These days I'm looking for something new to read and I feel like wuxiaworld should have some potentially good stuff on it, but when I look at wuxiaworld's novels on NU, their ratings and reviews are abysmal. What's wrong with WW? For one reason or another I stopped paying this website much attention ever since AWE's translation was finished and they started a wave of new novels, including Korean ones like Ranker's return. Not that I found these novels bad, but instead of immediately following the current translation I've decided to wait a bit for new chapters and... Well, there was basically nothing after this. All of the new WW novels have low rating, some even below 3*, ugly reviews, cringey titles/descriptions or something else no less off putting. I'm not a guy who will blindly believe in ratings and reviews, so every once in a while I gave a try to some of WW's current translations and, not surprisingly? was disappointed. Necropolis immortal has retarded MC, Duke Pendragon's author looks delusional, everyone is young except for me is a VR novel with Livestream system written by an author who never played any games etc. The only good novel I've found was a civil servant's life but it's extremely slow paced, translation speed isn't too good, some chapters were even divided. I've stopped reading it at ~ch63. Not only is it slow paced af, but author even switched POV. I mean, cmon, nothing is really happening the whole novel, with prologue being around 30 chapters, now you even introduce fillers? Maybe I will read it again later when there will be more chapters. Considering that WW was one of my favorite translators couple of years ago, I'm somewhat surprised with its current situation. Did I miss all the good stuff? I'm not really following any news related to translators and their websites, so I wonder if something changes with WW itself? Any novel recommendations from WW?
WW has gone downhill because it's a business, that simple. As for recommendations, I don't really read anything they currently TL.
I can still find some good/readable novels from webnovel relatively easy, so I don't think it should be too much of a problem. Even if it's a business it's not like someone prohibited them to translate anything good?
Same with me, WW was one of my fave sites.. I mean WW one of the site I exclude from my release my release filtering.. But Everytime I check their site all the novels there are really bad for me.. I guess they only translate the novel they can easily get the license . They don't put the effort to get more good novels.. (sigh)
my reasons for not following the site in the past years, is because they started with the dark theme novels, from apocalyptic novels, to tragedy, and other which isn't my cup of tea.
What I mean is, they pick up what licenses they can and what is available because they are a legal business. Qidian, and ( forget the names of the other big ones) the other publisher have the majority of good novels and have ways to be read outside of WW.
i stopped going to WW when they introduced the mandatory registration to read novels.....there's already so many sites that want to hound all user information that it has gotten to the point of downright blackmailing now..... i can get access to the stories on aggregator sites, TYVM.....
Finally someone said it... I didn't wanted to point this out 2 years ago, because of haters.... But WW went shit, not recently though.. It's as if the name is still there, and nothing else.... Besides, I stopped visiting it, ever since the signing up became mandatory. Not just that, its literally was trying to be like QI... And it did become same shit...!! There was a time when Good LNs were just floating around, but slowly they went down and filthy VIP shit ugly ones started taking over their places...
A simple registration isn't too much for the sake of good novels, as it was WW I didn't think a lot about it. It's just that after registering I still can't find anything worthwhile. There are all kinds of generic cultication novels that make your eyes spin though.
It does, because people like me only visited to read on their site. Not to build a community.. And with the registration mandatory came limiting the non registered readers... I could read only few chapters without registering, at that time few chapters weren't enough.. But these days it's just meh... I'm busy irl, and there's no worthy goods they got anymore.
Their newer selection hasn't really been to my taste, either. Many of their older novels are still very much worth reading, though at this point most people who've been around long enough will have read them. Overall the site is still a major landmark, but one to visit for what they had rather than what they'll have next. Well, it's not like, say, Moon's Labyrinth - one I didn't like -, isn't popular at all. A 3.9 is basically a 4/5, and it's on over 4,000 reading lists here on Novel Updates - which represents, no doubt, a fraction of its actual readership. So there are plenty of people who like it. Maybe my tastes have just changed over time.
Are the novels now really worse than before are are you just harder to impress now because you've read so many? After a while it gets harder to get excited about something you've read over and over again. You Just get tired of it. Maybe some of the old classics like Coiling Dragon or ISSTH or Desolate Era, etc. really are better than the current fare, maybe not, but if they were released today I doubt they would be as popular as they were back then because they wouldn't feel new. It is true that WW's selection is somewhat limited. Qidian novels are not an option right now, but even though Qidian has a reputation for having better novels (and WW translators have always thought that as well), still, it's not like there aren't good novels on other sites. It's a matter of taste, and WW's policy is to allow translators to pick what novels they translate. It's a good policy, but you never know what readers will like. Also, the scene in general has been in decline since late 2017. Think about it: at least for Chinese novels, how many really big, household name novels that everyone's talking about and reading and recommending ad nauseam have there been since the Qidian/WW Incident of May 2017? For WW: A Will Eternal and.....? That's really about it. Not that others haven't had their fair share of readers, but really super popular ones? Nah. Korean novels yes, but not Chinese novels. For Webnovel/Qidian: Reverend Insanity and Lord of the Mysteries. And they spent a lot of money paying translators to translate a lot more novels than WW did. And still just two. Again, there's others that have been popular, but not at ISSTH/Desolate Era/CD levels. So some of it just the scene in general is burned out. Hasn't been a lot of innovation in the Generic Cultivation Novel. As far as selection goes, the only problem I think WW is making is that there are too many super long novels. If it's a hit, great, but if the novel doesn't do well, then the translator is stuck on the novel for years. Which means at best there will be fewer new novels since it takes so long for a novel to finish. It also leads to more novels getting dropped because they aren't making enough money for the translator to keep translating it. Physician's Odyssey is a good example. It was even subsidized for a time (meaning WW was paying the translator to translate it instead of just ad rev share + advanced chapters) until it was finally dropped altogether. Dropped novels means probably no ebook which means no more revenue streams for that novel. Just a waste of money. Add to that the snail's pace that WW operates at in general (the upcoming site design was announced like seven months ago, took years to get the apps up and fully functioning, very few ebooks out even years after many novels were completed; took 3.5 years for the ISSTH one, which still has the same translation mistakes in it that were in the original draft, meaning they didn't even translation check it, etc) the lack of marketing/outreach (there's no link to the mobile apps on WW at the time of writing this; and WW's manhua site, Wutopia, just shut down in June; there had been no link to it on WW's site either aside from a couple of links to manhuas for a few specific novels on their novel pages), and the fact that WW staff and translators have basically turtled up and isolated themselves from the community since about 2019, rarely appearing here or on Reddit except for a few, who only stay long enough to promote themselves before leaving again; then it's no surprise that WW is in decline. At it's peak in 2017, WW's certified global Alexa ranking on June 5, 2017 was 981. Now, it's 3,360 (Webnovel's certified rank March 11, 2019 was 3,190; WW at the same time was 1,315 ). Now, Alexa rankings aren't good for telling just how well a site is doing, but they are useful for comparing a site's current activity to its previous activity. You can draw your own conclusions. I think too that Webnovel's flood of novels beginning in 2017 oversaturated things and really hurt the community overall in the long run, hastening its decline. Too many novels too soon and only so many readers. In the old days everyone read pretty much the same things, now there is a lot more to choose from. Also means burnout happens sooner. The ratings don't really mean anything, and the descriptions were always cringey imo. You can bypass the reading limit by viewing the site in incognito mode in your browser. No need to register if you really don't want to.
What you said is right, but it's far from absolute. I don't really know concrete statistics, especially for qidian novels cause lots of people read them on other websites and NU isn't helping the situation either cause there no links here for people to follow, but some new novels weren't any worse than old classics. Legendary Mechanic, my senior brother is too steady, my house of horrors, my iyashikei game, Ending Maker, etc. Even from the lastest batch of WN - top tier Providence looks pretty promising to me. You don't need to be an expert of the market to judge good or at least readable novels. With WW's translation quality even average novels should be relatively popular. Unfortunately, novels that I used as example are far below this level, with nonsensical world building.
I think mist chinese novels are held by Qidian which they keep in stock and never translate for eg : Nine Sun God King was such a good novel that should have been translated also World Defying Dan God these are popular but no one can get it from Qidian I think the best ones on WW are right now Duke Pendragon (Great Novel ) Yama Rising Tomb Raider Keyboard Immortal ( didn't like much but popular )
They went into official translation, I guess most good novels have high license price so they pick the Average ones that have lower price. Because novel translation is not Wild West era anymore where translators and group can grab any Eye catching and really Good novels, those who went into bussiness have budget to think. Just my guess Also yeah they have bad experience with QI so there's small chance they want to partner with QI again.
A good novel (and everyone has different opinions about what is good) doesn't mean it will be a popular novel. Archfiend on WW seemed to be well-liked by those who read it, but few read it. It was dead last among translated novels (I used to work at WW and could see the numbers). Godsfall Chronicles is also a well-liked novel, but it was never popular either. Although it did have a few long hiatuses which didn't help anything, still even before when it was released regularly it didn't get many views. It's impossible to predict what is going to hit it off with readers. WW was fortunate with Second Coming of Gluttony because it was already booming when they acquired it, but starting a novel from scratch is a big question mark. What was/is clear to everyone at WW is that the novels that do the best are cultivation novels. That's why translators keep picking them, because they have proven to perform better than other genres. When someone does pick a different genre, it doesn't get as many views. World Defying Dan God is a 17k novel, not Qidian. That one used to be recommended to WW all the time when I worked there, but it's tricky because there have been several different translators, so to acquire the novel WW would have to either start from scratch or make deals with all those different translators to acquire the chapters, and then also have a translator willing to continue the translation. And it's a super long novel. WW is already working with Qidian again (or Xuanting or Cloudary or China Reading or Tencent, whatever the actual company it is they have to sign the contracts with) as they have been releasing audiobooks of Coiling Dragon, for example. I know for a fact that WW did not originally have audiobook rights to the licensed Qidian novels on WW, so that means they had to have negotiated them relatively recently.
Sorry factual inaccuracy . But aren't novels like NSHBA and Invincible also translating even though they are really long .? Especially Martial God Asura . So what about The Nine Sun God King and others? Don't have much knowledge about the innerworkings in translating companies ,just curious and eager as a reader to see preferable novels in liked/ frequently visited websites. but recently in the past few months wuxia has taken some good ones too like Duke Pendragon , Yama Rising etc..