When you begin World of Warcraft as an undead warlock in the village of Deathknell, you stumble out of your crypt to face the night with little more than a butter knife and a medieval garbage bag. But fortunately with a little careful planning you are able to balance your character's ascension in the areas of stats, armor, familiars, talents, weapons, spells, professions, and quest completion. Here is a small guide for getting the most out of your beginning warlock.

1. Quests. Try not to swim on the deep end. Because you're able to explore most of Azeroth if you can avoid getting killed, it's easy to drift into levels of insane difficulty and explore for a few seconds before getting totally destroyed. While you may have to travel here and there for your first few quests, try to get back to finishing your lowest-level quests first. Even a simple quest can lead to a chain of more challenging and rewarding quests, helping maintain your XP increases. As a rule of thumb, yellow quests need one or more characters to solve, and red quests take some pretty heavy firepower. If you're bringing another person or people along on a quest, be sure to share the quest if possible so they can share XP and rewards for completing it.

2. Professions. Within limits, the sooner you pick up two professions that either rake in big bucks separately (mining and fishing) or work together (herbalism and alchemy), the better off you'll be when you start getting used to your character. Experiment if you have to -- you can unlearn one or both professions early on -- and settle on two sources of extra income and items. And don't forget to learn the generic extras -- cooking, fishing, and first aid -- for extra bucks. A lot of times you can just sell your creations and put them into more lasting forms, like equipment.

3. Weapons. As a warlock, your spells mostly are your weapons. However, when you're in the early stages of warlockdom, a few swings of a knife can mean the difference between victory and defeat; it's possible to get a swing in between each casting time for extra damage that adds up. It also frees you to target your next opponent with a little more mana left over for spells. Use a dagger enough and your proficiency will go up in almost every fight you use it in.

4. Armor. All the great firepower in the world won't help unless you've got decent armor. In the case of a warlock, "decent" means "horrible with a Demon Skin thrown on top of it". Demon Skins 1 and 2 are crucial for any expeditions. If you're losing heavy amounts of life while using Demon Skin 1, do your best to upgrade to 2 ASAP. You'll notice the difference immediately.

5. Tactics. Beginning warlocks don't have Stealth or Invisibility to hide them from monsters. However, there are a few tricks you can use to take advantage of the terrain. First, stay out of creatures' attack ranges. Creatures will bother you less and less as you become more powerful than they are, but often you can avoid getting hit by two or more monsters at a time by simply staying out of crowds. When this isn't an option, you can lob a heavy 1-shot spell (Shadow Bolt) at a single monster and hope that it will be the only one interested in attacking you. When it comes charging at you, start any damage over time spells. When you're in seriously deep territory without any backup, use trees to block projectiles and enemy lines of sight. And don't keep yourself vulnerable to physical attack if you can step back and let your familiar take a few hits for you. Once a battle starts you can often step back.

6. Spells. Getting any spells you're qualified to use at your level is critical. Often your best-used spells will become substandard as you advance, requiring upgrades or other supporting spells. Get a 75 in Herbalism and you'll get a free bacon-saver called Lifeblood that gives you one heck of a good health boost every few minutes when you need it, immediately.

7. Stats. Your main stats to worry about are Intellect and Spirit -- spell power and mana regeneration. Agility, strength and so on are by and large unimportant as long as you can focus heavily on firing off big spells regularly and recovering their mana fast enough. Beginning armor and accessories are pretty much a non-magical wasteland, but as time goes on you'll begin seeing loot that gives your character a more unique, more powerful style.

8. Familars. Your only pet of choice is an imp until you can summon a voidspawn around level 10. However, you can choose to keep going with your imp by developing it further with Talents (see below).

9. Talents. Only when you reach level 10 are you able to use talents, a point-based system that lets you allocate one point per level after 10 into a tree-based list of extra improvements that arrives at one ultimate skill per school of magic you use. As a warlock you choose between Affliction (draining and status-changing spells), Demonology (familiar buffs) and Destruction.

10. Locations.  Deathknell is about as dull and small-town as you can get.  Brill is a big step up, allowing you to learn many professions.  Undercity may be maddening to find a way into from Ruins of Lordaeron (take either door to the side of the large closed door, but once you make it down you'll be able to find almost anything you need within your means.

11. Money.  Again, sell everything you don't really need.  This includes lame Spring Waters and Mushrooms you find early on, and tools for professions you're not in.  Recover your corpse when you can instead of wasting money on repairs when you get defeated.  Finish as many quests as you can, instead of going for a single high-level quest, and look around for guilds offering sign-on bonuses.  My orcish hunter Gutbag got 3 gold -- roughly the equivalent of weeks of low-level gaming income -- simply by joining a guild.  The resulting money has kept me stylin' both as Slobberknokr the warlock and the hunter, since I can send money from one character to another through the mail.  Also, guilds offer a daily amount of money for repairs, so you can save your money for better equipment instead of just fixing the old junk.

To sum up, the undead warlock starts out relatively fragile, with no benefit of armor or weaponry, spells need constant updating, and you're going to have to rely on your familiar pretty heavily until you can find a few people to team up with.  However, once you turn the corner at level 10, get a beefy voidspawn, then learn to make Healthstones and Soulstones (which let you auto-raise immediately without penalty), the fun factor starts to compound. 

Good luck!