In a new developer update video posted yesterday, Overwatch Game Director Jeff “Jeff from the Overwatch team” Kaplan talks about some of the new content coming up for Blizzard’s popular FPS title and gives players an idea of what they can expect to hear from the title at the upcoming BlizzCon 2018. One of the bigger pieces of information is the announcement of the Overwatch World Cup Viewer, a “special beta version” of which will be available “only in the Battle.net client,” which means it will only be accessible for PC players at first.
The Viewer will allow players to spectate Overwatch World Cup matches in real-time from the same spectator perspective that the professional casters and announcers use. Although the application will initially only be usable to watch Overwatch World Cup matches, the team hopes to expand it to allow players to watch a variety of matches in real-time directly within the game client itself, and it will also lend itself to a replay feature that will allow players to save and view replays of their own matches.
Kaplan also talks a bit about what players should expect from Overwatch at BlizzCon 2018, and to avoid any misunderstanding, he goes ahead and explicitly states that there will be no new map reveal at the convention as there have been in the past with the unveiling of the Oasis and Blizzworld maps. Kaplan stresses, however, that just because a certain piece of content isn’t announced at BlizzCon doesn’t mean that the team isn’t working on it, and it also doesn’t mean that there won’t be other “amazing announcements” for players to look forward to.
To close, Kaplan confirms that there are some balance changes coming to Overwatch in the near future. Specifically, there are buffs in the works for Roadhog, Reaper, Symmetra, and Mercy. Mercy will be receiving “a buff specifically to Valkyrie” that “should be pretty awesome for her,” while the team’s objective for Roadhog is to “improve how the hook feels . . . and also work on some of the shotgun consistency.” For the full details on all of this and more, you can check out the full developer update video just below.
