(staged) High level Warcraft group party plan goes amiss, crying ensues

On this morning’s Howard Stern show on Sirius he was making fun of how serious players get when playing WoW. I’ve been listening to Stern regularly since September and this is the first time I recall him spend more than a passing comment on MMORPG. Howard likes to play chess but he doesn’t seem to get or like MMORPG.

Howard said it was on YouTube if you do a search for “leroy jenkins” indeed it’s the top search result with over 425,000 views. I’ve embedded below to illustrate how seriously some people take their gaming:

Although I didn’t understand a lot of what these high level WoW characters were talking about — my character after almost a month of playing is only at level 20 — it seems like they had a plan rolling until one of the party just shouts “Leroy Jenkins!” and runs in by himself, pulling all the baddies onto his character. Must admit I chuckled at how quickly the high level monsters dispatched the party.

I’m not sure what the crying was about though (embarassed that he got everybody killed?) since WoW isn’t like Everquest in that you lose experience when you die. It would suck a lot worst if some of the characters actually lost levels that take a long time to build at higher levels. But tear-worthy? Don’t think so.

Update 11:07am PST: According to the Leeroy Jenkins Wikipedia entry there are widespread reports that this video was staged. Still pretty funny:

Regardless of the sketchy plans, a key fact that almost proves it was staged is that to “activate” the hatchling dragonlings, the player must click on them or walk over them. The video indicates that his error was in running in too early, before his team expected it, but it was not implied that he also clicked on the eggs or walked over them. Either way, it would require a further presumption that he went as far as clicking on them for what would seem a completely absent purpose, other than perhaps to stage a show.

I knew something didn’t seem right about this one. Machinima at it’s finest?