World of Warcraft Leeroy Jenkins Phenomenon Expansion as an internet meme

September 3rd, 2007 by admin

Leeroy’s popularity has spread to other Internet venues as well. In the popular MMORPG Guild Wars, a dwarven character named Stonekin relates the death of his family and calls the players to battle with a similar of his own name. Unlike Leeroy, ’s shout conveys benefit to his players rather than spelling their demise. He does, however, have a tendency to aggro groups of , while continuing to run towards his family’s murderer. The players must then fight these , but must also keep following , since his death means the defeat of the entire party. This might very well be a reference to the desperate attempt that Leeroy’s teammates made to support him.

In ’s City of Villains, there is a recurring Arachnos soldier NPC by the name of “Jenkins” (who typically has to be rescued because he keeps getting himself captured.) City of Villains developer Positron recently announced to players that the character “…was definitely inspired by a certain Internet movie.”

Leeroy appears as a direct in Artix Entertainment’s popular Web game Adventure Quest where he travels with the players to battle at “Vamprook Spyre”, where players, Leeroy, Grodd, and Amani are planning the raid of the dungeon filled with “Vampragons”, a telekinetic dragon/vampire bat hybrid. The dialogue is copied nearly word for word from the movie. In Artix Entertainment’s “”, warriors can sometimes perform the Jenkins shout when the spell “Battle Cry” is utilized.

The website community has served to promote and to expand the Leeroy Jenkins meme among the viewers of its various websites and has a number of sites dealing with him including one documenting his supposed suicide. In particular the community has promoted his battle cry. They have also had substantial effect on the meme in the form of that was originally used on its Leeroy tribute site. The , which has been replaced with a still from the original video, is a digitally edited picture from the film Black Knight, featuring the hero standing on a bucket of KFC, instead of a rock. This image has been widely distributed and is in fact utilized by Uncyclopedia in their parody article regarding the meme.

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