tencent decided that a better name is required. Still, "Arena of Valor" have several alternative names when released on different countries, such as "Realm of Valor" in Thailand, "Liên Quân" in Vietnam, "Penta Storm" in South Korea, and "Legendary Showdown" in Taiwan and Japan. 
Garena joined the marketing team as they helped to westernize the atmosphere of the game. The in-game characters have been swapped from characters inspired by Chinese folklore and Chinese mythology, to characters inspired by European folklore and several mythologies from other nations, with blending a variety of elements including Lovecraftian horror, steampunk, high fantasy, and sword and sorcery to appeal audiences outside China. The appearance of in-game characters mostly recycled and revamped designs of characters from "Heroes of Newerth", a MOBA game that Garena had acquired from S2 Games. "Arena of Valor" also included several characters such as Butterfly, Violet, and Mina from "Age of Gunslingers", a third-person shooter game that previously was also developed by TiMi Studios. Additionally, "Arena of Valor" has multiple collaborations with other franchises, having crossovers with DC Universe, "Wiro Sableng", "Contra", KFC, "Sword Art Online," "Ultraman", and "Bleach".
Tencent intended to feature characters from Marvel Universe during the prototype stage of "Strike of Kings" (before renamed to "Arena of Valor" and collaborated with DC Comics), with the closed beta test of the game under the name of "Marvel Super Heroes". The initial game featured some characters from Tencent's intellectual property crossover with Marvel's characters. However, Marvel Entertainment later took back their license, forcing Tencent to shut down the game as they lost the rights to release the game. Subsequently, TiMi Studios had to redesign the game, creating the current appearance of "Arena of Valor". Tencent then approached DC Comics to include their characters as a replacement to Marvel's characters, while Marvel went a separate way, collaborated with other video game developer companies to develop their own MOBA, such as "Marvel End Time Arena" by Smilegate, and "Marvel Super War" by NetEase.
The soundtrack for "Arena of Valor" was composed by different music composers each year, such as Jeff Broadbent in late 2016, Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe in 2017, Matthew Carl Earl and Obadiah Brown-Beach in 2018, Russell Brower, Paul Lipson, and Tom Salta in 2019, Yang Lee and Michal Cielecki in 2020, all creating a different atmosphere compared to the original score with Chinese music instruments in "Honor of Kings". "Arena of Valor" also features The Veda language, a constructed fictional language along with its polypersonal, including Afata (eponimous language), Gandal (impure language), and G'vunna ("Zudǝllǝ g'Vunnǝ", "language from the abyss") for different characters from different factions. These languages were created by David J. Peterson (who is also well-known for created Dothraki and Valyrian languages in "Game of Thrones") to make the game more interesting.
"Arena of Valor" has a wide variety of publishers for different regions. "Arena of Valor" was first launched in Taiwan on October 12, 2016 by Garena, following a two-week closed beta testing period. On October 17, 2017, Garena launched "Arena of Valor" in Malaysia, Singapore, and Philippines, where a majority of the gaming community plays mobile games. Garena decided to combine these three countries in one server. In South Korea, the game was published by Netmarble on April 26, 2017. The game was released in European markets by Tencent on August 10, 2017, and was released in North America and Latin America on December 19, 2017. On June 28, 2018, Tencent implemented "Asia server" unannounced. This server included Australia, New Zealand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and Brunei. In Japan, DeNA cooperated with Tencent to launch "Arena of Valor" on November 30, 2018.
Nintendo announced a deal with Tencent to bring "Arena of Valor" to the Nintendo Switch for international markets, as well as forming partnership to ships Nintendo Switch console into China. The game was announced to be released for the Nintendo Switch during the September 2017 Nintendo Direct presentation. A closed beta became available for the platform on June 28, 2018, and participants received an in-game skin for one of the characters. The game was officially launched on the platform on September 25, 2018. Speaking to Engadget, Tencent revealed the Nintendo Switch port of the game is enhanced and optimized for the platform, taking advantage of the console's processing power and hardware features to implement various changes to the game, such as improved graphics and animations, better lighting, smoother lines, and additional minute details like butterflies. Additionally, several adjustments were made to the game to be playable on a bigger screen with traditional controls, and stats for characters have been reconfigured. Because of these changes, cross-play between the Nintendo Switch and mobile versions of the game is not possible.
Post-release.
TiMi Studios once again faced an internal competition. Morefun Studios (which is also another Tencent's video game development studio) developed and released a mobile MOBA named "War Song" on January 22, 2018, in an attempt to compete with "Arena of Valor". However, "War Song" did not last long in the end. Instead, the assets of the defunct MOBA was recycled for "Chess Rush", an auto battler game, which was released on July 4, 2019.
"Arena of Valor" was reported to have caused a gradually straining business relationship between Riot Games and Tencent, and the relationship between the two firms became further strained when Tencent used notable "League of Legends" players to promote "Arena of Valor" and its esports tournaments. Riot Games's complaints initiated a two-month marketing freeze for "Arena of Valor" and demands that that Riot Games would be given the option to review all marketing plans, including a veto for use of select celebrity gamers. Nonetheless, Riot Games implied that their relationship with Tencent is still strong, and the conflict between them and their games is only "a bump in the road". 
In July 2017, Riot Games filed a lawsuit against Moonton, the developer of the rival game "", for copyright infringement, citing similarities between "Mobile Legends" and "League of Legends". The case was initially dismissed in Central District Court of California in United States on account of "forum non conveniens". Tencent, as Riot's parent company, then filed a new, separate lawsuit on behalf of Riot Games, directly targeting Moonton's CEO, Watson Xu Zhenhua (as he had previously worked in Tencent as one of Tencent's senior employee) in Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court, for violating a law regarding Non-Compete Agreements, which ruled in Tencent's favor in July 2018, awarding Tencent a settlement of (RMB19.4 million).
Riot Games eventually acknowledged the potential of the mobile market for the MOBA genre, and agreed to develop a mobile title for "League of Legends". Tencent then temporarily pulled marketing plans for "Arena of Valor" in Europe and North America in 2019, clearing room for Riot Games's announcement a few months later. Riot Games announced their own mobile MOBA game, "" on October 16, 2019, which is the 10th anniversary of "League of Legends". 
In addition, the succession of MOBA genre on mobile inspired the creation of "Pokémon Unite", a "Pokémon" spin-off game, developed by TiMi Studio as well in a further partnership with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. The game was announced in a "Pokémon" Presents on June 24, 2020.
Esports.
International competition.
"Arena of Valor" tournaments have been held in numerous regions, with each region having their own local leagues such as Garena Challenger Series Pro League (GCS) in Taiwan, Realm of Valor Pro League (RPL) in Thailand, Arena of Glory - Đấu trường danh vọng (AOG) in Vietnam, Arena of Valor Star League (ASL) in Indonesia, Arena of Valor: Valor Cup (AVC) in Malaysia, Singapore and Philippines, Arena of Valor: Valor Series (AVS) in Europe, North America, and Latin America, and Arena of Valor Japan League (AJL) in Japan.
"Arena of Valor" also has two annual world championship tournaments; Arena of Valor International Championship (AIC) and Arena of Valor World Cup (AWC). AIC is a tournament where teams from across the world participate to earn profit and glory for their own esport organisation, while AWC is a tournament where teams participate under the banner of their national flag to represent their own country.
The first AIC was held in South Korea from November 23 to November 26, 2017. The event attracted more than 36,000,000 online viewers, breaking mobile game records worldwide and has since become the leading standard of mobile eSports. The game occupying the top positions of mobile game rankings in Asia for months has also received the honor of Google Play's Best of 2017 Game award in Europe. The second AIC tournament was held in Thailand from November 23 to December 16, 2018. The tournament increased the number of competing teams to 16, with teams competing for the title and a proportion of the prize pool worth $600,000 (£460,000). The third AIC tournament was also held in Thailand from November 5 to November 24, 2019. It featured an additional all-new 1v1 competition, where one player represents each team and the winner walking away with $5,000.
The first Arena of Valor World Cup (AWC) tournament was held in Los Angeles, United States, from July 17 to July 28, 2018. A total prize pool of $500,000 made AWC one of the largest mobile eSports tournaments in gaming history. A total of nine regions competed for the grand prize, which includes Taiwan - Hong Kong - Macau, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia - Singapore - Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea, North America, Latin America and Europe. Additionally, the tournament host selected three Wildcard teams to participate in AWC. The second AWC tournament was held in Da Nang, Vietnam, from June 27 to July 14, 2019, with the same total prize pool of $500,000. The second AWC also marks Japan's first participation in "Arena of Valor" international tournament since the game introduced their Japanese server on November 30, 2018.
The third Arena of Valor World Cup for 2020 was canceled due to COVID-19 pandemic, and were replaced by the one-off Arena of Valor Premier League 2020 (APL 2020).
Asian Games 2018.
"Arena of Valor" was part of the Esports demonstration event at the Asian Games 2018 held in Indonesia. Eight countries were able to participate after qualifying from their respective regional qualification, with Indonesia automatically qualifying as host. Unlike other electronic sports events, there is no qualification for Central and West Asia.
Southeast Asian Games 2019.
"Arena of Valor" was among the game titles included as a medal event at the 2019 Southeast Asian Games.
Accolades.
"Arena of Valor" won the award for "Best Music in a Casual/Social Game" at the 15th Annual Game Audio Network Guild Awards, whereas its other nomination was for "Best Original Instrumental". It was also nominated for "Original Score – Video Game" at the 2017 Hollywood Music in Media Awards, for "Original Dramatic Score, New IP" at the NAVGTR Awards, for "Best Competitive Game" at the 2018 Golden Joystick Awards, and for "Fan Favorite Mobile Game" at the Gamers' Choice Awards. "Arena of Valor: Flip the World" won the award for "Song/Score - Mobile Video Game" at the 9th Hollywood Music in Media Awards, while the game itself and "Honor of Kings 2.0" were nominated for the same category at the 10th Hollywood Music in Media Awards. The game was also nominated for "Best Mobile Sport" at the "Pocket Gamer" Mobile Games Awards, while "Honor of Kings 2.0" won the award for "Best Music in a Casual Game" at the 18th Annual Game Audio Network Guild Awards, whereas its other nomination was for "Best Sound Design in a Causal/Social Game".