Westward Journey Online II (Chinese:西游 西游 Online II ) is aMMORPGdeveloped and managed byNetEase. After its initial publication, it began to suffer serious technical problems and was closed to rework, reopened several months later as “Westward Journey II”. Another MMORPG, Fantasy Westward Journey, uses the same engine with a different graphic style. Westward Journey is one of the most popular online games in China, with a maximum competitive number of users of 588,000 in March 2005 and with more than 56 million registered accounts, ranking it in the first 3 MMORPG games in China at ‘time.
The content of the game is strongly inspired by classical Chinese literature: the title is a reference to one of these sources, Journey to the West . Unlike many Western MMORPGs, games feature nudity and anti-religious themes. “Westward Journey II” had a controversy when the State party closed it for several months because of party criticism in the game.