Tarisland
About the game
Tarisland was Tencent's attempt to bring the classic PC MMORPG to your phone without cutting anything out along the way: one fantasy world shared across PC, Android and iOS, with crossplay and a single progression path on all three. It launched in the west on June 21, 2024, lasted a little over a year, and today it is shut down: the global version went dark on November 4, 2025, and the Chinese one on February 11, 2026. This page exists as a record of what it was, what it charged for, and why it ended the way it did.
What it was and what set it apart
The pitch was an old-school MMORPG structure inside a cross-platform body: nine classes across the tank, healer and damage roles, dungeons and full raids with real boss mechanics, and progression through talent trees instead of the auto-upgrade systems that dominate the genre on mobile. The ambition wasn't modest: the same account was meant to walk into a raid from a PC or from a phone, same character, same gear. That idea —a WoW-like that follows you into your pocket— is what made it interesting, and also what doomed it to be measured against the biggest game in the genre.
The business model: free-to-play, with fine print
The game was free from end to end: no paid edition, no mandatory subscription, no barrier to creating an account. The premium currency was crystals, bought with real money and spent on cosmetics, mounts, pets and conveniences like bag space. On top of that sat a seasonal battle pass and an optional subscription in three tiers (roughly €2.09 weekly, €5.49 monthly and €30.99 for six months). The banner of the whole campaign was "no pay-to-win": the shop never sold statted gear, and that part was literally true.
The fine print sat one step further out. Crystals converted into gold, and gold bought Empowerments, emblems and enchanting gems that did grant stats; each season also introduced a brand-new upgrade system that the paid pass accelerated. Layered on top was the energy system (Vigor), which capped daily farming and nudged you toward buying time back. The studio itself publicly acknowledged that its definition of pay-to-win —selling raw power in the shop— wasn't the one players were using, and the gap between those two readings stayed a live argument for the game's entire run.
Current status: shut down, with no legitimate way to play
The last meaningful content was the February 2025 season, which raised the level cap to 60 and added a zone, quests and the Blight Legion event. Then came seven months of silence. On September 4, 2025 the end of global service was announced and sign-ups and purchases were cut off immediately; on November 4, 2025 the servers went down, wiping characters, items and purchase records, with no farewell event, no migration anywhere and no refunds. The Chinese server held on a few months longer: the shutdown was announced on December 12, 2025 —citing the expiry of the publishing contract with the developer—, servers and website went offline on February 11, 2026, and communities and support closed on the 25th of that month; there, at least, players were compensated, trading remaining balances for packs in other games from the group. Today the official site doesn't resolve, the game is delisted from Steam and the mobile stores, and there is no offline version, no legitimate alternative server and no announced relaunch.
Why it didn't work, and what's left
From the reveal onward, Tarisland wore the World of Warcraft clone label, sold by much of the press as China's plan B after Blizzard walked away from that market: a comparison no new game wins. The execution didn't shake it off either. The cluttered interface and the pacing of progression gave away the mobile-first design, even on PC, and the monetization argument never died down. The numbers say it plainly: on its Steam release in October 2024, the all-time peak was 583 concurrent players, and reviews settled at mostly negative, with only 36% positive. An MMORPG with a population that size can't even fill its own raids.
To be fair, there was a decent game in there: the raids had real mechanics, the classes felt distinct, and the crossplay promise actually worked. But an MMORPG isn't judged only by its design — it's judged by whether it survives, and this one didn't. If you got here looking for a way in, the answer is that you can't, and nothing suggests that will change; if you came out of curiosity, Tarisland stands as a reminder that in this genre copying a classic's structure competently isn't enough: you have to give people a reason to move, and that reason never showed up.