Experience the Overwatch World Cup from any perspective in real time with the Overwatch World Cup Viewer. We’ve taken professional esports observer tools from the big stage and put them in your hands at home so you can curate your viewing experience. Watch live games alongside hundreds of thousands of other players around the world from all of the first or third-person, birds’, or worms’-eye views that are most important to you. Curious how South Korea’s Widowmaker landed the seemingly out of nowhere headshot on Australia’s Mercy? You can simply watch from her perspective as she lines up a pixel-perfect shot to secure the elimination before seamlessly snapping your camera back to the main teamfight on the payload.
Had to miss the game? Don’t worry, our replay system has you covered. Overwatch World Cup replays will be available for a month after the game originally airs, so you can analyze as many games as you want during the feature’s beta test.
Starting now, you can pre-download the Overwatch World Cup Viewer before games go live Friday, November 2 at 12:15 PT. When it’s show time, follow our step-by-step instructions below to view all the action the way you want.
Steps to launch the Overwatch World Cup Viewer:
- Open Battle.net App
- Click on Overwatch
- In the Region/Account drop-down menu select Overwatch World Cup Viewer
- Install to your desired directory
- Click play!
Please note: Players must have an Overwatch game license to run the Overwatch World Cup viewer.
Here are some handy keyboard shortcuts to get started and spark some ideas on everything you can control your viewing experience.
- N: Show/Hide media controls
- Scroll Wheel Up: Increase playback speed
- Scroll Wheel Down: Decrease playback speed
- CTRL-P: Play/Pause
- Spacebar: Toggle between first-person and third-person view
- Left/Right click: Detach from first-person and third-person view to free camera
- WASD: Standard camera movement
- Q & E: Move camera up/Down
- F1-F12: Spectate players (corresponds with player list in media controls)
- 0: Snap to the objective
- CTRL-I: Show map overlay
- CTRL1-CNTRL9: Save bookmarks
- 1-9: Restore camera bookmarks
The complete list of shortcuts can be found in-game under Options > Controls > Spectate. These shortcuts are fully customizable to fit your needs best, similar to any other keybind in Overwatch.
So, you’ve mastered the movement shortcuts and camera jumps. Now—here are a couple of protips (literally) from Overwatch League observer Maikol Brito on what he looks for during games and how to capture epic replays.
- If you're interested in learning how a player plays a hero, make sure to spectate them—but also spectate the enemy counterpart to understand the differences in their play styles.
- For the best view when using the map overlay (CTRL-I), position your camera high in the sky and look straight down at the ground. This will allow you to recreate an overhead map view when using the tool.
- Using the map overlay to watch the game can help you understand how team fights unfold in detail. The individual hero icons provide status indicators that tell you exactly what is occurring to that player.
- Setting up static cameras in locations can help you view the fights from a different perspective and understand team rotations. Remember to bookmark your locations every new match!
- If you're creating highlight footage for videos, don't overuse slow motion. For maximum effect slow down the impactful moments of a play or team fight.
Now that you’ve read all about the new feature, make sure to tune back in for the first Overwatch World Cup match live at BlizzCon starting November 2!
Friday, November 2
12:15-2:15 p.m. PDT—Quarterfinal 1: United States vs. United Kingdom
2:15-4:15 p.m. PDT—Quarterfinal 2: France vs. Canada
4:15-6:15 p.m. PDT—Quarterfinal 3: China vs. Finland
6:15-8:15 p.m. PDT—Quarterfinal 4: South Korea vs. Australia
Saturday, November 3
9:30-11:30 a.m. PDT—Semifinal 1
11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. PDT—Semifinal 2
1:30-3:30 p.m. PDT—Bronze Medal Match
3:45-6:30 p.m. PDT—Gold Medal Match
Please note that this feature is still in a beta. By beta testing the OWWC Viewer, you help us work on the technology that will allow us to bring this functionality to additional platforms and match types in the future. As such, we’d like to know your thoughts and feedback and to report any bugs here.
Thanks for playing heroes, we hope you enjoy it and we’ll see you at BlizzCon!