Hogger

About

Hogger is an enemy character from the massively multiplayer online video game World of Warcraft who takes the form of a hyena-esque creature called a gnoll and is encountered in Elwynn Forest, the game's starting area for human characters. Present in the game from its original launch, Hogger is an elite enemy who is designed to be fought by multiple players working together and is virtually impossible to singlehandedly defeat at the early level of progression at which he is meant to be encountered, and despite not being particularly tougher than other elite enemies and bosses in the game, of which those at the highest levels are literally millions of times more powerful than him, he is extremely infamous due to how overwhelmingly powerful he seems when initially encountered by first-time players who have no concept yet of enemies that they cannot defeat by themselves and grossly underestimate what his elite status entails, inevitably leading to death, in many players' cases for the very first time in-game. Hogger will only be encountered during normal early-game progression by human characters, and for characters of other playable species there are other enemies in their respective native areas who will serve as one's introduction to elite foes instead, but due to humans being the most commonly-selected race among new players for obvious reasons, Hogger is by far the most infamous such beast. Tellingly, Hogger has precisely 666 health, no doubt further fueling his reputation.

History

Since the earliest days of WoW, Hogger has been a point of humorous discussion among players, who frequently exaggerate his power level and difficulty to defeat to ludicrous extremes in the spirit of Chuck Norris' memetic reputation. A historic in-game pastime has been for brand-new, level 1 characters (many of whom are created expressly for this novelty purpose alone) to gather in much larger numbers to fight Hogger at an even earlier point than that at which he is meant to be fought by 3-5 players at level 10 or so, simulating a full-blown raid boss encounter.

The creators of WoW have long been very well-aware of Hogger's reputation, and have repeatedly acknowledged it: in-game lists of players' personal statistics have since been updated to include "Deaths from Hogger" as its own stat for all characters, and in the third expansion, Cataclysm, Hogger was updated so that he is no longer outright killed in the initial encounter and is instead imprisoned in the Stormwind Stockage dungeon, where a significantly stronger version of him can be fought and killed much later on. A wanted poster of Hogger can be seen in the 2016 Warcraft film, and in 2009 a live event with professional players at BlizzCon involved a level 80 raid boss version of Hogger, whom said players were unable to defeat. Hogger is also featured in the digital card game Hearthstone where his cards (including a mutated version not found in WoW itself) reference his fearsome reputation.

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