"Leeroy Jenkins" Creators Confirm It Was Staged

“LEEEEEEROOOOOOOOYYYY JEEEEEENKIIIIIINS--”

It’s one of the most iconic war cries in online gaming history. First uploaded in May 2005, the video begins with a group of World of Warcraft (WoW) raiders meticulously setting up their game plan while getting ready to enter a dangerous arena filled with dragonspawns, when all of sudden, a brave man who goes by the name Leeroy returns to his computer, yells out “alright, let’s do this!” and charges headfirst into the arena, ultimately dooming his teammates to failure and death.

Having gone “viral” a couple years before the advents of mainstream meme culture and social media platforms, the video became an instant classic among millions of WoW players and beyond. After making its debut on YouTube, where it racked up tens of millions of views and remix and parody videos by the dozens, Leeroy’s war cry made appearances in TV commercials, major motion pictures and even trivia shows throughout the 2000s.

During this time, many hawk-eyed viewers raised questions about its authenticity, with some of the most vocal skeptics trying to back up their claims with telltale giveaways, but since the concept of viral media literacy was still in its infancy, most viewers didn’t make much of the theory that the stunt had been pre-orchestrated.

Then last Friday, more than 12 years after its release, Ben Vinson, the WoW player who recorded the infamous video, decided to come clean with a never-seen-before clip titled “Leeroy Jenkins First Take/Dry Run (NEW).” In this outtake, the discussion starts out much like the original video, only this time, when Schulz cries his character’s name before making the dash, the rest of the players let out a chuckle but stay in their positions. In short: it’s a rehearsal.

But why now? According to Vinson, he has been “waiting for the ‘right’ moment to make [the video] public for more than a decade,” and decided to release it in hopes of raising awareness about Net Neutrality, which suffered a devastating blow last week with the controversial repeal of Title II regulations by the Federal Communications Commission. In displaying solidarity for open internet, Ben Schulz, the maverick behind Leeroy Jenkins, also wrote a post on the WoW forums saying that the video “should answer the ongoing question that we all already knew the answer to and hopefully support a good cause.”

And so the myth of Leeroy Jenkins, a WoW player too hyped for his own good, is a confirmed hoax. A legend dies so that, hopefully, net neutrality can live.

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