Those MMOs are from very different eras.

WoW was released 7 years later in 2004, by then a whole lot of 3D MMOs were already released and somewhat successful, like Anarchy Online.

Imho the better analogue would be Ultima Online; Also 2D and from the same era as Tibia.

Tibia did so much better than UO, outside of NA, because Tibia did not require a monthly subscription to play it.

It has options to "subscribe" but paying for that was also possible trough other methods than CC, while most US developed MMOs would often only offers paying per CC for the subscription.

That left a lot of people locked out who in theory were even willing to pay for playing, but in practice couldn't be bothered to get a CC just to pay for a video game.