Leeroy Jenkins (video)
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Leeroy Jenkins (aka Ben Schulz) is one of the most famous of characters in World of Warcraft. The video has become a World of Warcraft phenomenon. After much debate and controversy, Pals for Life, Leeroy's guild, have admitted that this was a staged promotional video. They maintain, however, that it is essentially a faithful re-enactment of a true event.
Leeroy's actions have caused the larger World of Warcraft community to use his name to represent any action that could be seen as potentially dangerous and/or incredibly stupid. The Leeroy movie is generally suggested to be a must-see for any and all WoW-players. It has become a popular term for a person who causes a bad pull that causes a group wipe. In 2005, Leeroy was also mentioned in a question about World of Warcraft on the TV game show Jeopardy!.
Contents |
The Video
In the video, Leeroy sits AFK while the rest of his extremely cautious group discuss tactics on how to safely defeat a boss in Upper Blackrock Spire (to the point of calculating a 32.33% chance of survival). Before his party is properly prepared, however, Leeroy suddenly returns to his computer saying, "Alright chums, let's do this...", then screams his signature line, "LEEEEEERRRRROOOOYY JEEEEEEEEENNNNKKIIINS!!!!" and he charges blindly into the battlezone.
The other party members stand still for a moment, perhaps in shock, and then run after Leeroy in an ill-fated attempt to both 'rescue' the helpless crusader and 'stick to the plan' to complete their original goal. Meanwhile, Leeroy has proceeded to aggro nearly every creature in the chamber, and the party is quickly overwhelmed and unable to coordinate. At this point, the party wipes (all members die) and discovers that their Soulstone buffs have exhausted.
The movie concludes with the words 'At least I have chicken', which has become a secondary catch-phrase. Schulz states that he was kicked out of the guild for about five minutes until they let him back in after the inncident. He also stated that they used a soulstone after the event to rez everyone.
The Player
Leeroy's actual name is Ben Schulz, of Colorado, and he has been playing since open beta. He is a repair technician for industrial lighting. Although offered by EA to be a game tester after the Leeroy event, he turned it down. He came up with the name Leeroy Jenkins after a catchphrase/yell while playing Starcraft with some friends. [1]
Another perspective on the movie
The movie was staged, and to some, an obvious joke. Even before a "Pals For Life" member was interviewed on a gaming news network and stated that it was a reenactment of a previous event, people pointed out the various indicators for a staged event, including the following:
- The expression "WIPE TIME!" is written in the guild chat of the recording player at the beginning of the movie. Though this may have been an attempt at humor by one of the guild members.
- One of the raid members asks, "Does [Leeroy] need those Devout shoulders?" The Devout shoulder piece, or more precisely [Devout Mantle], is a cloth item from the Priest set Vestments of the Devout. Leeroy, being a paladin, would rarely need to wear a cloth item. To this question, one of the raid members responds, "it'll help him heal better, he needs more mana." Even though, with the paladin itemization of that time, it was not uncommon that healing paladins would use mail, leather or cloth armor for healing, the shoulders in question would not have been especially well served for that purpose.
- The calculation of survival percentage -- the calculations are nonsense ("32.33 repeating" percent chance of survival) and serve only to parody nerd guilds who overuse meaningless statistics.
- The strategy being discussed is unlikely to succeed and is largely counter-productive: the Father Flame event is possibly one of the hardest events to master, simply due to the large number eggs that will potentially hatch during the fight. The use of Intimidating Shout would not help ; if anything, it would only keep the whelps off the group for a few seconds and possibly pull even more. Casting Divine Intervention on the spellcasters is similarly useless -- it would prevent them from casting anything (one of the members even yells in the video, "I don't think you can cast with that shit on!").
- Most members of the raid can be seen purposely running over eggs to release more whelps. When whelps have already been released, this is the last thing anyone who has any knowledge of the encounter would do, except if the person was trying to make it more difficult for the group to survive.
- The video was first posted to the official forums under the topic title "Rookery overpowered -- BLUE PLEASE!", in which the Pals For Life guild made an empassioned appeal to Blizzard to lower the difficulty of the Rookery because they were unable to handle all of the whelps, despite their formidable AOE fear rotation. The obvious solution (and nature of the joke itself), of course, is that the Rookery is trivial if you step on as few eggs as possible, rendering the need for a "fear rotation" useless. If you must do the event, going out of your way to step on extra eggs certainly does not help the matter.
The Leeroy mod
Prior to the addon exodus, which was caused by Patch 2.0.1., players could also get a Leeroy add-on for WoW. Typing /leeroy would result in the playing of the 'Leeeerrroooyy Jenkins!' line, accompanied by an emote saying "<player> invokes the power of Leeroy Jenkins!". Other players that have the mod would also hear the Leeroy Jenkins sound.
Cheering for the Whiter One
Leeroy stepped into controversy when he stated that he would be cheering the "white" team, as in caucasian. He explained, however, that "it came out wrong but like I've tried explaining that before but until America televises video gaming to that extent and we have people that are that hyped about it... [we] are not going to produce [the] kind of players that Korea is producing right now. They are superstars. They play against the best and people strive to do that much harder than they do here. So in that, generally, Koreans kick the shit out of the white dudes. And that's what that was about. I was just doing that to root for the underdog."
Dialogue
The full dialog of the original video is difficult to reconstruct based on the material. As a consequence of this individual transcripts may vary heavily.
The following is therefore an approximation based on available material:
Forekin: [talking to teammates outside cave] OK guys, these eggs have given us a lot of trouble in the past, uh does anybody need anything off this guy or can we bypass him?
Spiffy: Uhh, I think Leeroy needs something from this guy.
Forekin: Oh, does he need those Devout Shoulders? Doesn't - isn't he a paladin?
Spiffy: Yeah, but that will help him heal better, he'll have more mana.
Forekin: [sighs] Christ. OK, uhh well what we'll do, I'll run in first, gather up all the eggs, we can kinda just, ya know blast them all down with AOE. Um, I will use Intimidating Shout, to kinda scatter 'em, so we don't have to fight a whole bunch of them at once. Uhh, when my Shouts are done, I'll need Anfrony to come in and drop his Shout too, uh so we can keep them scattered and not have to fight too many. Um, when his is done, Bass of course will need to run in and do the same thing. We're gonna need Divine Intervention on our mages, uhh so they can AE, uh so we can of course get them down fast, cause we're bringing all these guys, I mean, we'll be in trouble if we don't take them down quick. Uhh I think this is a pretty good plan, we should be able to pull it off this time. Uhh, what do you think Abduhl? Can you give me a number crunch real quick?
Abduhl: Yeah gimme a sec... I'm coming up with thirty-two point three three uh, repeating of course, percentage, of survival.
Forekin: Well, that's a lot better than we usually do. Uhh, alright, you think we're ready guys? [interrupted]
Leeroy: Alright, chums, Let's do this... LEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOY JEEEEEEENKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINS! [runs into room]
-Short pause-
Spiffy: ... Oh my God he just ran in. [runs in]
Forekin: Save him! Oh jeez, stick to the plan. Oh jeez, let's go, let's go! [follows]
Forekin: Stick to the plan chums, stick to the plan!
Forekin: Oh jeez, oh fuck.
[Indistinguishable]: Gimme a Divine Intervention, hurry up.
Forekin: Shoutin'!
Player 3: I can't cast! I can't move, am I lagging, guys? I can't move!
Forekin: What the—what the hell?
[Another Player]: I can't AE!
Player 3: I can't move!
Forekin: Oh my God...
[Another Player]: The eggs keep respawning! More respawning!!
[Indistinguishable]: I don't think you can cast with that shit on!
[Another player]: Oh my God!
Leeroy: We got em, we got em! I got it, I got it.
Spiffy: Take it off! Take it off! [muffled shouts]
Forekin: Stay down, Stay down. Oh my God..
Forekin: Goddamnit Leeroy! Goddamn it...
[Various others]: Yeah, Leeroy you moron, Leeroy! [various put-downs of Leeroy amongst group]
Forekin: Listen, this is ridiculous.
[Indistinguishable]: You dumbass.
Leeroy: I'm on it.
Forekin: I'm down, Forekin down. Goddamnit. [shouting, then a pause, followed by other put-downs] Why do you do this shit, Leeroy?
[Another Player]: Spiffy, rez us! Spiffy, rez us!
Spiffy: I'm trying!
Leeroy [crying]: It's not my fault!
Forekin: Who's Soulstoned? We do have a Soulstone up, don't we? [everyone dies] Think I need a Soulstone?
Spiffy: Yeah but you need a Warlock.
Spiffy [noticing everybody is dead]: ... Oh God...
Forekin: Oh for - [sighs, nearly chokes and swallows] Great job! For Christ's sake! [indistinguishable babble] Leeroy, you are just stupid as hell.
[Another Player]: Oh my God...
Leeroy: At least I have chicken.
Cultural references & Aftermath
This event has even gone on to garner attention from Blizzard and Upper Deck Entertainment. The mock-website YTMND has a vast collection of pages involving Leeroy-jokes. Also, World of Warcraft Trading Card Game features a Leeroy Jenkins trading card.
Leeroy Jenkins was mentioned as part of a clue on the November 16, 2005 episode of the game show Jeopardy! as part of their college week tournament, though no contestant rang in. "Guerilla gaming." Guardian Unlimited (news website). Mentions the Jeopardy question without specific details.
A presentation at the 2005 "Aesthetics of Play" conference at the University of Bergen described Leeroy as the "one icon of the WoW player, one movie from the game that most people have seen."
In the 2007 video game "Mass Effect", one of the initial three squad members is named Richard L. Jenkins - his middle initial standing for "Leeroy." During the opening stages of the game, while the player and the other squad members take cover, Jenkins rushes into battle and gets himself killed.
A 2007 Toyota Tacoma television commercial spoofs Leeroy."Toyota Ad Spoofs Video Game, Viral Video"
In the game Adventure Quest, there is an area for guardians where they can be with Leeroy's party, and even fight them.
In the game Dragonfable, your character will occasionally shout the famed leeroy jenkins warcry in combat whilst performing a special melee attack.
In a sixth-season episode of the sitcom Scrubs (TV series), the character of Laverne gives a Leeroy-style cry of "Let's do this! LAVERNE ROBERTS!" before punching out the window of a car, much to the disbelief and surprise of her friend, who had had the keys to the car all along.
During Blizzcon 2005 in Anaheim California, Blizzard's own metal band played a song entitled "Leeroy Jenkins, The Paladin of the Horde" in his honor, as seen on the "Behind The Scenes" DVD that came with the Burning Crusade Collector's Edition.
In the South Park episode Make Love, Not Warcraft, the antagonist is a griefer named Jenkins, an obvious reference to Leeroy Jenkins. The episode also opens and closes with audio clips from the original video.
In the episode "Sonata" of the CBS television show Moonlight, before running into traffic a Vampire shouts "Lets do this! LEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOY JEEEEEEENKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINS!" and causes an ambulance to swerve and crash.
In the Guild Wars explorable area Sorrow's Furnace, added during a game update in August 2005, a character called Kilroy Stonekin must be escorted by the players for a quest. One of his skills is called "Kilroy Stonekin", increases party movement speed and proceeds him charging if into the nearest group of monsters.
External links
- Download location of original movie
- Leeroy in Jeopardy!
- Leeroy Jenkins Tribute Site.
- Interview with Ben "Leeroy Jenkins" Schulz
- Home of PALS FOR LIFE - original site for Leeroy Jenkins's guild.
- An interview with Leeroy Jenkins
- The Leeroy Jenkins Parable
- Leeroy's Armory profile
