Sometimes for various reasons when you’re in a game you’ll be instructed to “watch”, which means you won’t be playing and should only spectate from that point forward.

• If you join a new game specifically to watch, set your race to Human and make sure all players know that you’re a watcher. Once the game starts ally all players but do not give shared vision, and move your peon to an out-of-the-way location that will not interfere with gameplay. Absolutely do not build or get involved in any way – you’re watching!
• If you’re instructed to watch in the middle of a team game (for example, if one of your opponents leaves or drops) then ally all players and remove shared vision from your original allies. Additionally, move all your existing units back into your base and stop making units/expanding your base.
• If you’re watching and one of the players forgets to ally/share vision with you it’s fine to remind them by saying “vis” or “vision”.
• If you’re the one playing, then ally and give shared vision to all watchers (but be carefuly not accidentally ally/vision an opponent – it happens!)

For additional tips check out the Watching Recommendations on the server etiquette page.

War2Observe

War2Observe (created by xslider) is a great utility for watching games and can be found on our Downloads page. It allows you to see resource information for any player in the game by selecting one of their units. For obvious reason it only works if you run it before the game starts and do not build at all during the match.