Blizzard just caught Overwatch fans off guard with a surprise Developer Update. In it, Jeff Kaplan teased a lot of the goodies, coming to BlizzCon, as well as some new changes to the PTR. The main focus of the update was a new feature – the Overwatch World Cup Viewer. It’s essentially a game viewer, exclusive to the Overwatch World Cup, though the hope is for it to be expanded to include more than just pro play.
A functional replay system is among the top asks from Overwatch players. Of course, such a tool would be cool just to have. But there are several benefits. Plays can effectively use such a feature to review their gameplay to study their habits and hopefully improve. Of course, such a system would also benefit Overwatch content creators. Especially those who create hero and strategy guides, based on reviewing match footage. The Overwatch League did have a viewer for the casters and this feature supposedly functions in much the same way, albeit with some tweaks. But with it, players can watch the games in real time and watch replays, all with a variety of perspective options.
The feature goes live in beta ahead of BlizzCon. However, it can only be run through the battle.net client, in its beta. Meaning that only PC players have immediate access. Though the plan is to push out a version of it for the entire player base in time. This is something the community is no doubt familiar with. The Overwatch Public Test Region is something that only PC players have access to. This is, of course, a sticking point with many players. Console players often begrudge the fact that PC players get to test out updates first. Many often suggest consoles get their own version of the PTR. Especially since, because of the different ways in which the two versions of the gameplay, they should generally be balanced and patched differently. Though they do keep console in mind with some patches, like the recent Pharah tweaks.
In any case, it isn’t known when players can expect the next evolution of this feature. But it wasn’t the only thing said about BlizzCon in the update. Along with that exciting news came the rather expected news that there wouldn’t be a new map reveal at the event. However, Jeff did suggest that there would be several other, extremely exciting announcements to look forward to. Fans can almost definitely expect a new hero reveal. And it’s not exactly known if the new World Cup Viewer is part of the new “social features,” teased some time ago. But whatever the new announcements may be, it has fans waiting.
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