Discussion What's up with wuxiaworld?

Guess WW is unlucky

 

Eh, I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with a water army. I think it's mostly audience bifurcation + reviews being inherently imperfect and subjective (DAV is rated higher on NUF than WW, opposite is true for PPC, etc.). A vocal minority who posts more of the reviews talk a lot about how they are tired of cultivation novels, but the actual numbers show that newly released cultivation novels continue to be the best performing in both readership and revenue. It's definitely true that Qidian has the biggest library of 'top-tier' novels in China, which has always been one of their biggest advantages in the industry, but all the networking I did in the first three years in China means we essentially have access to everything but Qidian, which is quite a considerable collective library. Every publisher has a few top-tier gems, and those are generally what we draw from, and I'm very comfortable with the performance of most of the new novels (aside from the female/mystery ones, those don't attract that much from the current audience).

Just as a side note, there are a lot of underlying assumptions here that I think are fundamentally off; for example, we have far more than thirty novels, one of the newly signed novels (SCOG) is one of the most popular novels on the site, and total audience across our three platforms (PC, iOS, Android) has actually increased since we implemented the v1.0 bingewall system. Overall, I'm pretty comfortable with where we are and where we're headed.

For the guy who mentioned Japanese novels, now that we have inroads on the Korea side, Japan is actually next on the target list! We'll see how things work out.

 

hah~ as long as you can convince them it good~ unlike cn, jp is strict on legal case so no worry about backstab worst they make their own platform but jp company seem not so eager for cross the sea~
anyway if you take ln you only competitor so far is jclub~ as for wn seem none~

oh yeah convince jp company is headache good luck~

 

I don't view Jclub as a competitor, I view them as a potential teacher and mentor. This aint an easy industry to get into, and I'm sure I'd have much to learn from'm!

 

Well, in the end, we NUF are just a loud minority. It's just that there is not much gathering place like this so it gave off a misleading vibe.

 

At the same time though, the OP was asking about the quality rather than the popularity, the opinion of a loud minority is not necessarily invalid for that even if it doesn't give the full picture.

 

Every time I go to WXW ,it's always the same novels that are recommended.
Nothing new and interesting

 

You must not have been on the site for a while! We've released about 20 novels in the last few months, of which only four were male lead xianxia/xuanhuan. The rest are a mix of modern day mystery/thriller novels, female lead cultivation or romance, Korean novels, and a pure slice of life series. Scroll down a bit on the frontpage

 

Ratings are extremely subjective, one person's trash is another's gem.

WW has a lot of dedicated supporters, so I can assure you that the problem are not haters. Haters are usually a bigger issue for Qidian novels or novels of genres that some people dislike their very existence.

So uhn... What you can take from those ratings, is that the new novels they're translating probably don't appeal much to the userbase of NU.

 

Plus even the same novel can have different rates on different sites.

 

What, my new novel was mentioned in the first couple of replies? I'm flattered, thanks very much @anon1guy

As one of the last folks on WW translating a Qidian novel (SOTR finished last month after 2,376 chapters and 4.5 years), I think there's only one or two other Qidian novels currently active. IMO, the site library is undergoing a shift in quality/type of content to keep up with the times. What was ground-breaking and earth-shattering in 2017 sure as heck ain't the case anymore, but it's not like translators can immediately start and stop when tastes change.

A lot of veteran translators rolled off their multi-year series and started new ones last month, which will better reflect what people like now. However, all those series are very new, so they're probably not folks' first choice when it comes to picking up something to read. I highly recommend folks check out Life, Once Again (slice of life), Immortal Devil Transformation (academy), Rebirth of a Fashionista (modern), and of course, Necropolis Immortal (tomb raiding). I think y'all be pleasantly surprised by what's on offer.

Reviews/ratings are always a polarizing exercise. Those who will take the time to go to another site, click something, and go to even more effort of writing something are those who hate it or love it. I find that reviews from those who love the series tend to stay on WW itself.

While Ren doubts the existence of a water army, I do think there's a slight bit of 'fan/anti voting' going on, for lack of a better term -- votes that happen purely because of the platform/translator/author. I recall that when SOTR was added to WW on Feb. 29, 2016, it got slammed with a bunch of 1-star ratings. It was very memorable given the date and how highly it'd been rated right beforehand. Based on stuff that happened around that time, I have a fair guess who did it.

 

Excuse me, but what is water army?
Anyway the last time I checked WW is when I read TNE, and since then not anymore

 

When on purchases the book of WW, are the Chapters unlock or is it a downloadable book?
I rather have it unlock due to the comment section!

 

If you buy the downloadable book, it should unlock all chapters as well!

 

The novelty wore off.
They probably need to license SFACG novels.
At least those novels are different from Chinese and Korean and closer to Japanese.

 

After I ran out of things to do during the COVID quarantine, I went back and reread some of the first WNs that got me into WW. While translation quality has improved over the years, the stories are on par with the stories in newer WNs. For me, I don't think it has anything to do with novelty. When I first started reading, WNs were a square peg, and I was a square hole. Now, WNs are still square, but my corners have rounded out over the years, and the genre isn't the great fit for me that it once was.

A lot of us who are here complaining about the uniformity of WNs have been here for many years. People change over time. When I got into LNs and WNs, I was just getting out of school and looking for stable employment. Everything was in the hands of others. My grades were ultimately up to my professors. My job prospects were up to the HR people in charge of hiring. The comfort I got from self-insertion novels where the MC answers to no one but himself and succeeds in all things without having to confront the specter of failure helped get me through a difficult period in my life.

In the last year or so, I've spent a frustrating amount of time trying to recapture what I loved about the genre when I started reading. Recently, I realized it's not the WNs, it's me. Now that I have a job that allows me to have control over my life, static, all-powerful MCs don't hold the same allure that they once did. That's why I've been posting less frequently on NUF and have been paring down my reading list on NU and J-novel Club. I don't plan to look for new WNs. Once the ones I'm currently reading are finished, I'll be moving on to new pastures.

So, before looking externally, look within and ask if the issue is with you or with the novels.

TL;DR: Old guy realizes he's old.

 

Hahaha. I put it in another way: You are no longer the target audience.

I was never the target audience and never finished any WN but it is the same thing with Asian dramas.
I am no longer the target audience which I was 8 years ago. I no longer want to watch poor helpless female characters.
I want rich confident women but those are not what the target audience want.
They want Cinderella stories, I prefer reverse Cinderella haha or rather a frog prince story?
Hahaha. We grow up and mature.
I never really got into these stories because I grew up on books like Rich Dad Poor Dad, so self-insert, wish-fulfillment was never my thing.
Even as young as 10, I was aware of adult responsibilities even if my thinking wasn't mature enough.
Thanks for the response.
My next goal is subtitles and then licensing Japanese webnovels from authors who don't have light novel contracts

 

That's the case for me, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's the case for a lot of long-time readers who give low ratings to WNs.
Nostalgia is a powerful thing. Anything you do daily for years will become addicting. If you no longer find the same fix from what you're reading, it's a lot easier to blame the novels than yourself. That's not to say that some WNs aren't better than others, but most are really similar.

I'd think subtitles would be hard since the video is the main event, and the subtitle is more like icing on the cake. Maybe it would be easier to work with Japanese production companies and sell or license your translations to the studios directly? Licensing unlicensed J WNs seems like it would an easier task.

 

Japanese countries are not interested in expanding overseas
There is a reason KOCOWA exists and many Korean TV stations have English YouTube Channels but Japanese don't have a single one
Subtitles is just a money pit and unlike translations you can't monetize via ads. I am trying to copy Forbes.com and get drama fans to write articles like these
https://mydramalist.com/article/4-reasons-to-love-find-me-in-your-memory-011014939
then I can earn ad revenue from the articles to fund subtitles