The leeroy jenkins history
We all know the meme from back in the day when WoW was hip and cool. The silly dude who ran into the boss without waiting for his mates. While at the same time you hear someone yelling LEEROOOOY. And then wiping his whole crew.
This is the story of the real person behind the character and what the video did for him and his guild "PALS FOR LIFE".
It is now common fact that the video was a recruiting video and was set up for recruiting extra people for the guild. The video was one of the first to actually go viral (wow viral video's that is).
The real name Ben Schulz at the time of video creation he was a 24y student trying to get his degree in Electrical Engineering.
While the video itself was staged they kept that a secret for a long time. It did however not miss its goal of getting people to join the guild. It did however was a pain in the ass for the server. A lot of people wanted to see a glimpse of him which in turn got a big queue on the server and major lag spikes. He got some real in game stalkers who tried to get real life info from him (must be a drag :P).
The guild tried to get some real life cash of the hipe but blizzard and there copyrights prohibited them from printing anything wow / blizzard like on the shirts. And lets be frank who wants to buy a shirt with leeroy's face on it :D.
He got some gigs ad blizcon and other convensions but that did not make him rich. EA offered him a job but he declined as the pay was not what it should be and if he would accepted he must move to the middle of the US.
The guild flourished for some time and a lot of the leaders gained legendary items because of it. Everyone wanted to join the guild but like all story's the guild fell apart after 2 years of the video creation with some of the leadership quitting the game.
Leeroy came back in the picture for a short time when he was seen in a funny trailer for a movie (which never got filmed). And when blizzard announcement there wow movie. There was a small part in the script about a young soldier "leeroy" who would prematurely charge into battle. Sadly enough that part has been cut from the movie.
So we learned that even tough leeroy is a icon and has its own quest in the mmorpg called wow. He himself has not received any wealth from it.
Peace out Leeroy Jenkings
