The Burning Crusade (patch 2.4.3) is the quiet middle child of the private server scene. It has fewer realms than Wrath and fewer experiments than Vanilla, but the projects that survive tend to be serious and long-lived.
This guide rounds up the TBC realms in our tracker, grouped by what they are for. Status for every server lives on the tracker and it changes, so check the card before you commit.
Long-lived and established
- Moonwell - running since January 2011, Russian-language, operated by Torg Company. It runs two realms and the sizes differ sharply: the x5 main realm read 854 players online on September 29 2026, while the x100 realm is far smaller. The most established TBC pick we track.
- Rising Gods - Back2Basics - the TBC realm of rising-gods.de, German, with T6 PvE endgame and Arena Season 4 PvP, and three accounts allowed per player. Re-confirmed October 3 2026.
Boosted-rate and fresh realms
- RaguWoW - TBC 2.4.3 at boosted rates (x10 experience, x5 drop, x10 epic), Sunwell-themed, with world AI updates dated July 11 and August 4 2026. Home-hosted on dynamic DNS, so treat uptime as a small-project risk.
- Blackrock - a fresh TBC 2.4.3 realm with custom rates, working arenas and a published realmlist. Small so far.
- Moeni - TBC 2.4.3 with AI companions and an Ahn'Qiraj war-effort tracker.
Five-man and solo-friendly
- TBC5Legends - built for five-man raiding: every raid hand-retuned for five players, Normal, Challenge and Legends modes chosen at the door, Mythic+ to +13, and either an instant 70 or an x1 Journey. Tier 6 gates Mount Hyjal on October 17.
- Vault of Hatred - a TBC PvP realm built around playerbots, with a party builder that assembles balanced groups and a client that ships preconfigured.
- BloodWoW (TBC) - x15 rates with BattleBots and cross-faction play.
Something different
- illiwow - a TBC 2.4.3 arena that runs in the browser: rated 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3, free, nothing to download. The lowest-friction way to see TBC PvP.
- Tirisgarde - instant-70 with custom PvP events.
- WoW Tales - a Spanish progressive realm running TBC Phase 1 on the 3.3.5a client with its own launcher, opened October 2 2026.
- Dark Storm Reloaded - blizzlike Outland with ladders and a VIP support tier.
In development
- Whitemane Sunwell - a TBC 2.4.3 realm on the Whitemane network (free to play, no pay-to-win, quality-of-life features, custom legendaries, solo-queue PvP). The biggest TBC entry still to come, and not open yet.
- Stealth WoW - a European TBC custom realm, with players "coming soon."
What's gone
Felmyst is offline. Stormforge, which ran several expansions, shut down in May 2026 after a Blizzard cease-and-desist; see the crackdown explainer for the full story.
Picking a TBC server
If you want the safest community, start with Moonwell or Back2Basics. If you want TBC solo or with one friend, TBC5Legends and Vault of Hatred are built for exactly that. If you only want to taste TBC PvP, illiwow in a browser costs you nothing. And if you can wait, Whitemane Sunwell is the one to watch. When you pick one, how we review a server explains the checks we run.
Picks by expansion: WotLK, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria, Legion, Vanilla, and Vanilla+.