Corey DeGrandchamp > Guide: Play World of Warcraft FREE

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.
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!