Spectator mode and the esport scene in general

#1 - July 12, 2013, 10:12 a.m.

Hello!

I am rarely in these forums so if this thread has previously been created; I'm sorry for the repost.

TL;DR: Will esport ever happened in wow?

Is there ever going to be a spectator mode? Is this in Blizzards attention? Are they working on the esport side of Wow? Has there ever been any news about this?

I have a vision, my friends, consider this:

No matter which aspect of pvp one would spectate, it would be really fun.
Imagine a fully organized team of 40 players battling in AV or some other grand BG with spectators cheering and watching from above! It would be a grand spectacle, epic would not be the least to describe it! It would be like BF3, but with frostbolts, bladestorms, typhones and fire elementals flying everywhere!
Imagine watching the absolute top tier players do AB against each other, see EU All-Stars vs US All-Stars fight on different fronts for supremacy while the teams has a separate commander which guides their soldiers while we fly noclip mode above the fighting at the same time as some professional caster is shouting at us scrubs what's happening!
Imagine having intense 2v2 or 3v3 battles with a proper and thought out UI and movement(for the spectator, ofc) system, with a minimap and everything focused on simplicity for easier viewing so we really can see all the skillful things which is being done (because on current tournies it is quite hard to actually pick up what's happening)... To have instant action replays on the death scatters and Altertimed nukes!
It would be magnificent especially when having in mind that wow is being more and more balanced (shut up crybaby, it is) wow could actually become a real esport if blizz put some effort into it!

What do you guys think? Could there be a future in this? Is this in blizzards interest? Are they happy with pve content and focusing on SC2 pvp or will there be more esport oriented content coming?

Nakatoir

Community

#13 - July 12, 2013, 12:22 p.m.

This discussion has come up many times before and as such I will mostly be restating a few points, but I do want to get this out there; we do think that that a spectator mode would be awesome for the game and we really would like to implement one. You have to remember that this would be a huge feature and it would require a large amount of development time to implement. What it really comes down to is finding the time to be able to develop such a massive feature that already has a working alternative which many people already use; streaming.

We understand that many of you would like to have a dedicated spectator mode, but at this time we have no plans for creating one.

Nakatoir

Community

#25 - July 12, 2013, 3 p.m.

12/07/2013 15:26Posted by Easydragon
Comon everyone knows there's a way for Blizzard to flag accounts for their "spectator" client they've got in the game already.

Actually, those are just special accounts created only for use at specific events so that the casters can perform their roles in the most optimal fashion and provide the best viewing experience for everyone. It's not something that we can simply add into the game client or provide to anyone who requests it. It's not even a real spectator mode, it's a basic workaround that allows for us to let casters spectate matches and it's little more than a mobile camera for these particular situations.

I don't deny that getting a working spectator mode would help with community ran competitions and tournaments and it's one of the reasons that we would like to have one. Understand that this is something we know that players want and it's something that we would like to provide to you. We simply have no plans at this time to implement such a feature, but when we are able to implement this feature we'll be sure to let you know about it.