Tarisland, the MMO that tried to replace WoW in China, shuts down this November

To not many players’ surprise in the MMO market, Tarisland, Tencent’s World of Warcraft (WoW) clone and killer, run via Level Infinite, has announced its end of service. The game will be shut down and completely purged from the internet on November 4th, 2025, as stated on the game’s official website. After that point, the game will no longer be accessible. If you want one last hurrah, you have until then to do so.

While the game gets shut down, Tencent will, of course, have legal rights to your data for a set period of time, depending on the regions and laws surrounding your location. If you have complaints about the game’s closure, you’re also free to email [email protected] and voice your sadness, frustration, or if you want to know more about the game’s termination. As it stands, there are no other details surrounding the game’s demise. All we know for certain is that interest in the game has certainly declined over the many seasons since its launch in Season 0 back in June 2024.

It’s somewhat shocking and also not shocking for those who played the game. 

Several years ago, Blizzard Entertainment announced that its long-standing partnership with Chinese publisher NetEase had come to an end. The sudden shock killed World of Warcraft in China. Not long after the aftermath, Tencent, a rival Chinese publisher, revealed a WoW clone game, Tarisland. The game was all about ripping off WoW’s raids and dungeons while making it accessible to the global MMO PC audience and the Asian/Chinese market at the same time. Its initial trailer even showcased Night Elf and Tauren-like creatures fighting a big black dragon, rather similar to WoW’s Deathwing character. There were even Teldrassil-like backdrops, among other things very heavily inspired by Shadowlands and other Azerothian locations.

However, after many content update blunders, the game lost a lot of its appeal. Players couldn’t complete their talent builds with raids no longer relevant. PVP was only available at set times of the day, so if you missed the window, you were out of luck. Then, with season launches, the leveling process was skipped, once again cutting off early game rewards and forcing players to backtrack to older content. It very quickly lost its appeal, and the game naturally fell off, both globally and on the CN servers. On top of this, NetEase got its partnership back with Blizzard right around the time of Tarisland’s launch, further stunting its momentum.

The game last had a major announcement back on February 17th, hinting at a new patch for Season 1. But since then, there has been radio silence for all servers. With the lack of news for seven months, it only makes sense for the game’s termination to be imminent.