We’ve had TONS of questions, comments, and even complains about our old guide for this, so I’ve decided to write an updated guide on this.

Please Note
I have just followed this guide the day before writing this, it works 100% of the time, as long as you follow the instructions. Please read the entire guide before you start, and leave any questions in the comments below. Please share links to this guide with everybody you know.

This guide will have you connect to the servers run by Tru-WoW.
They are strictly “BlizzLike” which means everything (drop rates, experience) is how it is in retail, everything is the same as retail (with the exception of the few bugs, but the developers are working diligently on them!)

Tru-WoW is still running The Burning Crusade 2.4.3.
This is because of the massive amounts of problems and general “suckage” that the newer expansions would bring, such as scripted events and quests just plain NOT WORKING.

1. First off, you will need to install BOTH the original WoW client, and The Burning Crusade client.
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft – The Burning Crusade

2. Once you download the files above, run them both, it will open a Blizzard Downloader (one for each.) It’s going to ask you where you want to save the files to, I just recommend your desktop, so you can find them faster when the time comes. It will take a couple of hours to finish. And generally The Burning Crusade will finish first (it will automatically launch the installer, saying that the original WoW client is required first, close out of it.) This means you have to wait for them BOTH to finish before you can really proceed any further. (Now might be a good time to go do something productive.) Or in the meantime, you could always start downloading the patches in step 5, and create your account in step 6, also try to read through the entire guide to familiarize yourself with the process.

3. After both downloads finish, you will have to open the original WoW folder that the downloader created, usually called “WoW-2.3.0.7561-enUS” and from there run the “Installer.exe” let it run, and finish installing.

4. After the original WoW client installs, it’s time to install The Burning Crusade expansion, so go into the folder named “WoW-BurningCrusade-enUS-Full-Installer” and run the “Installer.exe” from there too, and let it finish installing.

5. Next you’re going to have to patch your client to version 2.4.3, which can be a pain finding the correct patches to apply. I’ve made it easy for you, simply download and install (IN ORDER) the following patches. AFTER YOU APPLY EACH PATCH, THE WOW LAUNCHER WILL SHOW UP, AND TRY TO AUTO-UPDATE TO V.3.0+ – MAKE SURE YOU CANCEL IT, DO NOT LET IT UPDATE TO 3.0!!! – This is incredibly important, if you walk away from your computer for too long during this process you could come back to a 3.0+ game, and have it unplayable until you uninstall and start all the way over.
2.4.0 (923.74 MB)
2.4.1 (04.88 MB)
2.4.2 (15.07 MB)
2.4.3 (27.27 MB)
None of these patches are hosted on this server, they are all provided by FileFront, if for some reason any of the downloads above are not working, please use the list of patch mirrors at WoWWiki. Another quick note, one of these patches is stored in a .rar file, and must be extracted. If you can’t figure that out on your own… well… There’s not much anybody can do to help you

6. Now it’s time to create your account, please click here to create an account, be sure to create your account as an “Expansion” account type (TBC), this is what lets you play The Burning Crusade, instead of just the original WoW game. Please allow up to 10-20 minutes for your account to be physically created on the servers. I also recommend creating an account on the Darkwolf realm, simply because it’s more populated.

7. Download my pre-made realmlist.wtf file (right click it, and “Save Link As…”) and place it in your WoW directory, usually set to

C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft

And choose to OVERWRITE the existing file.
Or if for some reason you are paranoid, and do not want to download my file, feel free to browse to your WoW directory, open up the existing realmlist.wtf file, and change it to ONLY say

set realmlist truwowonline.com

And save it. NOTE: if your on Vista or Windows 7, it is way less stressful to simply download and copy the file I provided above, however to do so, you will have to agree to the User Account Control popup.

8. Run Wow.exe  from the installation directory. Do not run the shortcut on your desktop, because that points to Launcher.exe, which will automatically patch your WoW install to 3.0+ which will make it unplayable on Tru-WoW. Take this time to DELETE the shortcut on your desktop, as it will just cause issues having it there.

9. Select your realm, Darkwolf for PvP, or Frostmane for PvE… At some point in the future they’re supposedly merging and becoming a WotLK server.

10. Create a character, and enter the World of Warcraft, for free! Enjoy!

***Notice of Account Closure***

Account Name: ************

Reason for Closure: Terms of Use Violation — Exploitative Activity: Abuse of the Economy

This account was closed because one or more characters were identified exchanging, or contributing to the exchange of, in-game property (items or gold) for “real-world” currency. This exchange process negatively impacts the World of Warcraft game environment by detracting from the value of the in-game economy.

I immediately tried to investigate by logging into my Battle.net account (which is also tied to all World of Warcraft accounts), however I was faced with the following…

However, I don’t HAVE a Battle.net authenticator. At this point I knew something was “up” so to speak. I thought to myself that there was NO WAY I could have been keylogged… I rushed home to begin a real investigation.

I ran multiple virus scanners, and multiple malware and spyware scanners as well. Nothing returned any results. I also ran these on a work PC for precaution as well, as I know I’ve logged into my Battle.net account there a few weeks back. Again, no results.

At this point I’m fairly confident I have NOT been keylogged, but something else has happened entirely. I have no idea why somebody would try to bruteforce my account. I have a worthless level 28 mage on my account and that’s it. You can also see the “recent activity” on that character, getting achievements because I haven’t logged on to him in literally over two years, but the hacker logged on yesterday evening right around 7PM. Yes, yesterday, as in Easter.

To make this matter all the more stranger, a good friend of mine has a brother who’s account was hacked and logged into on Christmas Eve of 2009, right around 8PM…

This makes me think there’s a group out there that is somehow obtaining login credentials and waiting until holiday’s to strike, likely thinking that people are out spending the day with their friends and family, and not worrying about their virtual video game accounts, giving the hackers time to add authenticators and log in and exploit the game in any way possible.

Now I have to deal with account recovery services at Blizzard, which from what I hear is an alright experience as far as the people on the phone go, but the queue/wait times can be ridiculous. I have a feeling I’m not the only account that got hit yesterday, and I’ll be on hold for a very long time, and they don’t even open today until 11AM.

As soon as this is straightened out, I’ll be changing my Battle.net password, and adding the iPhone app of the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator for added security.

[UPDATE - April 05, 2010 - 11:30AM]
Spent a good twenty minutes on hold with Blizzard’s Account Management and Billing department, before finally getting to talk to somebody. Once I did get to talk to somebody it was fairly painless as far as getting back my Battle.net account… Apparently the World of Warcraft account is another story… Somebody will need to investigate that and get back to me? I really don’t care about my characters or items, I just don’t want the account/serial keys BANNED, that’s all… And I want to get back into the account to remove all credit cards on file.

As of right now this is what I currently get while trying to access my World of Warcraft account.

[UPDATE - April 05, 2010 - 04:00PM]
I have received two emails from Blizzard about my World of Warcraf account! They are both listed below. Kudos to Blizzard for making this a fairly quick and painless process for me.

Greetings,

We have restored access to World of Warcraft account  ************ and reset the password to this account.

It may take up to one hour for our system to generate and send the new password. If you have not received a password within one hour of this message’s delivery, please check your Spam, Junk, or Suspect Mail folders.

And the second one shortly after was this.

Greetings,

Account: ************

Thank you for contacting the World of Warcraft Game Master Department and for bringing this matter to our attention.

We have reviewed our logs of your account, and we were able to determine the following:

No gold was removed
No items have been deleted, sold, traded
No unauthorized character transfers
No profession changes
Guild banks associated with your characters are intact

Fortunately, it appears as though your account has been unharmed.

For further information please check our Restoration Policy located at (http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/20457)

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you in advance for your understanding.

All in all I’m pleased with Blizzard’s understanding and fast work on my account (especially since it’s an inactive account).

I HAVE added a Blizzard authenticator, and I would highly suggest anybody else who has access to one or can afford the $6.50 for the physical one to do so as soon as possible, since something like this can happen out of nowhere to a very tech-savvy person.

THIS GUIDE IS OUTDATED, PLEASE FOLLOW OUR UPDATED GUIDE HERE!

So I’ve decided to write a guide, to help get some more peole playing this great game, without paying the ridiculous $15.00 fee per month. Before this really begins though, I should mention a few things:

This is a guide on how to play on a PRIVATE SERVER.
You won’t be playing with all your friends who play retail, so that just means you should get them to switch over to this method as well!

This guide will have you connecet to the servers run by Tru-WoW.
They are strictly “BlizzLike” which means everything (drop rates, experience) is how it is in retail, everything is the same as retail (with the exception of the few  bugs, but the developers are working diligently on them!)

Tru-WoW is still running The Burning Crusade.
The Wrath of the Lich King will eventually be supported, when it’s ready for private servers, they’d rather wait a few months to release it, in working order, rather than release it full of nasty bugs.

And now I’m just going to dive right in to the step-by-step of things…

1. First off, you will need to install BOTH the original WoW client, and The Burning Crusade client.
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft – The Burning Crusade
(And yes, I’m aware blizzard has an combination downloader, but that is for version 3 of the game, which is currently s till unsupported on most private servers.)

2. Once you download the files above, run them both, it will open a Blizzard Downloader (one for each.) It’s going to ask you where you want to save the files to, I just recommend your desktop, so you can find them faster when the time comes. It will take a couple of hours to finish. And generally The Burning Crusade will finish first (it will automatically launch the installer, saying that the original WoW client is required first, close out of it.) This means you have to wait for them BOTH to finish before you can really proceed any further. (Now might be a good time to go do something productive.) Or in the meantime, you could always start downloading the patches in step 5, and create your account in step 6.

3. After both downloads finish, you will have to open the original WoW folder that the downloader created, usually called “WoW-2.3.0.7561-enUS” and from there run the “Installer.exe” let it run, and finish installing.

4. After the original WoW client installs, it’s time to install The Burning Crusade expansion, so go into the folder named “WoW-BurningCrusade-enUS-Full-Installer” and run the “Installer.exe” from there too, and let it finish installing.

5. Next you’re going to have to patch your client to version 2.4.3, which can be a pain in the ass finding the correct patches to apply. I’ve made it easy for you, simply download and install (IN ORDER) the following patches. AFTER YOU APPLY EACH PATCH, THE WOW LAUNCHER WILL SHOW UP, AND TRY TO AUTO-UPDATE TO V.3.0 – MAKE SURE YOU CANCEL IT, DO NOT LET IT UPDATE TO 3.0!!!
2.4.0 (923.74 MB)
2.4.1 (04.88 MB)
2.4.2 (15.07 MB)
2.4.3 (27.27 MB)
None of these patches are hosted on this server, they are all provided by FileFront, if for some reason any of the downloads above are not working, please use the list of patch mirrors at WoWWiki.

6. Now it’s time to create your account, please click here to create an account, be sure to create your account as an “Expansion” account type, this is what lets you play The Burning Crusade, instead of just the original WoW game. Please allow up to 10-20 minutes for your account to be physically created on the servers.

7. Download my pre-made realmlist.wtf file (right click it, and “Save Link As…”) and place it in your WoW directory, usually set to
C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft
And choose to OVERWRITE the existing file.
Or if for some reason you are paranoid, and do not want to download my file, feel free to browse to your WoW directory, open up the existing realmlist.wtf file, and change it to ONLY say
set realmlist truwowonline.com
And save it. NOTE: if your on Vista, it is way less stressful to simply download and copy the file I provided above, however to do so, you will have to agree to the User Account Control popup.

8. Run Wow.exe (be sure NOT to run Launcher.exe, this will patch the game to 3.x.x, and that’s bad) and you should then be able to log in with the username and password you created in step 5. If you’re feeling tech-savvy, make a shortcut to Wow.exe on your desktop, and delete the old shortcut there (which pointed to Launcher.exe)

9. Select your realm, Darkwolf for PvP, or Frostmane for PvE, I however do recommend Frostmane if you are new to private servers, you can always at a later date just create a PvP character, no loss in time really, since it’s FREE.

10. Create a character, and enter the World of Warcraft, for free! Enjoy!

What… the hell?

He spends about 6 thousand a year on subscription costs, and is spending about 1500 on the new expansion when its released for all his accounts… He plays all 36 accounts at the same time using Octopus, this guy is sick. He hates getting a raid group together, lmfao, thats one of the biggest social aspects of WoW, this guy is ofically a loner, he wants no human contact, even when playing a MMORPG…?