Last week, NetEase Games released its Wuxia open-world action-adventure free-to-play MMORPG, Where Winds Meet. Powered by the Messiah Engine, it’s time now to benchmark it and examine its performance on PC.
For our benchmarks, I used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, AMD’s Radeon RX 6900XT, RX 7900XTX, RX 9070XT, as well as NVIDIA’s RTX 2080Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 4090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090. I also used Windows 10 64-bit, the GeForce 581.80, and the Radeon Adrenalin Edition 25.11.1 drivers.
Everstone Studio has added a few graphics settings to tweak. PC gamers can adjust the quality of Lighting, Vegetation, Tessellation, View Distance, and Effects. Curiously enough, there are no settings for Shadows or Textures. The game also supports NVIDIA DLSS 4, AMD FSR 3.0, and Intel XeSS. To use them, you’ll have to run the DX12 version via Steam. Otherwise, the game will default to DX11, and it will only show AMD FSR 3.0.
Where Winds Meet does not have a built-in benchmark tool. So, for our tests, I used this scene. From what I could tell, this was one of the most demanding areas in Qinghe. As such, it should give us a pretty good idea of how the rest of it runs.
All of our GPUs can provide a smooth gaming experience at 1080p/Ultra Settings. This includes our dated NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti. To be more precise, the RTX 2080Ti can push a minimum of 68FPS and an average of 74FPS.
Now, contrary to Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Where Winds Meet appears to favour NVIDIA’s hardware. The AMD Radeon RX 6900XT is noticeably slower than the NVIDIA RTX 3080. Similarly, both the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX and the RX 9070XT are noticeably slower than the NVIDIA RTX 5080. Speaking of the NVIDIA RTX 5080, it manages to match the performance of the NVIDIA RTX 4090. From the looks of it, Where Winds Meet is greatly optimized on the Blackwell GPUs.
At 1440p/Ultra, the only GPU that was unable to offer a 60FPS experience was the NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti. As for Native 4K/Ultra, our top three NVIDIA GPUs had no trouble at all running it with over 60FPS. On the AMD camp, the AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX was able to provide a 60FPS experience. The AMD Radeon RX 9070XT was also able to provide a smooth experience, provided you use a FreeSync monitor.
Graphics-wise, Where Winds Meet has an amazing art style. This incredible art style does most of the heavy lifting here. I’m saying this because the game suffers from major pop-in issues. Distant objects can also look a bit bad, and you’ll spot some low-res textures here and there. The 3D character models are also not as detailed as those we’ve seen in other triple-A titles. The game uses a fully dynamic lighting system, and since it doesn’t use RTGI, it can look a bit flat at times. This is an issue that affects all rasterized games. Still, as I said, the game’s art style and incredible world design make up for all these shortcomings.
Before closing, I should note that Where Winds Meet suffers from numerous traversal stutters. They are not as bad as those we’ve seen in some other recent games. Still, all of you will experience them. As I said, Where Winds Meet is using the Messiah Engine. So, you see? Traversal stutters are not exclusive to Unreal Engine 5.
I’d also love to see some improvements to the game’s menus. Right now, they feel chaotic and all over the place. There is room for improvement here. Thankfully, controls feel great. There is full support for KB&M. In fact, that’s the best way to play it, given its MMORPG nature.
All in all, Where Winds Meet will run with framerates over 60FPS on a wide range of PC systems. This is one of the best-looking free-to-play games out there. It has stunning environments and an amazing world. Its art style is among the best you will find on PC right now. Yes, it does not take full advantage of what modern PCs are capable of. However, it will run great on a lot of PCs. And, at the end of the day, that’s what will please a lot of PC gamers. My only gripe is with the game’s stutters. So, let’s hope that the devs will figure out a way to at least reduce them.
Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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