Fond Memories: Southshore versus Tarren Mill
Posted by 
iTZKooPA on Friday, October 17, 2008 - 20 Comments Tags: arenas, battlegrounds, fond memories, lake wintergrasp, southshore, tarren mill, world pvp
iTZKooPA on Friday, October 17, 2008 - 20 Comments Tags: arenas, battlegrounds, fond memories, lake wintergrasp, southshore, tarren mill, world pvp 
You young ones are spoiled these days, what with your multiple Battlegrounds and Arena matches. Heck, one of the most exciting features coming with Wrath of the Lich King is Lake Wintergrasp. An entire zone dedicated to uninstanced PvP, complete with siege weapons. Back in my day we had to travel across the ocean, uphill, through the snow while dodging bear and lion pies to get our PvP fix. Yea, I am talking about the good old days of Southshore versus Tarren Mill.All of those who leveled up before the invention of Alterac Valley and Wasrong Gulch know exactly what I speak of. The Horde and Alliance quest hubs in Hillsbrad Foothills are meant for mid-20 level players, but players of all levels used to pass by to get to the higher level zones like Eastern and Western Plaguelands. This was also the time before you could chain together flightpaths, forcing players to jump from node to node, rather than one continuous flight (node to node somehow makes it cheaper...). Tarren Mill and Southshore happened to only be a stones throw from each other, allowing for short trips from the graveyard to the battlefield. The conditions caused a perfect storm of PvP, the likes which have never been seen in World of Warcraft again.
My first trip into crux of mayhem and death was early in my WoW career. Before Onyxia was released, my guild already had its fair share of players that were level 40+. I remained on my level 20ish Rogue, still too low to head to Southshore for quests, but always wanted to help my guild. My guildmates one night decided it was time to raid Thrall (we were under the impression that killing him would allow you to loot Thrall's Ear, Diablo-style, obviously we were mistaken), so the Guildmaster grabbed as many members as possible, along with anyone who was interested, and stormed off to Ogrimmar.
After the Horde handed our ass to us, we turned back, dejected and depressed at our failure. We sought revenge, and what better target than the hotspot of Tarren Mill (on the way to Tyr's Hand, which was were most people were headed). Now about 30 strong, and mostly composed of Ventrilo-equipped guildmates, we laid waste to Tarren Mill and any Horde that dared enter the Hillsbrad Foothills. For almost two hours, we commandeered the zone for no better reason than that we could. The Horde had won the battle at the capital city of Ogrimmar, but the Alliance sent out a message. No town is safe.
Tarren Mill versus Southshore battle royals are long gone, and unfortunately, will likely stay that way. If you wish to re-live or even experience the mess for the first time, there is a new website called YouTube. You may have heard about it?
I have tried a few times to recreate those memories, but it never happens. Battlegrounds truly ended World PvP for WoW. Blizzard tried to bring World PvP back with The Burning Crusade's PvP objectives, but it wasn't the same. Thankfully, Blizzard is trying again, and what we have heard about Lake Wintergrasp keeps me hoping.
Reader Comments (20)
Those were the days. I'll never forget when honorable kills debuted - I earned my first 100 kills in a Southshore/Tauren Mill debacle - and this was before they gave you honor points!
aaah yeee, the best thing there is about PvP, the uninstaqnced pvP, I love it the most! btw, I can really understand what your saying, alot of TM -SS is still going on on my srver, also just plain atking westfall, or crossroads.
(first)
Mikesmit,
Aszune EU
i actually leveled 60 around the time that BG's became very popular so I never really experienced this kind of world pvp.
the world pvp i have experienced is more or less getting ganked while leveling or doing daily's so i do hope that wotlk will bring back the old world pvp.
im really excited about wotlk :)
great post iTZKooPA, cheers mate! :)
Even though I came into WoW very late in TBC I have still been able to experience some of the SS-TM War, even as of a few days ago, but on a vary small scale. From friends and veteran players alike, I heard the stories of old and could only imagine world PvP on that scale (as in server crashing). I still remember the first time I saw "Southshore is under attack" spammed in my chat log, and only one phrase could wrap up my findings, "curiosity killed the cat." Ever since then I made it a point to make frequent stops to SS just to see if there is anything going on, sometimes there is, sometimes crickets. As much as I enjoy PvE, BG's, and Arena, I really hope that Lake Wintergrasp brings an intense World PvP to the game. Definitely looking forward to it.
thats it!!!!!!!!!!!everyone make a post on the community event page. i want TM vs SS back.
On a side note, though it wont be as big, This weekend HALLOWS END!!! It brings you back to the Hillsbrad/Lordaeron region. Horde will be tossing stink bombs at South Shore, could be some interesting developments there. Not to mention a headless horseman to kill and a giant wicker firey thing that needs putting out.
-El Santo Fuego
I wish I had been able to play back when WoW first came out. I would have loved to experience this type of PvP.
STV was PVP hell for me. I have done my tour of duty there.
Ah, to be young and newbish. Nostalgia is the worst form of memory, because everything seems so good when looked that way. See Original voltron for an example. It seemed so amazing... now it's just 5 minutes of lips moving.
As for world pvp: BGs didn't kill it, pvp rewards did. If there weren't any rewards for pvp, then people would do it "for the fun of it" and it's much more enjoyable to fight over random spots on the world map than preset instances imo.
I'm not saying rewards are bad; they aren't. I'm just saying that BGs without the rewards would be really boring. Now there seems to be little reason to pvp if you aren't working for the rewards (i.e. hardly anyone does BGs over and over because they simply love how it functions).
Why isn't there a BG where the only goal is to exhaust the enemy? Why do we need objectives? Where's my Dodgeball pvp?!
If you're a WoW veteran who only sees the game through a bunch of 70 hanging out on Aldor Rise, and you're lamenting the loss of World PvP, I have just one thing to say: roll an alt.
World PvP is far from dead, just ask my blistered ass :P
Case in point, one of my many alts is a Blood Elf Tank Paladin on the Vashj server, he's not terribly high-level or remarkable by any means, but he whiles away the hours as well as any toon, I suppose. And just a few weeks ago, in fact, the Arathi Highlands erupted into war. Now when I say "war" I dont mean a bunch of humans and a bunch of orcs squabbled for a few minutes and then logged off, for almost four hours the Alliance and the Horde rallied against each other trying to defend their respective settlements.
It all started one evening when the Horde noticed a massive influx of Alliance in Arathi, which is in and of itself suspicious on Vashj where the ratio of Horde to Alli is about 5:1, but on top of that, their collective levels were far too disparate to just be questing. Knowing full well that the Defilers had yet to erect a Disco, the only reasonable concensus (at least as far as /1 was concerned) was that they were rallying to attack Hammerfall. A titanic battle ensued, the Horde backed by its massive population and the Alliance reinforced by its love of crushing things smaller than itself (which is a neat trick when you're a gnome) erupted into skirmishes all over the map, 8 vs 8, 10 vs 10. (These are all estimations, of course, but you get the idea, they were BIG!) Realizing the woes of my chosen specs DPS output, I elected to stand back and throw heals at the Fire Mage I rather serendipitously met moments before the conflict began in earnest. Soon guild chats were flying, and the fight got even bigger. You couldn't ride down the road without seeing a fire nova go off over the next hill. It was at this time that some of the Horde saw fit to try and occupy Refuge Point, thus hamstringing their base of operations. I have no idea how the city raids went as my new friend and I found it much more satasfying to duke it out player e player while getting some quests done, rather than with some npc guards, but regardless of the outcome, about 30 mins after the initial attack, Hammerfall finally saw itself besieged in retaliation. There had to be at least 15 of us standing in the Hammerfall gate "Thou shalt not pass" It worked pretty well until I got two shotted by a 70 NE hunter. When I had finally rezzed (I waited a few minutes to ensure I wasnt being camped) our side had managed to repel the two or three 70s that showed up and chased them northeast until they were pinned against the mountains, where the festivities were finallly ended by a woodstock-like flotilla of Horde, along with some lvl 37 elementals who were more than willing to help/hinder. At the end of the day, I had 50 shiny new honor, and 22 honorable kills fresh out the oven.
"You young ones are spoiled these days, what with your multiple Battlegrounds and Arena matches."
Word.
Those were great days...
My first ever PvP kill came in a TM vs. SS scrap
Heres a great tip from me: Create a pvp event by writing a post on your servers forum and say for example Place: Hillsbrad and Time: 8 pm or something and see how many people will reply and join the event. This has worked several times for me on my old server, sometimes there had been 20 ppl on each side dukin it out :)
There's still plenty of action in Hillsbrad though, it's when the vets break out their 70 that it's not so fun for the 30s there. :)
Ashenvale is my first love. Raiding Astranaar on the trusty lvl20ish hunter along with every able body from the Barrens Chat. Those truly were the days.
World PvP Seemed Like A Lot Of Fun.
Having Joined About A Year Ago The Only World PvP I Ever See Is A Few Allys Raiding Crossroads.
The Biggest Non-City PvP Raid I Have Seen Was When I Got About 30 Horde Together And Took Over Westfall.
Then After The Allys Came And Killed Us All I Got About 80 People Together And Marched Through Redridge, Eastvale And Goldshire On Our Way To Stormwind Where We Took Over The Trade District And Laughed At All The Allys Trying To Kill Us.
FOR THE HORDE!
FOR THE HORDE! (/salute)
I remeber when BC first launched. I had an amazing encounter with wrold pvp. On my server, dethecus, some horde kited the new High Lord Kruul< replacement of kazzak, to ironforge. He successfully killed the dwarf leader and then we got a roaid going to eventually kill him. Now after he died we had a flood of lvl 60-70 horde gush into IF. IT was mass pvp inside of ironforge. Probably one of the most fun pvp experiences i have had. The guards had next to no time to respawn so we were on our own.
On a different not, i recall my favorite world pvp encounter was when my friend and i were twinking in stv for the fishing cap and boots when short john yelled he had huis chest. we rushed over there and got in position to take it. I stealthed to the chest on my lvl 12 rogue at the time and looted it before any of the 70's and higher lvls knew what was happening. Afterwards my friend and i got on our mains and it turned into a 30 min 15 person brawl.
(EU)Stormrage epicentre was always Crossroads, at level 20 you could barely get a quest going there because all the quest givers where ganked on a regular basis.
Course with the Euro servers having a major hickup at the moment, instance servers are always down, City Raids have started up again. This week alone UC has been raided 2-3 times a day, and the logical jump is for the Alliance to go to Silvermoon as well. Oddly enough a lot of the Horde are now sporting the City Defender achievement.
Anyway, late post I know, but big thumbs up from the UK here on a really ace website.
Ah, back in't day. I remember those good ol' days, where you got in a big group, and just killed every npc until the high levels came and tried to attack. Fun times.