00:05Welcome, everyone, to today's Developer Update.
00:09Super exciting news, we're talking about BlizzCon today.
00:12Now, I know it's a little bit early, and we're not quite to BlizzCon yet,
00:16but we have a very special feature coming just for BlizzCon
00:20that we want to tell you about as early as possible.
00:23And that feature is called the Overwatch World Cup Viewer.
00:27So, the Overwatch World Cup Viewer obviously is going to be a way for you to watch
00:33the Overwatch World Cup in a way that you've never seen before.
00:36But let me go into some detail on how that's going to work.
00:40Prior to BlizzCon, we are going to put up a special beta version of the feature
00:47because we need to test this more than anything else.
00:50And that beta version of the Overwatch World Cup Viewer will be available to you
00:55only in the Battle.net client, which unfortunately means that the beta of this
01:00will only be available for our PC players.
01:05Now, what will the Overwatch World Cup Viewer enable you to do?
01:09You can watch all of the matches in real time as they're happening live
01:15from a spectator point of view, just like our professional esports observers do,
01:20which means you can move the cameras around, you can watch from first person,
01:25you can watch from third person, you can use a free cam to move around the levels,
01:30and watch the exciting Overwatch World Cup matches from any view that you deem awesome.
01:37Of course, for those of you who don't have access to the Overwatch World Cup Viewer,
01:41you can also watch the Overwatch World Cup on all of the streams that will be normally available to you,
01:47and you can go to the Overwatch World Cup website to see exactly where those are going to be.
01:52But there's more to the Overwatch World Cup Viewer than just watching the matches live.
01:58And one of my favorite things about the Viewer and the way that it works
02:01is it also enables you to watch the replays of every match that will be played
02:07during the semifinals and finals at BlizzCon.
02:11So you can go back and you can watch from any angle all of the exciting plays that happened.
02:16You'll also have control over things like the camera speed.
02:20So if you want to watch, you know, in a quarter time and watch it in very, very slow motion
02:25to really understand how the pros were doing all of those moves, you can do that.
02:30You can also speed things up. You can jump around in the timeline.
02:35We've enabled some other features with the World Cup Viewer as well,
02:39like that top-down map view where you get the little icons on each of the heroes
02:45that shows you if they're stunned, if they're casting an ability,
02:50and shows you where their health is at and their ultimate status.
02:54So you can turn that on as well.
02:55We think it's a really fun feature, and most of all, and a lot of you are probably wondering,
03:02you know, well, I love Overwatch. I might not be super into eSports.
03:06You know, I want to check out World Cup, but, you know,
03:09why is this feature interesting to me if I'm not going to watch World Cup?
03:13Well, by testing the beta version of the Overwatch World Cup Viewer,
03:18it allows us to work on the technology that will one day allow us to bring these features
03:24to all of Overwatch, both PC and console, in not only an eSports setting,
03:31but for all of us as individuals.
03:33Can you imagine going and watching one of your own matches later,
03:37but being able to put the camera wherever you want in that sort of replay view?
03:42We think that would be pretty amazing.
03:44So to summarize, the Overwatch World Cup Viewer kind of gives us two big features
03:49that we can test out for future Overwatch eventually.
03:52The first one is the ability to have up to millions of people watch Overwatch
03:59in a live setting directly through the game client.
04:02And the second feature is a replay feature that allows you to rewatch matches
04:08that have already happened.
04:10Early on, this will only be for the World Cup,
04:12and will require a special version of Overwatch only available on PC.
04:18But at a later date, we're trying to use this beta to enable the technology
04:22to reach every single one of our Overwatch players.
04:25So we think that's really exciting.
04:28Now, some other BlizzCon news that I think is important to mention,
04:32and this is just in terms of setting expectations for you all.
04:36I know that a lot of you tend to get in your mind what we've done in the past,
04:40and so you anticipate what we're going to do at BlizzCon this year.
04:46And I've read a lot of this on social media where you sort of predict
04:49what's going to be announced or not announced at BlizzCon.
04:53I want to be explicitly clear that we're not announcing a new map this year at BlizzCon.
04:59So in the past, we've announced Oasis and we've announced Blizzard World.
05:03Both were announced at BlizzCon.
05:05To be honest, we felt like they got a little bit lost in the shuffle,
05:09both during the timing of announcing at BlizzCon
05:12and also the time at which we released them.
05:15They didn't have as big of an impact as we really wanted,
05:18and we feel like a new map is something very, very special.
05:22So we are definitely working on new map content.
05:26We know that's something that you all love and you all request often.
05:30So don't think that by us not announcing something at BlizzCon,
05:34it does not mean that there's no work going on.
05:37We're definitely working on new map content.
05:40You're just not going to have any new map content announced at BlizzCon.
05:45That does not mean that there won't be amazing announcements at BlizzCon.
05:49We think the content we have for BlizzCon is going to be awesome,
05:52and I wish I could share it with all of you right now.
05:56But you'll have to wait until early November.
05:58Make sure to tune in.
06:00Now just a couple other housekeeping notes on what's going on in Overwatch right now.
06:04We are making some balance changes.
06:07The balance changes are for what we call Patch 1.30.
06:12That patch is going to, in essence, I'm not going to go into all the details,
06:17but expect buffs for Roadhog, Reaper, Symmetra, and Mercy.
06:24And I know that both Roadhog and Mercy are discussed probably more than some of the other heroes.
06:31Mercy will be getting a buff specifically to Valkyrie that we're experimenting with
06:36and we think should be pretty awesome for her and be a welcome change to the hero.
06:43And with Roadhog, there's a lot going on.
06:45We want to improve how the hook feels for Roadhog
06:49and also work on some of the shotgun consistency.
06:53There will be more details coming out.
06:55I know you probably have a lot of questions hearing that.
06:58But we will be releasing detailed patch notes on what those changes are.
07:02And as always, we'll include developer comments to explain our point of view of why we're making the changes.
07:08Whether or not the changes will make it all the way to live is yet to be seen.
07:12Of course, we'll be monitoring both PTR feedback and playing on the PTR ourselves to see if those changes are
07:19good or not.
07:21Anyway, thanks for hearing us out.
07:23We really hope as many of you as possible help us to test the Overwatch World Cup viewer.
07:28We've been working very hard on it and it's very promising technology for the future of Overwatch
07:33and the future of cool features to come.
07:38Thanks for everything and we hope you enjoy BlizzCon as much as we're going to.
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