Bye, King’s Raid – just another King’s Raid post

So I’ve decided to leave a game I’ve been playing for 5 years. What happened?

It’s normal to grow sick of a game, but after staying with it for so long, that game becomes a habit and a part of life. It becomes harder to quit after investing so much of your time (and perhaps money) into the game.

But I feel like after so long, my love for this game has died out completely. The only thing stopping me from quitting for the longest time was my weekly guild raid runs, and even that felt really tedious. I’m no longer excited for new content or balance patches that the players have been asking for since forever. I wrote a lot of guides for the game, including beginner’s guide, content guide, and all heroes overview, and one day I just don’t feel like updating them with new info anymore.

For a while I’ve felt like the first line of QUEEN BEE’s Kaen, Dororo‘s opening theme. ‘Party is over, but I still want to dance.’ The party is King’s Raid.

It’s not the lack of new content or the lack of communication between Vespa and the players, it’s just that I’m so tired with the game’s instability and repetitiveness, and trying to keep up with the META that changes with every patch (most of them are new heroes that old players like me haven’t saved enough resources to build lol). I haven’t built half of the heroes I wanted to build, but I don’t feel like it anymore when I know that the heroes I built will probably be useless.

King’s Raid was ‘a game you play with love’, as they like to advertise themselves back during the open beta in 2016. The Vespa staff on the Thai side were super friendly and engaging with the player community. This died out when King’s Raid expanded (the staff were replaced by bots), and died completely when JP server launched. Events after that just became ‘for JP whales’ and the other servers were pretty much just secondary. This is completely normal, you treat people with money better, sure, but at least don’t trigger the Korean players’ rage so much… (Notably the fanart and hero design contests. Vespa never had another one because almost every entry that made it past the first round were JP, only one from TW/HK server I think? It’s okay if the quality of the work was actually superior but I feel that there were so many good works from other servers that just flew under the radar)

I’m not even a competitive player. Guess what the competitive players must’ve felt. A document called Fix Your Game Vespa was released into the King’s Raid International Community, detailing all the stuff they have to put up with and was never fixed.

King’s Raid became a fundraiser project for Time Defenders. I gave that game a try and it wasn’t that attractive. Sure, gameplay and characters look nice, but there’s nothing that’ll make me stick to the game. Plus, my device heated up like crazy whenever I play.

Nothing new was added to King’s Raid, the patch notes were barren, and the King’s Pass had many issues I don’t even want to complain about. The newer alternate costumes for Jane and Maria are nice but they felt like marketing plans to buy time for KR2, which even when it comes out… I’m not gonna play. I was invested in the story and lore, but I’m just not interested anymore.

So many people are abusing the bugs in arena and Vespa doesn’t fix them promptly. Late game felt more like a chore than an enjoyment. LoH wasn’t even fun lately.

I loved this game. I love my main, Theo, and his quest to reunite with his liege Jane. I love the twisted main story and the dramatic character stories. I love Rephy’s ears. I love the game’s graphics and weapon design. I love that the game has as much husbandos as waifus. However, these things are no longer enough to keep me with the game. When playing becomes a chore, it’s about time to give it a rest. Or quit.

I’m not going to deny, Genshin Impact was one of the reasons I start to stray away from King’s Raid. Sure, miHoYo has its issues but I can feel that they care about the player and they put heart and soul into the games they make, even their first Zombiegal Kawaii game I played all those years ago.

I thought one day, I’m going to make a firm decision to leave and delete King’s Raid, then say goodbye to all my guild members and leave their discord. However, it’s not something clear cut like that. One day I just stopped logging in and that was it. I bought a new phone and didn’t reinstall the game. I’ve quitted King’s Raid. I’ve left the game I’ve loved for the longest time, and now all that’s left are some fond memories and apathy.