Oh my god, he just ran in
May 11, 2015 12:44 PM   Subscribe

In what would turn out to be a watershed event in the history of viral videos and online multiplayer gaming, footage of the Leeroy Jenkins incident was uploaded to the internet ten years ago today (previously).
posted by prize bull octorok (72 comments total) 35 users marked this as a favorite
 
JJJJEEENNNNNNNNNKKKIIIINNNNNNSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
posted by GuyZero at 12:51 PM on May 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


How are there no "timesup" or "letsdothis" tags on this post?
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 12:54 PM on May 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


I am so old.
posted by Metroid Baby at 12:55 PM on May 11, 2015 [19 favorites]


In a world where there are very few cultural references my young children understand from their ageing father's era, Leeroy is one of the few we all share.
posted by greenhornet at 12:56 PM on May 11, 2015 [11 favorites]


At least I've got chicken...
posted by kmz at 12:56 PM on May 11, 2015 [13 favorites]


At least he had chicken.
posted by entropicamericana at 12:57 PM on May 11, 2015 [7 favorites]


I think this is a much better video - the linked one seems to be missing the original battle cry.
posted by GuyZero at 12:57 PM on May 11, 2015 [20 favorites]


Well now I know who my sons and his friends are always talking about.
posted by chapps at 12:58 PM on May 11, 2015


Something about the incredibly laborious nature of the joke feels like a metaphor for MMOs in general. A clan goes all the way into this dungeon just to pull off a cheap bit of stoner humor.

Except somehow I think there is this kernal of universal joy just in that shout of total release.
posted by selfnoise at 1:02 PM on May 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


My wife and I have always been amused at poor poor Corporal Richard L. Jenkins in the first Mass Effect.
posted by kmz at 1:03 PM on May 11, 2015 [8 favorites]


At 8 years old and 43 million views, that YouTube link seems to be the most-viral Leeroy video around. The "ten years ago" link includes both the high quality version and the original upload!
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:05 PM on May 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


By this logic MetaFilter must date from what like the 1700s?
posted by StephenF at 1:09 PM on May 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


How KFC never managed to turn this into a commercial I will never in a million years understand, even as I'm thankful they didn't.
posted by echocollate at 1:10 PM on May 11, 2015 [7 favorites]


All of my friends who hate the very idea of WoW still love that video. It's universally easy to understand and hilarious.

There is a Leeroy card in Hearthstone of course, which is pretty much only used as a finisher. It's not that bad to lose to him because I always have a bit of a laugh.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:10 PM on May 11, 2015 [8 favorites]


There's something amusing about the fact that the original link in the previously post doesn't exist any more and that even if it did it was a link to Windows Media; the technology that presented it is basically outdated already but the meme itself still means something to a lot of people.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:11 PM on May 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


leeroyjenkins.net

The soundboard still works
posted by Dr-Baa at 1:15 PM on May 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


And now my brain is intoning (though I know it's only tangental)

I will not move when flame wreath is cast or the raid blows up.
posted by tilde at 1:17 PM on May 11, 2015 [9 favorites]


The original YouTube upload is a great example of bitrot in action: because of subsequent changes in compression standards, the quality of that video has degraded considerably in the years since it was uploaded.
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 1:17 PM on May 11, 2015 [17 favorites]


I will not move till flame wreath is cast or the raid blows up.

No, no, no, you do not move when Flame Wreath is ca--
*blows up*
posted by Spatch at 1:20 PM on May 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


I love that the second post in the original thread suggests it was staged. It's comforting to know Metafilter has remained consistent these past ten years.
posted by bondcliff at 1:25 PM on May 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


Wake up sheeple! Leeroy Jenkins was an inside job!
posted by Foosnark at 1:28 PM on May 11, 2015 [14 favorites]


I think it was staged, though, wasn't it? Ben Schulz admitted to it.
posted by Nevin at 1:31 PM on May 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


From Wikipedia:
The meme spread further in 2009, when the Armed Forces Journal published an article titled "Let's Do This!: Leeroy Jenkins and the American Way of Advising". The article, by Capt. Robert M Chamberlain, links Jenkins to the American approach to advising Iraq.
Seems appropriate.
posted by clawsoon at 1:37 PM on May 11, 2015 [12 favorites]


It never occurred to me, until today, that the original video was a digital play (not that I've thought about it in, on, 9 years or so), but now it seems obvious. 2005 was definitely a different era. It's also interesting that no one has, like, tracked Ben Schultz down and done a "where is he now?" bit. I guess the legend of Leeroy Jenkins transcends his creator.
posted by muddgirl at 1:44 PM on May 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yes, it's staged. From what I recall, the tactics suggested are a joke too. For example, the WoW wiki says that divine intervention made a character immune to damage for three minutes, but unable to move and unable to take action. So casting it on the mages means that you'll just make them useless for a while.
posted by YAMWAK at 1:46 PM on May 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


Sometimes I'm sad I don't have time for MMORPGs any more ... I still remember UBRS raids wiping on the rookery part because someone couldn't follow instructions. Raids were even more of a mess back in the Molten Core/40 player raid days ... what are the odds that at least one of 40 random people from all over the world will space out, spill a drink, have to pee, or lose internet during a critical battle?

Spoiler: It's ONE HUNDRED PERCENT.
posted by freecellwizard at 1:47 PM on May 11, 2015 [20 favorites]


500 years from now, when video gaming is reduced to the level of Pong, video game historians will mark this as the event that precipitated the demise of video-game civilization.
posted by rankfreudlite at 1:48 PM on May 11, 2015


I think it was staged, though, wasn't it? Ben Schulz admitted to it.

I think the event more or less happened, but the video itself is a "reenactment".
posted by Brocktoon at 1:48 PM on May 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


The Armed Forces article in question.
posted by clawsoon at 1:48 PM on May 11, 2015


that audio is hideous. ow ow ow.
posted by thelonius at 1:50 PM on May 11, 2015


Another "classic" is the Onyxia Wipe audio. (language)
posted by Brocktoon at 1:50 PM on May 11, 2015 [11 favorites]


As jsnlxndrlv pointed out above, the audio from the Leroy Jenkins video actually used to be much better - but videos that have been up on Youtube for ten years have kind of gone through the ringer as far as compression is concerned. So if you remember pulling up that video years ago and watching it without cringing, you're probably not wrong.
posted by koeselitz at 1:52 PM on May 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


I can't comment about raiding in WoW (never played it), but I participated in 54 person pick-up raids in EQ, and they generally went pretty well. Raids in DDO tended to go worse, and that was with only 20 people, but then raids in DDO didn't take anywhere near as long as a full EQ raid.
posted by YAMWAK at 1:56 PM on May 11, 2015


Last time I went skydiving I totally shouted LEEEEEEEEROYYY JENNNNKIIIIIINNNS as I exited the plane. Felt damn good.
posted by duffell at 1:57 PM on May 11, 2015 [24 favorites]


I've done 8 and 16-man progression raiding in SWTOR (though not at elite levels or anything) and man I can't even imagine dealing with 24, 40, etc people at a time. And I laugh at that Onyxia video every time but I have to admit there's been times when doing raids with people that have been raiding for a while and still just can't do super basic shit and I cuss them out a lot but only in my head.
posted by kmz at 2:02 PM on May 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


Back when 80% of my team played WoW we also were converting the hundreds of builds we support to run on a Jenkins agent farm. Yes, the markup file that controls the build ecosystem generator is named LeeroyJenkins.xml. It has outlived any of our toons which seems like a metaphor for something.
posted by Fezboy! at 2:04 PM on May 11, 2015


Dear god what have we been doing with ourselves
posted by The Whelk at 2:13 PM on May 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


I remember when Joi Ito called WoW "the next golf."
posted by Nevin at 2:30 PM on May 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


Onyxia Wipe always reminds me of this Eurovision BBC producer video.
posted by chrominance at 2:36 PM on May 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


Anybody up for a change.org "Leeroy Jenkins Day?"
posted by symbioid at 2:44 PM on May 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


I've done 8 and 16-man progression raiding in SWTOR (though not at elite levels or anything) and man I can't even imagine dealing with 24, 40, etc people at a time

25 man raiding with a dedicated, competent raid guild (Horde firsts on our server for pretty much everything when I was playing with them, not world beaters but pretty good) was the most fun I ever had with electronic entertainment. The coordination of the large group pretty much is the gameplay, it's not so hard to not stand in the fire but once you add a few more moves for all 25 people to do and they are all different for different bosses it becomes challenging.

You need competent raid leaders who can keep their heads and the classes and roles need to coordinate well among themselves. Too many guilds just depend on one raid leader to do everything and it's just too much to keep track of.

The sense of communal accomplishment when you get the job done for the first time is just off the charts awesome. Leeroy type moments are part of the fun too though. I once wiped the raid on Felmyst because I was coming down off shrooms at the time and thought I saw a giant spider run across my wall and screamed about it on Vent. Glad nobody was recording!
posted by Drinky Die at 2:53 PM on May 11, 2015 [8 favorites]


The original YouTube upload is a great example of bitrot in action: because of subsequent changes in compression standards, the quality of that video has degraded considerably in the years since it was uploaded.

Or maybe we have degraded in our ability to view videos.
posted by rankfreudlite at 2:54 PM on May 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


This has so many layers. The basics:

Pals For Life was a PvP guild, the fact they are inside UBRS is kind of a joke, you'd be more likely to find them outside trying to kill all the PvE people before they could get in the instance. Blackrock Mountain was really the hub of endgame material in vanilla WoW, even if you thought raiding was a joke. Laughing Skull was an absolutely ruthless server to play on for world PvP.

Then they are trying to do the father flame event so leeroy can get his devout shoulders. This is a sly joke about Paladins (who can wear plate armor) having to wear cloth because Blizzard didn't make plate with the right stats. Plus, Leeroy is obviously a Retribution paladin, wearing armor meant for a warrior, and wielding two handed weapon: a pvp build.

He also pulls all the dragons, then Bubbles, which many people would have experienced a Ret Paladin doing at some point.

Then, look at how everyone else is set up. All the warriors have a two handed weapon, are undoubtedly Arms specced (You can see Mortal Strike in the hotbar of the recorder), no one is geared to play tank. This is early in the game and all the other classes which are supposed to be able to tank (druids, paladins) don't have proper gear (again blizzard failed at gearing vanilla properly).

They keep talking about AoE which is the last thing you want to do in that room. Any damage or contact will pop the eggs. If you were doing it right you would carefully pull the egg keepers into the open room where the people are sitting.

Divine Intervention is a very situational spell. Not only does it make people unable to move ("I can't move, am I lagging guys?"), it kills the person it casts it. It would take 4? of 10 people out of the fight instantly (ironically including Leeroy).

The druid is healing in their humanoid form, but clearly is wearing Twig of The World Tree which is a mace meant for feral druids (pvp/damage/tank). When the battle starts, the druid immediately casts tranquility (the sparkles that fill the screen) which is a channeled healing spell that makes it extremely likely that everything will attack the druid (and probably kill him instantly).

Further, Intimidating shout (1:43) makes everything run around in fear (popping more eggs). Then Anfrony (the recorder) runs up the ramp to pull more dragons who are aren't even part of the event.

Finally it all ends with more nonsense, everyone yells at Spiffy (the mage who has been DIed) to resurrect them, but he can't because mages can't ever do that. Then they ask who is Soul Stoned, but no one is because you need a warlock to do that etc...

Essentially nothing that they say or do makes any sense, except that you might have wasted an afternoon in 2004 because someone did it at the wrong moment.
posted by ethansr at 2:55 PM on May 11, 2015 [59 favorites]


The power of picking the absolute perfect name to hang the entire three minutes on.
posted by Navelgazer at 3:07 PM on May 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


I can't think of Leeroy with "More Dots" (Linked above as "Onyxia Wipe")
I was well into the game at the time, and More Dots hit me way closer to home.
posted by DigDoug at 3:20 PM on May 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yes, something about the Onyxia wipe sticks very deep in the humour centre of my brain, too, in a way that's much more memetic in its profusion and mutation than Leeroy Jenkins, as pleasant a jape as the Jenkins' vid is. C'mon guys, throw more dots!
posted by erlking at 3:25 PM on May 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Onyxia wipe also has a Hearthstone card.
posted by Drinky Die at 3:32 PM on May 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


There is a Leeroy card in Hearthstone of course, which is pretty much only used as a finisher.

Agreed. But...it's just cheap enough that it hangs out in your hand, just daring you to do a Leroy Jenkins of your own: throw the card into the ring, do a bit of damage, and immediately get clobbered.
posted by Ian A.T. at 3:33 PM on May 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


kmz: “I've done 8 and 16-man progression raiding in SWTOR (though not at elite levels or anything) and man I can't even imagine dealing with 24, 40, etc people at a time. And I laugh at that Onyxia video every time but I have to admit there's been times when doing raids with people that have been raiding for a while and still just can't do super basic shit and I cuss them out a lot but only in my head.”
I dragged people from the second-stringer development squad up and down Karazhan Tower with my tank for a year. Organized, formed, solved add-on problems for, and lead the raid and explained the same fights every week. I also tanked progression into Ulduar. After a couple of months of people not getting the hang of Kologarn, I quit playing WoW for a long, long time. WoW uses tanks and raid leaders up, even leading people they like and respect. I can't even imagine using the new "raid with random strangers" features.
posted by ob1quixote at 3:57 PM on May 11, 2015


Mod note: A few comments deleted. If you're not interested, skip the thread. Thanks.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 4:00 PM on May 11, 2015 [6 favorites]


The LFR stuff lowers the difficulty level down to loot pinata basically.
posted by Drinky Die at 4:01 PM on May 11, 2015


I can't even imagine using the new "raid with random strangers" features.

The way this works is that on the "raid with random strangers" difficulty all of the features of each fight are tuned down so far that they're absolutely trivial. Half of your raid could be completely asleep at the keyboard while the other half keyboard turns and clicks all their spells and you would probably still win.
posted by IAmUnaware at 4:02 PM on May 11, 2015


Well the comment got deleted and metafilter seemed to be down for a bit just as I was going to reply, but I already typed up this brief explanation and will offer it anyway, for the hordes of curious mefites who don't know what this is about and would prefer to learn about it through the comments here. For if one person can be bold enough to comment, there must be thousands who share the sentiment. It's not complicated:

Ten years ago, there was a game called Wizards of Warcraft (WoW). It was the sort of game referred to as an MMO (massive multi-player online), in which dozens of people could play all at once. The players organized themselves into different "clans", which would fight amongst each other for control over the different star systems in the game. Better Together was a PvP clan ("People versus Protoss"), one of several which spent most of their time doing "raids" on the Protoss clan in which they would try to steal weapons and gold, killing anyone who got in their way. Leeroy Jenkins was just a whelpling back then, the lowest rank in the clan heirarchy. On the raid which made him famous, Leroy thought he saw the opportunity to AFK ("a free kill") the Protoss leader Ragnarok, who was unexpectedly present and busy repairing his Deathwing (a kind of space ship) with his back turned. "LEEROY JENKINS!!!" shouted Leroy as he charged in, blaster pistol drawn. But his aim was worse than a star trooper on shrooms, and he was quickly slain by the Protoss Shadow Warriors he hadn't seen around the corner. The rest of his clan's raiding party followed him in, and thus began the great war that finally put an end to Protoss dominance of the Neutral Zone. That is why Leroy will be remembered forever. Also, he was famous for enjoying chicken.
posted by sfenders at 4:37 PM on May 11, 2015 [34 favorites]


Of course the Leroy video is staged. It doesn't make any sense.

Dots. More Dots!! However. That shit was real.
posted by Bonzai at 4:58 PM on May 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


Raids were even more of a mess back in the Molten Core/40 player raid days ... what are the odds that at least one of 40 random people from all over the world will space out, spill a drink, have to pee, or lose internet during a critical battle?

My personal favorite memory of that time was a month or two before we had Rag consistently on farm, which meant every time after our first wipe there was about 15, 20 minutes of explaining and lining people up in the right places, etc. before we'd restart the encounter. Except, of course, for that time when we'd finally gotten almost every one of our 40 people into the right place, explained again how not to splash damage your neighbors, started to get the tanks and healers into their final positions... and then one of our hunters accidentally up and shot Ragnaros in the face.

He farmed everyone's fire resist potions for the next week, but never quite lived it down.
posted by deludingmyself at 5:39 PM on May 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


The random queuing thing has a feature whereby if you wipe, you get a buff called Determination which increases damage dealt and decreases damage taken by a percentage. And it stacks, so the more times you wipe, the easier it gets.

And yes, one out of three randomized raids has at least a few people who are clueless and pull bosses prematurely or do other time wasting silly things. Sometimes it's great, other times... not so much.
posted by ostranenie at 5:51 PM on May 11, 2015


Oh man. I was totally sucked into WoW at the time, and LJ killed me at how hilariously bad it was. We recreated it at some point just for fun, which was a blast. The Onyxia wipe animation similarly came out right when my guild were trying to down her, and it was just hysterical. I even played it for a friend who had NO idea wtf was going on, and she kept going "more dots!" for years afterwards.

I just watched the videos of some Molten Core take-downs (of Lucifron and Rag) that I found in a folder the other day. Man, I have barely any idea what stuff on the screen means anymore... Yet I still have many, many good memories of running through MC and the insane amount of coordinating it took to get 40 people from across timezones and with different native languages all working together. Like deludingmyself said, it took forever to get everyone set up again after a wipe, and inevitably someone would pull accidentally, or a pet would, and it would all go to hell. Good times!

(But if I never have to run a DKP system again in my life, it will be too soon...)
posted by gemmy at 5:58 PM on May 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


I like the EPGP system the good at raiding guild I mentioned earlier used. The next time I found a half decent guild they insisted on an opaque loot council and that idea can just go fuck itself. Oh, the guild leader's friend who misses every other raid got the token instead of me even though I'm here every raid healing better than anybody else in this guild? Well, bye! Hearthed after the next boss pull and never raided again.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:04 PM on May 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


I was a hardcore raid leader at the time Leeroy Jenkins hit. Every day someone thought it would be funny to emulate or pretend to emulate the behavior in a raid. Every damn day.

Eventually, Blizzard added an achievement that could be earned for a character that added a last name of Jenkins, able to be displayed after the character's name on screen. I immediately rolled a Paladin and named him Jimmyd in order to get it, which was done by popping a certain number or percentage of eggs in that room. There were entire runs to that dungeon for the sole purpose of getting it for everyone in the raid.

I led quite a few of these groups. The irony is not lost on me.
posted by Revvy at 6:25 PM on May 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


freecellwizard: what are the odds that at least one of 40 random people from all over the world will space out, spill a drink, have to pee, or lose internet during a critical battle?

Or in the case of a coworker, have an earthquake go off in the area so that afterward, people could tell how close they were to the epicenter based on when they said "is that an earthquake?" on teamspeak.
posted by traveler_ at 6:55 PM on May 11, 2015 [7 favorites]


The original YouTube upload is a great example of bitrot in action: because of subsequent changes in compression standards, the quality of that video has degraded considerably in the years since it was uploaded.

I'm looking for the original leeroy.wmv to compare it with the YouTube copy, but all the links are from 2005 or 2006 and no longer work. "2005" doesn't sound like a decade ago, but it is.

Despite link rot being a persistent problem, we have some things to be thankful for. From a 2005 forum discussion: "16 megs at 17 k/sec... it'd better be worth it brendan.." Now that would take a few seconds on any decent home connection.

Edit: Never mind, here it is.
posted by Rangi at 7:22 PM on May 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


In case that link disappears too, here are some more:

leeroy.wmv (15.8 MB)
MediaFire
Mega
SendSpace
DepositFiles
posted by Rangi at 7:54 PM on May 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Spoiler: It's ONE HUNDRED PERCENT.

I'm coming up with a thirty two point three three, repeating of course, chance of survival.
posted by almostmanda at 8:01 PM on May 11, 2015 [8 favorites]




koeselitz: "As jsnlxndrlv pointed out above, the audio from the Leroy Jenkins video actually used to be much better - but videos that have been up on Youtube for ten years have kind of gone through the ringer as far as compression is concerned. So if you remember pulling up that video years ago and watching it without cringing, you're probably not wrong."

Actually, comparing the YouTube version to the original version Rangi linked to, if you remember the audio as being much better, you're totally suffering from Things Were Better When I Was Younger syndrome. The video has degraded, but the audio was always that shitty.
posted by Bugbread at 9:50 PM on May 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


One of my six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon moments: I've actually met Leeroy Jenkins/Ben Schulz. He's the son of my department head from the university where I did my BA. He came into a play rehearsal we were doing and did the "LEEEEEROOOOOOYYYYYYY JENKIIIIIINS!" yell for us, and it was awesome.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 5:04 AM on May 12, 2015 [5 favorites]


I joked about raid wipes above, but I agree with Drinky Die that well-executed raids are one of the most fun things I've done in video games. The time investment is too high for my current life, but it really is something when a plan comes together. I always played a healing paladin which was a pretty undersung but important role. Some of my proudest moments were showing up frequently in the top couple of healers in pickup raids and having people ask me what mods I used and saying "... I don't use any mods" (I did eventually start using a few mods). To have a good time in the higher-end raids took a guild with just the right balance of seriousness and fun - everyone had to know their role but not get too uptight about mistakes. Good times.
posted by freecellwizard at 7:25 AM on May 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


I joked about raid wipes above, but I agree with Drinky Die that well-executed raids are one of the most fun things I've done in video games.

It really was a unique experience, and one I have strong positive memories of despite not ever wanting to go back to spending that much time sitting in front of a computer at a stretch ever again.

In a weird twist of fate I now live super close to two guys who used to run ten man Karazhan with me (and I'm married to another! wtb healer for rl 5man!), so my internet friends have become real life backyard barbeque friends, and we can all nostalgia out over our shared memories of fictional places that don't actually exist.
posted by deludingmyself at 10:17 AM on May 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


Oh yeah, finally downing a hard boss after dozens of wipes can be tremendously rewarding. (Less intense but also fun is steamrolling old content with weird conditions you set for yourself. Naked runs, everybody the same class runs, etc.)

I like the EPGP system the good at raiding guild I mentioned earlier used.

Ha, we used EPGP in the 16-man progression guild I was in... I like the fairness of the system but goddamn it is a pain in the ass to keep track of. My wife was in charge of updating the spreadsheet for a while and when we decided to use Suicide Kings instead she was only too happy to give up that job.
posted by kmz at 10:57 AM on May 12, 2015


We had a mod that kept track of it all automatically. Would be a pain in the butt without it.
posted by Drinky Die at 11:05 AM on May 12, 2015


Ah, yeah, SWTOR has no mod support, unfortunately.
posted by kmz at 11:08 AM on May 12, 2015


Also I see all of your DKP grumblings and raise you attempting to enable DKP not only across multiple raids weekly (because yes, my guild did have two 40-mans running each week for at least two years, plus Ony and world dragons and such), but also across multiple allied guilds worth of raids for hundreds of people. We suffered through trying to make this work for all of MC and I think all of BWL. By the end of it, I was honestly convinced that the respective raid and guild leaders all deserved an honorary degree in political science, fantasy economics, and personnel management.
posted by deludingmyself at 8:10 PM on May 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


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