Warpy was my first World of Warcraft character. I picked up WoW in mid-January of 2006 in order to test out the stability of a computer I'd just rebuilt, but ended up having so much fun I just stuck around. I named him after an old Diablo II character of mine. Warpy definitely has his own personality, even though Kul Tiras is not a role-playing server. He's nothing like the smarmy necromancer that he was named after. He never had two silvers to rub together, and every time he leveled it would take days to buy his new spells and grimoires.


He started at the Abbey where all humans do, but I wanted to look around, so I just sent him along the road south, to Goldshire, then east with no idea of what was at the other end of the road. As Warpy was just level 1, he kept getting killed by wolves. Eventually I just got frustrated, and tried out his hearthstone, which returned him to the Abbey. This time, I explored the area near the Abbey, found the quest givers, and meekly leveled my warlock the way I was supposed to.

I found out in the guides on the Blizzard site that a monster's aggro radius depended on the level difference between it and your character, so became more cautious in my explorations, but I didn't sit down and read any 1-60 or even 1-10 guides, as those would ruin the surprises. I saw my first imp when I found Stormwind and thought it was a vanity pet. "That's cute. Where can I get one of those?" Several patches later, demons learned to talk, and I realized that imps weren't cute at all.

Warpy's explorations were greatly facilitated by the Lunar Festival, which started by the time he was in his early teens. He was able to get the Darnassus and Ironforge flight points without the usual trial-and-error expeditions. The Deeprun Tram was easy to find once in Ironforge. Warpy was able to supplement Westfall quests with some in Loch Modan and Auberdine.

However, the Lunar Festival also offered Warpy plenty of opportunity to get into trouble. I decided he should collect as many ancestral coins as possible because he was level 16, darn it, and big enough to take care of himself! I had a notebook and a map of Azeroth, and got the names of two more elders from each elder Warpy found. I did decide to leave the guy by Blackrock Mountain alone. But Booty Bay looked pretty convenient to Westfall, so I once more had Warpy head south down the road as far as he could go. No problem with Duskwood, except for a skull-level Defias bandit who destealthed when I checked out a side road and chased Warpy a ways down the road, but I couldn't get him past the tigers and panthers by the road in Stranglethorn Vale (they were twice his level).

I've never had as much fun leveling an alt, even the Horde ones, because I'll never be able to replicate that exploration experience.