Hero Wars: Alliance Realm

Highlights

Hero Wars: Alliance is a top-10 mobile RPG of the years 2022 and onwards, attracting multiple millions of monthly active users. In Q1 2026, the game started to pivot from a PvP battler to a PvP strategy with the launch of Realm. This launch was very risky:

• Our community was skeptical about major changes to the game’s core gameplay.
• In advance of the original release window, we had a couple of unpopular feature rollouts that further aggravated the players.
• The feature would roll out in an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) state with little to no polish.

To smooth over all of these factors, I’ve arranged the following:

1. Private preview to influencers and randomly selected active players and community members.
2. A mobile beta test with the same group of players, showing the feature hands-on.
3. A 2.5 hr Q&A voice call with the same group of players and the feature’s Product Lead to address all concerns and collect feedback.
4. Two additional rounds of beta tests with new groups of players.

All of this resulted in a few major changes to the feature, including:

• A full overhaul of the combat system based directly on player feedback, as it was their biggest gripe.
• General polish added to all parts of the feature.
• Significantly improved new player experience.

Our team originally estimated the launch window to result in net -50 sentiment (10% positive, 60% negative) across all of our communities of 3M total followers and members. With the feature’s changes coming into place, we netted around +13 sentiment (33% positive, 20% negative) in our community upon release.