Leeroy Jenkins

Leeroy Jenkins is a character name for a player character created by Ben Schulz in Blizzard Entertainment's MMORPG World of Warcraft. The character became popular due to a video of the game that circulated on the Internet. The phenomenon has since spread beyond the boundaries of the gaming community into other online and mainstream media.

The video was released by a World of Warcraft player guild to video-sharing site Warcraftmovies on May 11, 2005. It features a group of players discussing a detailed battle strategy for their next encounter while Leeroy is away from his computer, preparing a meal. This risky plan is needed specifically to help Leeroy, yet it is ruined when Leeroy returns and, ignorant of the strategy, immediately charges headlong into battle shouting his own name in a stylized battle cry. His companions rush to help, but Leeroy's actions ruin the meticulous plan, and all of the group members are massacred.

Part of the satire in the video was the complex battle plan itself, which—evident only to fellow players—represented a fundamental lack of understanding of the game characters' abilities, and would have led to the party's demise even without Leeroy's suicidal charge.

The Internet phenomenon started with the release of the video clip called A Rough Go to the World of Warcraft game forum in a thread titled "UBRS (vid) ROOKERY OVERPOWERED! blue plz.", which jokingly presented the video in a serious context. The thread requested that other players provide help with strategy and that Blizzard reduce the difficulty of the encounter. The video spread as an Internet meme, and Leeroy's response to the other players' chastisements, "at least I have chicken", was also much parodied.

When asked about his actions in the video by National Public Radio, Ben Schulz said the players "were drinking 40s and just yelling at each other." As time went on some began suggesting that the video may have been staged. Schulz has neither confirmed nor denied this.

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Wikipedia