It’s always a good sign of brewing success when a Premier League football club decides to get involved in Esports. The Wolverhampton Wanderers, aka the Wolves, announced their acquisition of Honor of Kings pro team, QGHappy. While traditional football fans are slightly sceptical of Wolves’ move, perhaps there are underlying benefits for Wolves to venture into Honor of Kings (HOK).
The expansion comes at a crucial time for the title, as game developers decided to make their esports entire scene global.
Image source: Wolverhampton Wanderers on Twitter
Wolves’ power move to debut in HOK Esports
This is definitely no ordinary acquisition by Wolves and fans consider this a power move into the rising HOK scene. For starters, QGHappy is highly regarded as a formidable team, having gained over $5M in winnings from HOK tournaments.
Their most notable achievement is the recent Honor of Kings World Championship Cup 2021 (HOK World Cup 2021) victory, earning them a ticket into the hall of fame. While Wolves’ decision to acquire a team of such calibre is definitely a wise investment, let’s not forget that the next World Cup will not be a breeze anymore.
We have become the first football club to enter the King Pro League in Asia after taking over Honor of Kings world champions Chongqing QGhappy.
Welcome to the pack, Wolves QGhappy!
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— Wolves (@Wolves) September 5, 2021
Moreover, HOK enjoys the idea of incorporating football-themed skins for their characters, where they already made one with Manchester City jersey skin. As HOK becomes more popular, we might even get Wolves jersey in-game skin as well, which is an absolute win for publicity.
Tencent merges the major mobile MOBA titles
Following the grand showcase of HOK World Cup 2021, Tencent isn’t one to shy away from developing new games in recent years. Their brainchild, Arena of Valor, came as a shocking surprise for the fans since its debut in 2016. While never reaching the scope and size its twin game gained in China, AoV has carved a nice niche of the western market over the years.
To step things up, Tencent has once again made a bold move to put Arena of Valor into the spotlights. Hence, the announcement to join forces with Honor of Kings in hopes to create the Frankenstein of mobile MOBAs.
Both games are technically the same, with relatively similar mechanics. The defining difference are character playstyles developed over the years, and diverging development that has occurred over the past 24 months. Of course, we are all clueless how exactly Tencent plans to incorporate both games into a single ecosystem. The company did share a glimpse of their plans and ideas by creating an “esports version” of the two games combined. The new game will have characters from both games, presumably to showcase the two games’ synergy. We will have to wait until the official debut of the game for further insights.
Having the Wolves get into competitive HoK acquiring a championship team, seems less surprising when we take into consideration the scale of the competitive system Tencent will create next year.
The Arena of Valor World Cup 2022 (AWC 2022)
AWC 2022, is se
Esports.net
