Fans Already Call New Tencent MMO Tarisland A WoW Clone

Tencent, the Chinese gaming giant, has just unveiled Tarisland its new MMORPG. It was quickly recognized by fans as having a lot in common with Blizzard’s World of Warcraft.

Tarisland, like WoW, looks like a fantasy MMO with a more cartoonish, exaggerated art style. There are paladins that can mage, dragons, elves who have a strong affinity for purple, and many other characters. While this would not be enough to warrant the clone tag, closer inspection shows that many of the game’s characters and environments are heavily inspired by WoW. Blizzard’s style is evident in the game’s elements, dragons and airship designs, as well as some of its playable classes and races.

The trailer for the game features a dragon looking very much like WoW’s Deathwing landing on the ramparts in a city. It’s a scene that’s very similar to the WoW. Cataclysm movietic. Tarisland looks to include dragonriding – a major new WoW feature which just launched as part of Dragonflight expansion.

This has led many WoW content creators as well as WoW fans to criticize Tencent’s lack of originality. MrGM posted the announcement trailer on Twitch. TwitterHe stated that “this new Tencent game looks very familiar.” This tweet even generated a response Chris Metzen is one of the founders of WoW and he recently announced that he would be joining the WoW Development team as a creative adviser.

Tarisland was announced just as Blizzard games services in China (including WoW) are scheduled to shut down on January 23. It marks the end of a 14 year partnership between Blizzard Games and China’s NetEase Games. Blizzard is currently seeking a partner to publish its titles here, and recently extended its existing deal by six months to NetEase. NetEase refused to accept the offer, citing unfair and unequal treatment. Blizzard will permit Chinese WoW players the ability to download their character data in order to keep them safe until the game’s services on the market resume.