With Tarisland, the Chinese gaming giant Tencent aimed to conquer the western MMORPG market. However, the current numbers on Steam are disastrous just before the turn of the year.
What is the status of Tarisland? Although the MMORPG, launched for PC, Android, and iOS in June 2024 by Level Infinite and Tencent, recently received new content such as a raid boss and an event in the past week, it seems that the responsible parties simply cannot manage to sustainably attract a large number of players to the servers.
At least, the very weak player numbers on Steam suggest this (unfortunately, there are no statistics from other platforms). According to steamdb.info, there are currently (December 6, 2024, 11:13 AM) only 31 players online simultaneously.
This would not even suffice for a single full 40-player raid in Molten Core or Blackwing Lair in the Vanilla or Classic version of the big role model, World of Warcraft, from which one has borrowed many designs for game world, classes, characters, mounts, and races.
And even during prime time in the evening, the situation is only slightly better. The 24-hour peak is just 63 concurrently active players. These are disastrous numbers for an MMORPG that launched with high ambitions this year. User reviews on Steam reflect this, with a “Mostly Negative” rating, showing only 35 percent positive assessments.
The trailer shows that Tarisland launched with some ambitions:
“The worst MMORPG released recently”
How does the community assess the numbers and the game? The state of Tarisland is currently being discussed in the Reddit community.
- InternetExplorer020 writes on Reddit: “Unfortunately, Tarisland is the worst MMORPG released recently.”
- Arrotanis is not surprised by the poor numbers (via Reddit): “They made the game worse and removed 90% of the content before releasing it on Steam. Surprisingly, that was not the right move.”
- Bro_sapiens had fun at first, but … (via Reddit): “I truly enjoyed playing Tarisland, both in beta and when it came out (through the website, not now on Steam). The only thing that stopped me from continuing after about 50-60 hours was the absolute lack of visual progress with my character.”
- Eriyal explains on Reddit: “This game had some of the most fun raids and dungeons for midcore players that I have ever played. […] Ultimately, many players probably felt like they were playing a game system and not a fantasy world. That probably drove many people insane (consciously or unconsciously) and ultimately pushed me away from Tarisland as well.”
In recent reviews on Steam, players criticize that in Tarisland, one starts at level 41, right in the middle of the story campaign, without even receiving a proper recap of previous events. Furthermore, monetization, world, controls, the class system, the mobile-like user interface, and much more receive a lot of criticism.
How does MeinMMO editor Karsten Scholz rate the MMORPG today? You might remember: I actually had a surprisingly good time with Tarisland during the launch. Surprisingly, because I expected very little – due to the factors of Free2Play, PC AND mobile release, and Tencent.
But I actually liked the strong focus on raids and dungeons, with the very first group challenge in the tutorial. Just like the high comfort in finding players, fast traveling, or inventory management. And the staggered leveling phase delivered in small snack-sized portions, as Tarisland fit perfectly into the daily routine of old Karsten from June 2024.
However, at maximum level, the excitement faded quickly. Snacks don’t keep you full for long. Sufficient content supply was slow to arrive. Moreover, as an MMORPG fan, I really couldn’t complain about a lack of new food this year.
In the second new release, Throne and Liberty, there is much more in my view than in Tarisland. And the fact that all major online RPGs received extensive expansions in 2024 certainly did not help Tencent’s MMORPG. Speaking of which: All major MMORPGs received a new expansion in 2024 – the addons in the power ranking
