WoW pros defend Blizzard Co-Leader amid boosting drama backlash

As World of Warcraft players continue to criticize Blizzard’s new Co-Leader, Mike Ybarra, for selling boosts, WoW pros from across Azeroth have come to his defense. 

During an October 16 World of Warcraft stream, Blizzard’s new Co-Leader Mike Ybarra tweeted that he would be selling boosts, earning the ire of some members of the WoW community. Despite apparently addressing the issue in a vague October 19 tweet, the debate continues to dominate the conversation.

This comes in the wake of the ongoing lawsuit against Activision Blizzard for promoting a “pervasive frat-boy culture” within the workplace, which has seen increased scrutiny against the company. At the heart of the lawsuit is the WoW team, which has prompted a mass culling of seemingly inappropriate content in the iconic MMO.

As boosting continues to split the fanbase down the middle, some of the biggest names in professional WoW have come to Ybarra’s defense.

WoW pros defend Co-Leader amid boosting drama

While a large proportion of the game’s playerbase have condemned Ybarra’s decision to sell boosts on-stream, a handful of the biggest names in competitive WoW have jumped on Twitter to make their views known.

Guild Master for Complexity Limit, Max, was quick to point out that the community has demanded lead developers play the game, but then get angry when they boost. “Bliz co lead plays the game at a high level and does a VERY normal thing that doesn’t affect anyone else, WoW players:” followed by an emoji sticking its tongue out.

Wow players: wish devs played the game

Bliz co lead plays the game at a high level does VERY normal thing that doesn’t affect anyone else

Wow players: 🤪 https://t.co/hQhL0PpCM2

— max (@maximum) October 18, 2021

Fellow Limit pro and Raider, Thdlock, echoed this, writing “love how I take 1 trip to the WoW reddit to see absolute idiots talk about how boosting is ruining the game…”

Love how I take 1 trip to the WoW reddit to see absolute idiots talk about how boosting is ruining the game when it has literally been this way for as long as I can remember. You are not going to catch any reasonably good player spend 10 hrs farming instead of 1 hr doing a run.

— Thdlock (@LimitThdlock) October 18, 2021

Finally, Co-CEO and Raid Leader for Limit, Scripe, writes “boosting isnt [sic] really a horrible thing but you shouldnt [sic] be required to boost to be able to compete.”

Jokes aside boosting isnt really a horrible thing but you shouldnt be required to boost to be able to compete. Also something about people paying to skip content tells me something is off. Should try to remove the incentives to boost and to get boosted imo

— Scripe (@ScripeWoW) October 18, 2021

As the situation continues to prove divisive, it’ll be interesting to see whether the devs look at adjusting how the boosting system works to make it more palatable to the game’s community.

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