Fantasy Westward Journey Nukes Every Player Tier With Back-to-Back Greed Moves — NetEase Stock Comment Section Gets Raided

What does it take to make players of a 20-year-old MMO storm a publicly traded company's stock comment section? Fantasy Westward Journey (梦幻西游) just answered that question with a masterclass in self-sabotage — a combo attack that managed to alienate whales, multi-boxers, casual players, and new-server grinders all at once.

According to player breakdowns, the recent changes hit every demographic with surgical precision. First, the Super Skill system dropped — essentially invalidating years of investment by forcing top-tier team rebuilds. In gacha terms, imagine your fully-built T0 comp getting completely power-crept overnight. That's a nuclear-level nerf in any gacha game.

The second blow targeted multi-boxers and F2P players: dungeon and ghost-hunting rewards were slashed, equivalent to cutting free pull currency in a gacha game. The third strike hit practically everyone — the Taishan (泰山压顶) spell animation got reworked. This was no minor tweak. Taishan was the premium pick because its short animation saved roughly five seconds per round across five casts. The devs then proceeded to change it multiple times within a single week, first stretching the hit animation, then squishing characters flat. Players have crowned it "the most braindead change in Fantasy Westward Journey history" — one that saves negligible subscription time while generating permanent outrage.

The fourth punch was the "Green Channel" — a paid fast-pass for new servers, essentially telling players to pay up or stay locked out. The fifth was ramping up the Pocket Edition's output, which boils down to officially selling in-game gold and strong-arming players into spending. One commenter summed it up perfectly: swap any of these moves into a modern gacha game and each one alone would be "truck-kun crashing into HQ" levels of outrage — a reference to the famous Korean protest where players sent trucks with protest banners to game studios.

But here's what baffled outside observers: Fantasy Westward Journey players have an almost inhuman tolerance for abuse. When someone asked why players put up with it, the top-voted reply was brutally honest: "Because you can actually make a little money." Another elaborated: "Zero-spend, one hour a day, and you still profit. Not losing money already puts you above 100% of other games." The game's Cangbaoge (藏宝阁) marketplace — a real-money trading system integrated with the game — lets players cash out, turning the MMO into something closer to a side hustle. As one player put it: "Players might not love the game, but nobody hates money."

Still, some pushed back on the narrative. One argued the game only survives on its early-mover advantage with regulatory licenses, calling it "monopoly dining" with no real competitive edge. Others noted that while the PC client's revenue has fallen out of the top 10, Cangbaoge transactions are deeply tied to NetEase's stock price — which explains the stock page raid. Veterans with decades of accumulated assets feel even more trapped; one recalled losing access to a 2005 in-game mansion because they used a fake ID as a kid and forgot their password after a holiday trip home, leaving them with nothing but nostalgia and a locked account.