Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft (WoW) is one of the most popular and iconic massive multiplayer online RPGs of all time.
The game even inspired academic studies involving the economics of the game through Jens Holm and Erkki Mäkinen's research paper. The game was also used to see how society would react to a pandemic thanks to an in-game bug during its many expansions, per the Washington Post.
While these studies are certainly memorable, none were as well-known as the guy who controlled a paladin that brought chaos and mayhem because he was AFK (away from keyboard) preparing some chicken.
This is how one man (and their paladin) became one of the first memes during the early days of the internet.
This is how Leeroy Jenkins became known to the world.
Leeroy Jenkins - The Story Behind The Meme
The meme started with a group of WoW players under the guild PalsForLife, who posted a video to the official WoW forums asking for constructive criticism on their tactics and gameplay, according to Know Your Meme.
The video featured the guild's members discussing how to enter the Rookery in the Upper Blackrock Spire, which is known to be infested with dragonspawn.
One of the group's members, who seem to be known as Abdul, said that they had a 32.33% (repeating, of course) chance of survival, which is better than what the guild usually goes through.
A little later into the video, Leeroy Jenkins, who seemed to be AFK up until that point, suddenly moved and ignorantly charged into the Rookery, shouting "LEEROY JENKINS!" as his battle cry.
The group's members, stunned at what they saw, decided to try and save Leeroy and abandoned the plan they created mere moments ago. Needless to say, every one of them was defeated by the local dragonspawn despite a brave effort.
The video, which was eventually uploaded to YouTube in 2005 and again in 2006, gradually got people's attention, with the 2006 video gaining 30,615,841 views by May 2012. Media outlets soon got wind of the meme and started talking about it, with PC Gamer UK being the first to do so in 2005, while The Guardian and PC World followed in 2011.
Leeroy Jenkins' Presence In Meme Culture - Is The Video Staged?
Ben Schulz, the player behind Leeroy Jenkins, attened Blizzcon and other conventions, making the character more famous than he already was.
Ben "Anfrony" Vinson, the playerwhose perspective the world used to witness the birth of a meme, said in an email in 2017 that the video was staged and satirical from the start, per Kotaku.
"We had simply run that dungeon way too many times with pick up players who trampled over those eggs and caused wipes," Vinson said. "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."
However, the world didn't care whether it was staged or not. Leeroy Jenkins' popularity rose when the the sitcom "How I Met Your Mother" referenced the meme during the nineteenth episode of its fourth season. Other TV shows, such as "Family Guy" and "Barry" made their own references to the meme.
Meanwhile, Blizzard Entertainment acknowledged the character's fame by adding a Hearthstone card based of him. The game developer even added him to WoW as a permanent NPC in later years.
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