Southshore vs. Tarren Mill returns as PVP Brawl this week

You remember the chaos of Southshore vs. Tarren Mill, both from vanilla and later released as part of World of Warcraft’s 10-year anniversary event. Now it’s back in brawl form. Before there were battlegrounds, players made their own, and the two most famous examples of player generated World PVP were the occasional Alliance raids on the Crossroads in the Barrens, and the far more commonplace shifting back and forth battles taking place between the towns of Southshore and Tarren Mill in what was then contested territory, Hillsbrad.

Both factions had people questing and running into each other, both sides would end up getting into scraps, and those scraps would grow as max level players would come to join in the fray. I still remember the time a level 60 Tauren druid jumped me on my way to Scarlet Monastery — I was level 30. When my wife and I hit max level, we spent an entire afternoon hunting and killing that Druid over and over again.

Now? The game world has changed, Hillsbrad isn’t even contested territory anymore, and Southshore is gone. But this week, it lives again.

Two towns clash in this week's PvP Brawl—Southshore vs. Tarren Mill from May 30–June 6. ⚔️ pic.twitter.com/0ZMWapkf3B

— World of Warcraft (@Warcraft) May 30, 2017

If you never played in vanilla WoW it’s hard to explain what a big deal SS/TM was in the days before battlegrounds. There’s a reason the entrance to Alterac Valley is in Hillsbrad — back before you could queue for BG’s and had to go their manually to sign up, all the PVP players were already there anyway. It was easy for them to get over there. The brawl can’t truly recapture the frenetic, chaotic back and forth battles of the old days, but it’s still a fun way to relive the past, or experience it for the first time if you never have before.

I may just take my Human Warrior out of mothballs for this one.