Where Winds Meet mixes a long-form wuxia RPG story with MMO-style systems and a sprawling open world, so the answer to “how long does it take?” depends heavily on how you play. Time expectations range from a few dozen hours for a direct story run to well over a hundred hours if you chase everything the game offers.
Core playtime estimates for Where Winds Meet
| Playstyle | Estimated time to beat |
|---|---|
| Main story only | ~25–30+ hours |
| Main story + a good amount of side content | ~50 hours |
| Completionist (100% map and activities) | ~130+ hours |
Two main data points define the current picture:
- Single‑player “main story” runs sit in the mid‑20s to around 30 hours when you avoid most optional content.
- Full completion, including exploration and activities across the open world, easily extends past 130 hours.
These numbers reflect the launch version, where the world is already large but still expanding over future updates.
How long the main story of Where Winds Meet takes
The single‑player campaign in Where Winds Meet is structured around Main Chapters. Playing on a normal pace, engaging with combat and cutscenes but not lingering on every distraction, puts completion at roughly 25–30 hours. That’s enough time to clear both currently available chapters, see the major CGI story beats, and reach a proper ending without a cliffhanger.
The campaign is designed as a self-contained experience inside an online-only MMORPG. You can keep your settings on solo play and treat it as a long single‑player wuxia action RPG: you stay in your own instance, work through the chapters, and watch the story arcs resolve. No purchase is required to finish the narrative; the game’s core content is fully free-to-play.
It is technically a live service title, and more chapters are planned. The current story arc, though, is framed as a complete slice of the Northern Song era: it has set‑up, escalation, and payoff within those first chapters, and doesn’t end with a hard cut to “come back later.”
What stretches main‑plus‑side content to around 50 hours
If you follow the main chapters but regularly dive off into nearby content, main‑plus‑extras playthroughs move into the 40–50 hour range. That usually includes:
- Working through side quests and side stories in your current region.
- Trying mini‑games like archery, board games, or small local challenges as you encounter them.
- Clearing a good number of combat encounters and small dungeons before moving the main quest forward.
- Doing some early build experimentation with different weapons, Inner Ways, and Mystic Skills.
The first major zone alone can soak up a lot of time if you decide to finish most events there before taking the story out of the starting area. It’s common to be 15–20 hours in, still in the second main zone, with plenty of markers left in the first region if you prefer to over‑level and fully explore.
What a 130+ hour completionist run involves
Going for “100%” in Where Winds Meet means doing far more than clearing quests. A completionist run pushing beyond 130 hours typically includes:
- Opening every chest scattered across the map.
- Solving all MewMew Puzzles, the game’s environmental and riddle‑style challenges.
- Defeating all Sentient Beings, which function as open‑world activity nodes and encounters.
- Climbing region peaks and other landmark locations for exploration rewards.
- Finishing peculiar challenges and oddities tied to specific locations or NPCs.
- Resolving Encounters and Wandering Tales — short, self‑contained stories scattered around the world.
- Clearing Divinecraft Dungeons and other instanced content at least once.
- Working through achievement‑style goals, many of which nudge you into less obvious activities.
The world is deliberately dense: each region layers exploration objectives, narrative snippets, and mini‑games over the same terrain. Methodically tracking everything with an interactive map and checklist is what pushes playtime into triple digits.
How the game’s structure affects your time investment
Open world size and current content limits
At launch, two main cities are accessible, surrounded by large rural regions. Those zones alone support dozens of hours of exploration; future patches will add more regions on top of that, but the current footprint already behaves like a substantial single‑player open world.
The MMO review coverage describes this world as “seemingly massive,” with the reviewer still sitting in only the second unlocked zone after around twenty hours, with unfinished business in the first. That aligns with the idea that simply “doing what looks interesting” as you wander will naturally pull you beyond 50 hours over time.
Single‑player focus, MMO wrapper
Where Winds Meet runs on MMO infrastructure and includes PvP, raids, guilds, and time‑gated systems like energy for certain missions. At the same time, several players with hundreds of hours logged describe the experience as “single‑player first,” with the option to ignore co‑op and multiplayer entirely if you wish.
If you leave multiplayer modes aside and treat it purely as a wuxia action‑adventure, your time will be driven almost entirely by main chapters and open‑world exploration, not by raid resets or gear treadmills. You can stop at the story ending, or continue clearing side content at your own pace without worrying about falling behind.
Story length versus “hundreds of hours” comments
One recurring point from long‑form impressions is the claim of a story that can run to “hundreds of hours.” That figure doesn’t refer to a linear, fully scripted main quest of that length. Instead, it reflects:
- The two fully voiced and cutscene‑heavy chapters currently in the game.
- The expectation of additional story arcs in future content updates.
- The way side stories, Encounters, and Wandering Tales collectively function as extended narrative content on top of the main plot.
In practical terms, if you focus only on the central revenge‑tinged wuxia storyline, the 25–30 hour range remains a realistic target. Extending into “hundreds of hours” requires folding in side narratives and later updates rather than a single, unbroken campaign.
Examples of how different players might approach the game
For players with limited daily time
Where Winds Meet is compatible with short, daily sessions:
- You can log in for an hour, make progress on a chapter or clear a handful of encounters, and log off without friction.
- Progress gates like energy exist, but players “no‑lifing” the game report barely noticing them during regular questing and exploration.
- The presence of a Story difficulty that softens the challenge in single‑player helps keep your sessions efficient if you mostly want the narrative.
Working at this pace — roughly an hour or two per day — you can still expect to finish the main chapters within a few weeks and then nibble at side content as time allows.
For players who want a long‑term wuxia MMO
If the appeal is living in a persistent wuxia world for months, Where Winds Meet supports that too:
- Experimenting with builds across multiple weapon types, Inner Ways, and Mystic Skills can occupy dozens of hours on its own.
- PvP modes, guild content, and raids add repeatable high‑skill activities on top of story and exploration.
- New cities and regions planned for updates will keep adding new story arcs and exploration objectives.
This is where 200–300-hour playtimes emerge: not from a single “campaign,” but from extending the same character across story, side content, competitive play, and patches.
What you need to do if you only care about finishing “the game”
If your goal is simply to reach credits and feel satisfied that you’ve “finished” Where Winds Meet without sinking months into it, a straightforward path looks like this:
Step 1: Start in single‑player Story difficulty if you mainly want narrative and light challenge, or a higher difficulty if you enjoy tighter combat timing. Stick with solo play instead of enabling multiplayer modes.
Step 2: Prioritize the Main Chapters in your quest list. Only detour into nearby side quests when they naturally intersect your path or when you want a break from the main narrative.
Step 3: Use your first horse as soon as the questline grants it to cut down traversal time between objectives, rather than walking and clearing every activity marker you see.
Step 4: Save PvP, raids, and most Divinecraft Dungeons for after the story. They can be enjoyable, but they are not required to finish the current chapters.
Playing this way keeps your total time close to that 25–30 hour window while still giving you a coherent, emotionally complete wuxia story.
Where Winds Meet is built to accommodate both players who want a sharp, finite single‑player martial arts epic and those who want a long‑term MMO to live in. If you only have time for the former, the game’s current story arc is compact enough to finish in a few dozen hours. If you lean into every system — puzzles, exploration, Sentient Beings, dungeons, raids, and PvP — the same world easily stretches into an experience measured in hundreds of hours.
