Fantasy Westward Journey is an MMORPG created and run by NetEase. The game is the most popular online game in China as of May of 2007 by peak concurrent users (PCU), with a peak count of one point five million. Registered users reached twenty five million by April 2005, with 576,000 peak concurrent players on 198 game servers, considered the fastest growing online game in China at the time. Average concurrent users was reported in August 2006 to be around 400,000. The game uses the same engine as Westward Journey II with a very different graphical style. Both games are inspired by Journey to the West, one of the four great novels of China.





In July 2006, the administrators dissolved a 700-member anti Japanese guild, and locked the account of its founder for having an anti-Japanese user name. A mass protest took place in the game days later on 7th of July, the anniversary of the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War, with up to 80,000 users joining the online protest on one of the servers.