New MMORPG from a huge company was supposed to be a serious alternative to WoW, but the launch on Steam turned into a fiasco

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The largest games company in the world, Tencent, created an MMORPG in 2024 that was supposed to fill the gap left by WoW. Tarisland launched as a free-to-play MMORPG in July 2024 and caused a lot of buzz. But it completely failed on Steam.

That was the idea for Tarisland: Because Activision Blizzard fell out with NetEase, there was suddenly no more WoW in China. The servers went offline and many Chinese players mourned.

Tencent announced that it would be releasing an MMORPG for mobile and PC. It was obvious that they wanted to move into the gap left by WoW in China.

The MMORPG was released worldwide on June 21, 2024 and was well received. But a release on Steam was a flop.

Tarisland: Global launch trailer shows cinematic class action

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Tarisland was only able to keep the interest of MMORPG players for 2 weeks

How much success did Tarisland have in Germany? An analysis of the interest in Tarisland in Germany shows that the MMORPG certainly had a bit of hype when it was released in June.

For two weeks it was more relevant in terms of interest measured by Google Trends than major MMORPGs in Germany such as The Elder Scrolls Online, Black Desert or Guild Wars 2.

However, Tarisland could only ignite a flash in the pan. The game was only really relevant for two weeks, after which interest leveled off significantly and it fell well below the interest in the established competition.

Late release on Steam turns into a fiasco

What about Steam?? Tencent apparently completely gambled away, because they had obviously planned for Tarisland to gain momentum again with the release on Steam in October 2020, but that completely failed:

  • On Steam, Tarisland never peaked above 582 players.
  • The ratings are disastrous with 24% positive reviews.
  • There is no relevant spike in the Steam release on Google Trends.

    • The reviews say that you start at level 41, which no one can understand and which is an absolute no-go for many players. In addition, the game has many Pay2Win options and not enough options to customize the character.

    Was there a new MMORPG in 2024 that had a better impact?? The new MMORPG Throne and Liberty from NCSoft had significantly more success than Tarisland in 2024. This was able to keep players interested in Germany for around 8 weeks and remained above the interest in the strong established competition. But in December interest waned here too: Throne and Liberty lost more than 70 percent of players on Steam in two months, the community gave reasons

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