Fantasy Westward Journey (simplified Chinese: 梦幻西游; traditional Chinese: 夢幻西遊; pinyin: Mèng Huàn Xī Yóu) is a MMORPG developed and run by NetEase. The game is the most popular online game in China as of May 2007 by peak concurrent users (PCU), with a peak count of 1.5 million.[1] Registered users reached 25 million by April 2005,[2] with 576,000 peak concurrent players on 198 game servers, considered the fastest growing online game in China at the time.[2] Average concurrent users was reported in August 2006 to be around 400,000.[3] The game uses the same engine as Westward Journey II with a distinctively different graphical style. Both games are inspired by Journey to the West, one of the four great novels of China.
In 2006 July, 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 July 7, 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.[4]