"Spectate friend" option not coming to Heroes of the Storm anytime soon

Dustin Browder

Heroes of the Storm and StarCraft 2 game director Dustin Browder has been on a Twitter tear recently, answering a slew of HotS questions. Most were in response to fan suggestions or specific balance questions, but there was also the occasional glimpse at new features that might be on the way. One topic of note concerned the lack of a "spectate friends" option like the one Hearthstone introduced. When asked if we’d see the feature anytime soon, Browder replied:

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It’s disappointing to hear that watching your friends ineffectively pilot Cho’gall is a ways off, but encouraging that Blizzard sees it as part of the eventual road map of features. Browder also gave glimpses at a few other things they are working on, including a “final fix” to backdooring strategies, more stats in the match history screen, and the potential of bringing back three and four man queues in Hero League if their new matchmaker works out well. He also said they are trying to get Lunara, one of the three heroes announced at BlizzCon 2015, released before the end of the year.

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Browder finding the time to hold forth on Twitter today was apparently a result of his lack of meetings, and certainly a great example of a high profile developer being very candid with his game's community. Browder even addressed the fact that he was not this responsive during his time on Starcraft 2, and has “gotten better at this” since. Asked what characters he’d personally like to see come to HotS, he said:

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You can check out his Twitter feed for all of the replies, but just one caveat as you read do: Browder reminded everyone that some of his responses should be taken with a grain of salt...

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Tom Marks
Tom is PC Gamer’s Associate Editor. He enjoys platformers, puzzles and puzzle-platformers. He also enjoys talking about PC games, which he now no longer does alone. Tune in every Wednesday at 1pm Pacific on Twitch.tv/pcgamer to see Tom host The PC Gamer Show.