Just about everyone who plays MMOs knows who Leeroy Jenkins is. Becoming a star overnight, Leeroy Jenkins was the central character of a 2005 World of Warcraft video in which a group of players were attempting to clear out the Rookery in Upper Blackrock Spire. After a period of talky preparations, Leeroy abruptly shouts his name and charges in, triggering all of the baby dragons and wiping the group.
The whole affair was staged, as people gradually found out, but the internet found it hilarious and cemented it as a meme. Since then, the Leeroy Jenkins crew has enjoyed a modicum of popularity and were amazed as anyone else that the video went viral.
“We didn’t think anyone would believe it was real, we thought it was so obviously satire,” video creator Ben Vinson told Kotaku, “but we were wrong. We had simply run that dungeon way too many times with pick up players who trampled over those eggs and caused wipes. We were like, ‘What if there was a guild who just couldn’t get past those eggs despite their best efforts?’ We imagined the designers at Blizzard sitting around scheming, ‘They’ll never get past the eggs!’ When literally all you had to do was not step on them. It was just mind boggling how incompetent people became in that room.”
