WoW community accuses Tencent of “blatant plagiarism” over new game

World of Warcraft players are accusing Tencent of “blatant plagiarism” after seeing a trailer for an upcoming game from the developers.

Tencent revealed a new trailer for its upcoming MMO game, Tarisland, on January 13.

The first-look footage of the video game has left Warcraft fans doing a double take and comes in the midst of Blizzard’s shutdown of live servers in China.

Those servers are expected to close on January 23, as Blizzard confirmed it was unable to reach an agreement with its partner NetEase to retain its licensing. The games affected include Overwatch 2, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Starcraft, Diablo III, and Warcraft III: Reforged.

Tencent accused of plagiarising WoW

A tweet from YouTuber and WoW esports caster MrGM picked up some momentum on January 18, where he said: “This new game from Tencent seems extremely familiar.”

The comments have since flooded in, with World of Warcraft players claiming the project looks like a ripoff of the game they play.

The Reddit post says: “Tencent announces blatantly plagiarized from WoW game. I have a feeling Tencent isn’t going to pick up Blizzard.”

The thread has hundreds of upvotes and comments.

A number of comments have alleged the game is a ripoff of Activision Blizzard’s World of Warcraft franchise – and it seems they are not the only ones confused.

On Twitter, one fan wrote: “Is this one of those ‘oh we can’t get a Blizzard partnership let’s rip off one of their games and get away with it due to our copyright law being different?'”

A second user said: “In this trailer, we can see all the major events that shaped Wow’s 20-year story and they plan to squish it in just the base game.”

Creative advisor for Warcraft, Chris Metzen, also responded to the reveal.

He tweeted: “Huh.”

Tencent has not yet responded to the allegations and its MMO, Tarisland, is set to open up for testing on PC and mobile in due course.