Ten celebrities who play World of Warcraft

First of all, I should come clean about something.

I’m not really a Warcraft player or fan. Over the past few weeks I’ve had to report on a number of World of Warcraft events (see here and here). This has allowed me to meet and befriend many hardcore players and given me a better understanding of the game. These days, I’d describe myself as more of a WoW sympathiser.

But this new-found interest led me to think, out of more than 11 million players worldwide, some of these people have got to be famous. So here, in no particular order, is a top ten list of Warcraft-playing celebrities:

10. Dave Chappelle

British audiences may not be too familiar with Dave Chappelle (maybe you caught him in The Nutty Professor telling your mama jokes with Eddie Murphy? No? You missed out). He’s actually one of the most popular comedians on the planet, with a hit show Stateside.

"You know what I've been playing a lot of?" the comedian reportedly asked a crowd a few years back. "World of Warcraft!" When a few cheers broke out, he responded, "I knew I had some geek brothers and sisters up in here!"

9. William Shatner

Celebrities that appeared in World of Warcraft adverts also play the game apparently. That advances this list quite a bit, so I won’t use them all. For example, I’ve deliberately missed out Steve Van Sant from The Sopranos (for not having a long enough spot) and John Claude van Damme (for talking in French).

First up is Denny Crane from Boston Legal Captain Kirk from Star Trek:

8. Mr T

A night-elf Mohawk (and don’t try to tell him otherwise…)

7. Verne Troyer

Mini-me is a Mage.

6. Kevin Werbach

Who? OK, so Mr Werbach isn’t strictly a celebrity. But he gets into this list because he is influential. He has the ear of President-elect Obama and is on the changemonger's transition team. More importantly, he’s part of not one, but two guilds.

5. Matt Stone and 4. Trey Parker

The South Park creators wrote an episode based on the game. It was so good it won an Emmy. There’s no way they could have done that episode which is filled with so many Warcraft in-jokes without having played the game first.

Watch the episode here.

3. Jay Mohr

You may have spotted this actor as the evil agent in Jerry McGuire, or on his guest appearances in shows like the West Wing and Scrubs. But he’s something of a World of Warcraft comedian, and hosted the proceedings at Blizzcon - the Warcraft convention in Anaheim, California - this year.

I was there. Jay was hilarious throughout. This is my favourite moment from the weekend – when he starts to ride the mount of the winner of the costume contest.

2. Mila Kunis

She plays Meg in Family Guy and was great in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. What are her gamer credentials? When she was quizzed about her WoW knowledge, she could name 8 of the 10 playable races. For goodness sake.

1. Macaulay Culkin

When Mila started to struggle with the questions, her boyfriend Macaulay “Home Alone” Culkin got involved.

He’s a level 70 Paladin apparently.

So there.

Posted by Murad Ahmed on November 25, 2008 at 05:34 PM |