character gone?

Hi everyone, I think my character is missing. Let me give some more context. So when classic era came out I started playing with my human warrior until he was like lvl 41. Then TBC came out and i cloned him. Leveled him tot lvl 70 and wheb wotlk came out leveled him to 80 (still have this char) However, the clone on classic era (lvl 41) was still there in the time when i was leveling thru tbc and wotlk. Now i haven't checked upon him in months while i was gearing up on the warrior in wotlk classic. Recently i began playing on wow classic era again with a new char and tought to myself hmmm let me check my warrior (lvl 41) again but he is nowhere to be seen. I checked every realm, made a new char on the realm the warrior was on but nothing... he is just gone... someone who knows what could have happened? Don't know if things changed in classic era, been a while since i played. Thanks!