Using a Starter Account to Explore All of World of Warcraft (in 2012)
This story was published concurrently in video form by Subpixel.
I recently recalled one of my greatest achievements in gaming — greater than any platinum trophy I’ve ever collected, greater than any boss I’ve ever defeated. Back in 2012, I used a WoW trial account to explore the whole of the known world. WoW trial accounts, or “Starter Accounts” as they’re now called, cap your character’s level at 20, which means you can access the very basic mounts and dungeons — presumably to tease you enough to convince you to buy a full subscription. It was in this context that I made my world explorer.
I mentioned this character back in a previous video about how depressing I found WoW’s Dun Morogh valley, and from my experience making a dwarf in that snowbound hellscape, I’d already done essentially everything the starter account had to offer, so my goal with my new Draenei character became one to determine the true limits of a WoW starter account. What could I actually do? I knew from my experience as a dwarf that zones did not seem to immediately have level requirements, as I had previously wandered into Loch Modan sufficiently underleveled for what threats awaited me there. But how far could I explore before the game stopped me? Apparently, there was no limit.
This quest soon became twofold: acquire as many exploration achievements as I possibly could, for bragging rights; and because I was a hunter, tame as many exotic animals as I could, as further proof of my efforts.
This was pre-Mists of Pandaria, so there were five key achievements I had my eyes on:
- Eastern Kingdoms Explorer
- Kalimdor Explorer
- Outland Explorer
- Northrend Explorer
- Cataclysm Explorer
Acquiring these five achievements would see me exploring over sixty unique zones across four continents, and you’d think that after completing such a monumental task, it would be difficult to forget. Apparently not. The memory came back to me only recently, when I unearthed a huge folder of screenshots from my travels — screenshots you’ve been looking at for the past few minutes.
So here’s how I did it — to be best of my recollection:
At first, I was still unsure as to whether or not the game would even let me in to some of the higher level areas, so that was the first test — get somewhere really high level. I could’ve explored all the low level areas first, but I didn’t want to spend the time exploring all the areas I knew I could access, if only to be locked out of the high level zones later. And there was one high level area I wanted to use a test: The Outland.
If I could get through the Dark Portal to the Outland, I figured that was a sure a bet as any that the game would let me go anywhere I wanted. But even that was getting several steps ahead of myself. Step 1 was just getting to the Dark Portal in the first place. For those unfamiliar with World of Warcraft and its geography, The Dark Portal is located in a zone called the Blasted Lands, which Wowpedia lists as level 40–60. For those of you keeping track at home, that means that I would have to anticipate enemies 20–40 levels more powerful than I was.
As is the way with most adventure games, the further one travels from the starter area, the more challenging and powerful the enemies become — such is the case with WoW. These waves of increasingly more powerful enemies would be just one of several hurdles I would need to overcome in order to collect every one of the game’s exploration achievements. So, knowing that traditional routes between WoW’s myriad zones would likely result in instant death should I stumble across the path of some powerful enemy or another, I had to get creative with my landscape traversal. This became a long struggle of trial and error until I found routes, however roundabout, that avoided as many high level enemies as possible.
I mentioned before that level 20 is the earliest point at which you can acquire a mount. Mount speed in WoW is tied to you character’s level, so while you can access a mount at level 20, they are the slowest mounts. However, they are just fast enough to outrun most enemies that don’t have ranged attacks. But even with this extra speed, most the the regular paths into the Blasted Lands were too “bottle-neck-y” to be worth traversing on foot.
Here is the alternate route I came up with:
From Booty Bay, in Stranglethorn Vale, I could cross the cape and swim along the eastern coast from Cape Stranglethorn to the Blasted Lands — making landfall in the town of Surwich — southwest of the Tainted Pass. From there it was a pretty simple traversal to the south side of the crater that houses the Dark Portal. The reasoning behind this path was twofold: one, there were no enemies, to speak of, in the waters between Stranglethorn and the Blasted Lands — unlike if I had traversed the intended roadways between the areas; and two, there was a gryphon master in Surwich, which meant that after my first visit to the town, I would no longer have to worry about swimming from Stranglethorn — in the future I could just fly there.
So slowly but surely I made my way up the coast to Surwich, and eventually to the southern side of the Dark Portal. I fully expected for WoW to not let me through the portal, and give me some prompt saying “this area is for subscribers only” — like many of the more fancy areas in games like Runescape or Club Penguin. But, to my everlasting joy, entering the portal sent me to a loading screen, which eventually vanished to reveal Hellfire Peninsula. I’d made it.
Knowing I didn’t want to make the obnoxious trek to the Dark Portal every time I wanted to visit the Outland, I set my hearthstone to the inn in Shattrath City — and made it my hub for all my future Outland explorations.
I actually explored all of the Outlands before finishing off my explorations of Kalimdor, the Eastern Kingdoms, or Northrend — but eventually I did cross all the continents, and ticked off all those boxes to claim my rewards. Though it was in the Outlands that I found out how useful the Hunter “Eagle Eye” skill was when trying to capture cool screenshots of the area.
I also collected a handful of new companions while on my expedition through the Outland — as further proof I’d actually been to each of these places. One Dealer Rashad sold me a Blue Dragonhawk hatchling, Brown Rabbit, Crimson Snake, Senegal, and Siamese cat. The Snake is actually also available from a vendor in Orgrimmar, but that was obviously out of the question since I was an Alliance character.
After completing my exploration of the Outland, I returned back to the continents of terrestrial Azeroth — and discovered new hurdles in my quest for world exploration. Secondary to the issue of increasingly higher level enemies was the issue of flight. Some of the higher level zones had areas that were only accessible by winged mount, which require a minimum level of 60 to use. In case you’ve forgotten, that was 40 levels beyond the Starter Account cap.
But I found a somewhat inelegant solution. While I wasn’t able to summon winged mounts in my corporeal form, ghosts sometimes have access to similarly ghosty flying mounts in case your character died somewhere unable to be accessed on foot. This allowed for some creative resurrections, wherein I could die in one area of the world, ghost-fly up to an unexplored area, and if that space had a spirit healer, resurrect in the unexplored area — ticking off another box towards that area’s exploratory achievement.
This was particularly useful in some of the at that time new Cataclysm areas, like Uldum and the Twilight Highlands.
During my travels through Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms I picked up a few extra companions, some purchased from vendors and others collected out in the wild, like my Darting, Ravasaur, and Razormaw hatchlings — and a Dark Whelpling that was often by my side during my explorations.
But there were still some low level areas that I knew would be troublesome to explore, because they were deep in Horde controlled territory. I don’t fully recall how I got into these areas — though I know places like Thunderbluff and Undercity were easy to “explore” because their vertical borders were such that I could explore below and above the capitols, respectively, and get their associated boxes checked. Because I was a hunter, I was able to tame a couple of unique beasts from these horde areas too — Humar the Pridelord in the Northern Barrens, Echeyakee in the Barrens proper, Bayne in the Tirisfal Glades, and an armored boar from the Tauren starter area in Mulgore.
I also bought an Ancona Chicken when I passed through Thousand Needles, and a Senegal when I was in Booty Bay. And without much else by way of unique traversal, I explored all of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms.
And now we come to the final continent — or the final continent at that time. I searched and searched through my external drives for screenshots from my explorations of Northrend, but I could not find any — but you best believe I went there, and explored the whole thing. I think that by the end of it all I’d also gotten the “Pest Control” achievement, as well as Cataclysm’s “Stood in the Fire”.
So, that is more or less the story of how I explored the whole of WoW — or the whole as it was — as a level 20 Draenei. Regrettably, I do not remember the email associated with the trial account, so I can’t look up the character or log back in to get further proof of my efforts. The only documentation I have of my efforts, beyond landscape photography, are screenshots of my in-progress “Outland Explorer” achievement, and some achievements from WoW’s Midsummer Fire Festival, which don’t prove so much that I’ve been everywhere, but prove that I’ve at least been a whole lot of places for a character capped at level 20. But maybe this will be a long summer project — trying to once again, as a WoW starter account, explore the whole world.
