One of the two Blizzard CEOs is also quite competent in World of Warcraft. Mike Ybarra easily clears dungeons on “Mythic+20” and streams it.
One accusation that developers and executives of gaming companies have to endure repeatedly is: “They don’t know their game and don’t play it themselves!” In many cases, this is sheer nonsense: A studio head clearly proves that it simply isn’t true. One of the two new Blizzard heads plays World of Warcraft extensively – and probably much better than most of you.
Who is that? Mike Ybarra has been at the helm of Blizzard alongside Jennifer Oneal for a few weeks. The two have replaced the former head J. Allen Brack, who vacated his position due to the sexism and discrimination scandal at Blizzard.
Before his career at Blizzard, Mike Ybarra worked at other major gaming companies. He was involved as a manager with games like Age of Empires Online or Ryse: Son of Rome.
He has now also started streaming again on Twitch.
What is he playing? In a stream lasting over 3 hours, Ybarra showed that he knows World of Warcraft not just in theory, but is also a pretty competent player. Together with his group, he tackled some dungeons of the “Mythic+20” level – this is quite a big deal even for experienced players, and only a few are able to master these dungeons within the time limit.
He also managed to do that in “The Other Side” and “Mists of Tirna Scithe” quite easily. However, in the dungeon “The Ascendant’s Pinnacle”, the group narrowly failed, as the last of the 3 minibosses before the final boss is particularly nasty to play with the current affixes.
Interestingly, Ybarra still wanders around with a legendary item of item level 235, even though he could have upgraded it twice more. However, he complains about the prices on his realm and is not willing to spend most of his gold on an upgrade:
What does that mean? For the Blizzard community, it is definitely a good sign when one of the CEOs is so open and also streams on Twitch. He has already offered to answer questions about his work as well as gameplay mechanics questions. This not only makes him seem competent but also gives players a bit of the openness they have long wished for from Blizzard and the management.
Whether these streams will become a regular occurrence remains to be seen.
By the way, Ybarra is not only committed to Blizzard games on Twitch. He also plans to check out other games, such as playing Final Fantasy XIV with the guild leader of Complexity-Limit. Whether that was just a casual offer or will really lead to a “WoW professionals play Final Fantasy” session remains to be seen.
What do you think of the behavior of the Blizzard CEO? Is it cool that he streams on Twitch and shows what he can do? Or should one in his position rather not act as a streamer?
