Tarren Mill Tarren Mill is a Horde - allied town located in the northeast of the Hillsbrad Foothills . History . The township of Tarren Mill was originally a coastal town in the Tarren Mill region of Lordaeron ( shown to be southwest of Alterac ) during the Second War . King Terenas had ordered Alliance forces to the town in order to free elven archers that had been captured in the region , and were being held in a nearby prison camp . The elves had sent along a force of elven archers to assist the Alliance soldiers in the task , as well as plans for an elven lumber mill . When the soldiers reached Tarren Mill they discovered that the elven archers had already prepared the village for war . They had located their captured brethren , and were ready to seek revenge . The enemy camp was too far inland for Alliance warships to assist so they made preparations to march the next day . The Alliance forces made several raids from the town before attacking the Horde prison camp . The soldiers returned to Tarren Mill and immediately sent word of their success . A day later an elven destroyer arrived at the town with orders for the force to board ship and sail to Southshore where the battles were becoming more common . While the reason is not clear , Tarren Mill was eventually moved inland northeast of Southshore ( and southeast of Alterac ) . Humans once ran this mill , but it fell to the Scourge , and later the Forsaken . The undead , led by High Executor Darthalia , attacked Hillsbrad ’ s citizens mercilessly . Tarren Mill was once a thriving human town , but was destroyed and taken over by the Scourge , then by the Forsaken soon after the Battle of Mount Hyjal . The town was the site of a major battle between the Orcish Horde and the Alliance of Lordaeron during the days of the Second War . In Cataclysm . Tarren Mill was updated with new Forsaken architecture . Tarren Mill is under attack ! This affectionate nickname is due to the unfortunate fact that , before the introduction of battleground s , Tarren Mill was essentially inaccessible because of the 24 - hour all - out war that took place right outside it , and oftentimes even inside it ; this situation was created because Southshore is so close by . In its early days , it was not uncommon to find every single NPC — merchants , quest NPCs , and even the bat handler — to be killed immediately upon their spawning . The honor system did eventually manage to curb this slaughter , but it didn ' t even put a dent in the real problem : ganking of low - level players , a problem that existed mainly because Horde players arrive there at 20 - 30 , whilst many Alliance players go there 5 - 10 levels later . The huge load of dozens of players fighting at once created massive zone - wide slowdown , oftentimes leading to a condition known as ' lag death ' simply because a network connection couldn ' t possibly handle the overload — more than once an entire server has crashed whenever hundreds were fighting simultaneously . If one were to be either foolish or masochistic enough to turn on the LocalDefense channel ( or , alternately , the WorldDefense channel ) , the phrase that gave Tarren Mill its nickname would literally crowd out anything and everything else in the chatbox . A very similar situation happened at southshore , if the Alliance were not attacking Tarren Mill the Horde would be attacking Southshore . Upon the introduction of the honor system all out wars would be held containing upwards of 100 players per side resulting in many servers actually crashing . A common sight ( if one ' s hardware could manage to show it ) was a veritable wall of Alliance charging the town , with another wall of Horde rushing forward to meet them . Common latency times were 5 + " seconds " , with the highest values of 7 + seconds . Since the introduction of battleground s , however , what was once a fool ' s dream is now a reality : sporadic peace in Tarren Mill . However , on PvP servers it is still a favorite area for Alliance players to hunt lower - level Horde players and vice versa . Inhabitants . Trainers : Merchants : Guards :