Tibia is a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) created by CipSoft GmbH. It is one of the oldest MMORPGs and was considered most noteworthy in its early years; however, with the development of MMORPGs its popularity has grown much slower than others gaming communities. Its most unique aspect is being in a 2D environment, which is expected to contribute to the slow growth of the game as the gaming community rapidly shifted to 3D. It was first released in January 1997. It is a free game which is open to the public, though players have the option to pay a fee in order to upgrade to a premium account, granting special in-game benefits, including additional areas to explore, access to vocation promotions, and extra spells. In the early years of the game, CipSoft GmbH held player statistics, including amount of registered players; but these were removed with the growth of the game for performance reasons. For this reason, the amount of players cannot be accurately estimated, but the players online totaled over 64,000 online on November 28, 2007. There are currently 74 game servers, 37 in Germany and 37 in the USA. Each server can actively hold 1,000 players; but rarely do they reach this limit. According to CipSoft there are about 1.3 million registered accounts, mostly from Brazil, Poland, and Mexico.

Gameplay involves advancing levels while training to improve skill levels, hunting monsters using weapons and magical spells, gathering treasure, doing quests and exploring the Tibia world. Players interact with each other in character for conversation, trade and group battles and partake in guilds for more role-playing opportunities. On most of the game`s servers, players are also allowed to attack and kill each other, although there is a system in place to keep hostile actions under control called the skull system. Some servers do not allow such player versus player combat at all, while others encourage it by rewarding experience for kills.

The concept of the game is to hunt creatures to gain experience points. Gaining experience points leads to progression in levels, which gives you additional hitpoints, mana and increases your damage. Upon death, characters lose a small portion of their experience points and respawn in their hometown`s temple, where they continue their journey. Dying may also result in losing equipment that the character is carrying. When killing becomes excessive (3 or more in a PvP world) a red skull will be attained. While marked with a red skull, a character will lose all of their items upon death, regardless of whether or not they are wearing an amulet of loss (an item that prevents loss of items under regular circumstances). When creating a character, over 74 different worlds (servers) can be chosen from. While each world is exactly the same in appearance, players cannot communicate cross-server, and some worlds (non-PvP) do not permit player-versus-player combat, while some others enforce it (PvP enforced), where they gain experience points for killing others.

In the game, there are four vocations, each with advantages and disadvantages. All new characters start out without a vocation. Once a character reaches level eight, they can go to the Island of Destiny where they choose a vocation from four choices. Knights specialise in melee, paladins in distance, sorcerers in offensive magic, and druids in elemental/healing magic. Once a vocation is chosen, the choice cannot be reversed without a character reset. Premium players can purchase a promotion for their character`s vocation once they have reached level 20 for a one-time fee of 20,000 gold pieces. The Promotion gives the character various in-game advantages. The game also has a large number of Non-Playable Characters, or NPCs. NPCs are there to buy/sell items and for quests and other roleplaying purposes.

Quests are in-game challenges where a player or group of players solve challenging riddles or puzzles or fight difficult creatures for a special reward. Rewards vary from gold to equipment to items needed for other quests. Some areas of Tibia can only be accessed once a certain quest is completed or started. For example, the Isle of the Kings can only be accessed once the White Raven Monastery Quest has been completed.