This webpage is unfinished. I thought of adding information to Wikipedia, but then decided against it, at least for now. First, I will plan to clean out the commentary about Wikipedia from this page, so that this page can act better as an ongoing reference. Then, I will either document or act on my ideas for the Wikipedia article elsewhere/elsehow.

Wiki article referred to

(If you haven't seen the video, check it out "here". (Somewhere, not sure yet :) ). For a transcript, and some more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeroy_Jenkins )

Wikipedia's article says, at the time of this writing:

Leeroy was given a substantial boost in notoriety by the publication of an article in the August 2005 issue of PC Gamer UK by author Craig Pearson, entitled "The Ballad of Leeroy Jenkins". Pearson's article claims that the original video was designed as a negative commentary on the kind of "nerd-guilds" that meticulously and statistically plan out raids the way Leeroy's guild was apparently doing. Leeroy is in fact the hero of the piece, acting against the geekiness of his guild. Those familiar with game play in World of Warcraft have noted that the "plans" his guildmates were making relied on casting spells in a way that would be impossible according to the game's mechanics. Further an overall plan to activate all the enemies and fight them at once would be a rather unlikely occurrence among actual players of the game. However, some experienced players, such as those in the Twelve Prophets raiding guild, are reported to use this precise strategy. Giving further credence to this assessment and to Pearson's allegation is the fact that the dragon hatchlings in the Rookery are an optional engagement, not a required one. Indeed it's entirely possible to simply skip the eggs in The Rookery. While the Devout Shoulders item mentioned does require this engagement, it is considerably easier to do so a few at a time rather than all at once. Also lending credence to Pearson's theory is the fact that most of the characters in the video are using superior-level armor and weapons. Some are even wearing equipment that can only be obtained in an area of the dungeon after the Rookery (although players often repeat areas many times and it is not uncommon to return although you have better "gear").

Wikipedia's article makes it seem like Pearson's idea is just a "claim", and Wikipedia documents some evedience that only minorly supports this claim. In fact, there is far more to support Craig Pearson's arguement than the "impossibility" of some minor detail, or the optional nature of the eggs. The plan was designed to be more than just "rather unlikely" to work. The fact is that the plans being discussed were meant as a complete joke to those very familiar with the game.

1. The eggs are completely passable, but the group decides to fight the eggs because of Leeroy's needs for the [http://thottbot.com/?i=20469 Devout Mantle shoulderpads], cited because it would give him mana. This is a completely lousy reason. The "Devout Shoulders", as they are referred to in the video, are excellent for a priest character because priests can use mana for relatively early heals and priests simply cannot wear heavier armor. However, the Devout shoulders are made of cloth which provides the least amount of armor defense. Leeroy is a paladin character, and [http://worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/paladin.html;jsessionid=5D34027C4384104BAF38F80DA4A8284E.08_app03 The Paladin page on Blizzard's WorldofWarCraft.com] even lists "Can wear the heaviest of armors" as the very first of the paladin's strengths. Paladins typically crave the heaviest armor in the game so that they can stay alive longer and heal people later.

2. It may go without saying that it is easier for a group of warriors to fight a smaller number of enemies per battle, even at the cost of needing to fight more battles if needed. A group of fighters does not generally benefit, while fighting some enemies, to have even more enemies join the battle and helping the enemies by inflicting damange before the first enemies are fully dealt with. Also having more enemies at once can be relatively more chaotic. Also, game mechanics in World of WarCraft let several benefits occur only when players are not actively in battle, including faster restoration of health and mana points (with and even without eating and drinking), undisturbed spell casting that allows for easier healing, and the possibility for priests and paladins to cast resurrection spells that give life back to players who are dead.

   A big joke derives from the fact that the eggs only hatch when they are not left undisturbed. Disturbing multiple eggs at once at the start of a battle, or arousing eggs during a battle, will cause more dragonlings to hatch and fight the players before the battle can complete. From this, the "plans" being made have several details that will cause the exact opposite effect of what is desired. The "AoE" (and also further abbrevaited in the video as "AE") spells that have a wide "area of effect" will do less damage to the small number of unhatched dragonlings than the alternative attacking spells that have more concentrated damage done to a single enemy. Much worse is the fact that the wide-area attacks will cause minor damage to the unhatched eggs, disturbing the eggs. More enemies will hatch early on and join the fray.

3. "Intimidating Shout" causes a "fear effect" in enemies that will cause them to temporarily flee the area, making them difficult for the Paladins to fight as they are scattered. This skill could be useful towards the end of a fight to buy some time so that wounded allies can be healed, but nobody is going to need excessive healing at the very beginning of the fight. When scattered, the fully afraid enemies will try to attract any of their allies, so after the fear effect wears off the enemies will re-convene along with their newly attracted allies, so there will be an even larger group, which is the exact opposite effect of that the "plans" state are desired. The planner intends to do this as much as possible until his "Shouts are done", and after he has exhausted his ability to worsen the situation, instructions are given for others to take turns multiplying their troubles by doing the same.

   Also, combining this with the earlier plan, of using area of effect spells, is terrible. It is better to have a small area be attacked by all the mages, and to have all of the enemies in that small area so each enemy gets hurt by multiple mages. By having the enemies scattered, as the individual players select one enemy to attack, each attacked enemy will be attacked fewer spells, perhaps by just one mage. Furthermore, the area around each attacked enemy will be attacked, and since the enemies are scattered, this means several different areas will be attacked. Instead of one wide area of effect being attacked, which was downtalked in the last bullet point, there will instead be several wide areas attacked, so there will just be that many more eggs that will be disturbed.

4. The "Divine Intervention" jokes require, for their humor, a knowledge of how the skill works. This shield-type skill causes an ally to be unable to attack while shielded, and additionally causes the shielded target to magically lose any of the "aggro" (aggrevation) and/or "threat" generated through battle. Computer-controlled enemies will therefore leave the shielded target alone for a short time period. If this is done at the end of the battle, the computer-controlled monster enemies will see no threatening target to attack. They will therefore actually conclude that the battle is finished and they will leave the battle scene, returning to their original locations before they were attracted into the battle (perhaps by an afraid monster due to an earlier bullet point mentioned). If a battle seems hopeless, Divine Intervention can be cast onto a Paladin (who is likely to be among the last of the living allies due to having high armor, see first bullet point) so that the Paladin can use his skill of resurrecting the allied players from the dead and save those dead characters from needing to complete (or even to start) a lengthy journey to become alive again. Game mechanics insist that dead-resurrecting-activities can often be done only when the alive resurrecting is not part of an active battle. (So, Divine Intervention works not only by keeping the player alive, but actually causing the player to "leave the battle" since monster characters will ignore the player.) It is also worth noting here that "Divine Intervention" has a "cooldown" period, so it cannot be re-used until some time (an hour, to be precise) passes from an earlier casting.

   Separately, it is worth noting that game mechanics exist to help cause monsters to fight players wearing the heaviest armor first, so logically this means the monsters leave less armored player characters (like mages) alone as these players attack from a distance. This means the mages aren't likely to be attacked early on and so they simply won't need any sort of magical shield.

   The plan to cast Divine Shield on the mages, as mentioned in the video's discussion, is probably what Wikipedia referred to as the "impossible" game mechanics (to have mages attack when shielded), but largely is simply another example of the plans simply not working, and in fact causing an effect opposite to what is planned. If this plan gets executed, then the mages will receive a useless shield, the (lousy) plan of having mages cast "area of effect" spells early will become impossible. Once the Divine Intervention skill is wasted on the mages, the "cooldown" period will prevent Divine Intervention from being able to be used at the end of the battle where it proves to be extremely useful.

5. The statistic, of 32 and a third percent chance of success, is absolutely lousy. Sane players would shudder at proceding with a plan with less than 75% odds against computer opponents, yet the planner was delighted with this high number, which I personally think was estimated at about 33% higher than it should have been.
6. When Leeroy does rush into the room, which the video portrays as a suicidal action, a proper procedure for the group would be to allow Leeroy to die alone, by himself. Since the rest of the group was out of battle, they would actually have been able to resurrect Leeroy from the dead, and after maybe half a minute, the group would have again been fully prepared for another battle. Instead, the player yells "Stick to the plan!", which as described above is the worst idea possible.

7. To people unfamiliar with this area of the game, it may look like the player who recorded the video is trying to run from trouble, and everywhere he turns he simply finds more trouble, and that this is all Leeroy's fault. That just isn't the case.

   The player that the camera watches is clearly trying to run through as many eggs as possible, waking them up as much as he can. This isn't talked about in the video, but efforts to make sure eggs get trampled on are clearly visible when a viewer knows to look for this. What may originally look like a random turn is, when people understand this, actually an intentional effort to make sure that eggs are trampled on instead of accidentally being narrowly avoided. The player is too busy complaining endlessly about Leeroy that he doesn't fight any of the monsters, and instead he spends his time running around trampling eggs, making the situation worse and worse as he continues to complain about how Leeroy caused a little bit of trouble at the beginning.

   At one point, the player he looks like he is actually leaving the dangerous deadly center by running up a ramp. This potential escape looks like the player's only chance to possibly, maybe, if he is lucky, survive, if he can handle the monsters at the top of the ramp and if the monsters below the ramp focus on only other players and if those monsters, after killing the other players, forget about the player that ran up the ramp. That is rather doubtful. However, the player only runs up the ramp long enough to attract further trouble. Once the enemies at the top of the ramp see him, he jumps off of the ramp and back into the fray below the ramp. The enemies at the top of the ramp are now running down the ramp to join the fight.

   At the end of the fight, not only were all the players dead, but there were so many enemies hatched that making a second attempt (after making the lengthy journey to become alive again) would be far worse. In fact, I suspect the group's best chance to getting the Devout shoulders from that room would probably be to start the whole dungeon over from scratch, abandoning all earlier progress that was made in the level before getting to the area with the eggs.

8. During the entire battle, as nothing goes right, a big joke is that it is Leeroy that is being given all the blame. This often seems right and proper to those who think Leeroy was just doing a suicidal run because the futility of so many details of the plan just isn't apparent to those who haven't played the game enough to be familiar with the egg hatchlings. Running into the room as he did was actually a foolhardy but recoverable action. Reasonable players could have jumped in and helped Leeroy and probably succeed in winning the battle, as starting battles earlier than desired (often accidentally or perhaps, sometimes, even unavoidable) is something that, in World of WarCraft, can happen with relative frequency. The players blaming Leeroy, though, are responsible for making a situation that was much less recoverable.

In summary, Leeroy was not some jerk that ruined an excellent plan by expert players. He could have very rightly concluded that fighting a small group of monsters by his lonesome self, with approximately a 0% chance of success, would be a more likely way for him to survive than what the planners came up with. The video didn't just show a group "meticulously and statistically plan out" a method of victory, but rather, the meticulous effort in creating the plan was not actually helping, at all. If there is a commentary that the video is trying to make, that is perhaps it: Excessive planning is not always needed, and furthermore can be not helpful, and can be even be completely useless. Whether the video was trying to make that statement or not, there were undeniably a great number of jokes about Leeroy's group that may not have been understood (and so not even noticed) at all by many, if not most viewers to date. Myself would be included, in fact, if I didn't have a friend point out some of the game mechanics I wasn't aware of.

In the spirit of accuracy, therefore, I suggest Wikipedia use stronger verbage, which may mean simply using more nuetral language instead of all the weakening verbage (like "less likely" and "claim"). It is unbelievable that the Twelve Prophets guild uses the "exact strategy" of all the plans made in this video. (It is feasible that they might expertly use an "area of effect" spell to usefulness, but it isn't feasible to think that they would be successful by making several of the mistakes that are in the video.) Instead, just as an example, I would propose the entire body of "Leeroy's popularity rise" be replaced with: