Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Tibia (video game)" in English language version.
Tibia mainly focuses on player exploration, and therefore doesn't hold the player's hand much. It doesn't tell players what to do or where to go, and there's almost complete control over how it can be played. Hints don't come often, and players are mostly left on their own to figure out how to do things. Even more so, compared to other MMOs, Tibia isn't very forgiving. Death comes often at the beginning and may be a bit disheartening at first, but becomes a defining feature as the game is played. If you die one too many times, you get booted back to the rookie island and have to essentially restart. This is one of the reasons that the player base has been around for over a decade, even though there are newer and more technologically advanced MMOs. The hardcore element in Tibia simply doesn't exist in newer games.
Overall Maximum: 64,028 players (on Nov 28 2007, 19:26:00 CET)
All in all, more than 250,000 people like to explore Tibia, to chat with friends or to hunt creepy monsters regularly.