Visual similarities between World of Warcraft and Tencent's newly announced MMO Tarisland are raising questions regarding IP infringement. Over the past decade, the Chinese government's lax approach to IP protections and the complications of international legal efforts have led to infringements ranging from outright copies of games being released to more subtle design influences. Tarisland, which was announced this past week, taking influence from World of Warcraft seems to fall somewhere in the middle.
While it's unclear how much has been announced regarding Tarisland that was lost in translation, it's clear that it's a multiplayer fantasy MMORPG with massive environments and an action-based combat system. Players are shown flying through diver fantasy environments, delving into dungeons with large groups of players, and experiencing an epic story with larger-than-life heroes and villains. It's the visual design and the finer details of Tarisland where concerns are being raised.
It should be immediately clear where these concerns are coming from once watching the Tarisland announcement trailer. World of Warcraft fans will see Sylvanas in the first figure shown on-screen, with her purplish skin and burgundy cape. The pronounced aspects of her gear, including its shoulder pieces and gloves, also stand out as clearly influenced by World of Warcraft, as well. This not-Sylvanas then walks through a portal that hearkens to World of Warcraft's Dark Portal, and that's just the first 15 seconds of the trailer.
Tarisland's announcement trailer reveals a very clear influence from World of Warcraft all the way through. Its elves, night elves and blood elves alike, look directly taken from Azeroth, as do its humans. There's even a Tauren-like character briefly shown. Character classes are also World of Warcraft-inspired, with recognizable rogue, mage, hunter, warrior, and priest visual queues spread throughout. Environments from across Azeroth, heroic characters like Anduin and Jaina, and so much more all appear to have been taken from World of Warcraft and placed into Tarisland.
Perhaps the most egregious examples of Tencent's World of Warcraft inspiration for Tarisland stem from Blizzard's own cinematics. In one scene, a dragon similar but not identical to Deathwing, lands atop a castle parapet and bellows. This is a near one-to-one recreation of a sequence taken from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm's cinematic trailer released 12 years ago. Similar sequences from other World of Warcraft cinematics are also recognizable in Tarisland's trailer.
To give Tarisland some credit, the gameplay for the MMO looks entirely distinct from World of Warcraft. It's more a combination of Genshin Impact and defunct MMO Wildstar than World of Warcraft, with third-person action combat and active dodging. And while there's clear visual influence from World of Warcraft, Tarisland's polished modern 3D graphics are well beyond the aging visuals of Blizzard's MMO to a near-incomparable degree. The legalities of the comparison are a subject for the courts, but public opinion at the minimum is going to ask why Tarisland's developers had to use World of Warcraft as a crutch.
Tarisland is in development.
