E is for Emotes!

I was flicking through my blog reader yesterday, toying between the idea of replying to people or doing some actual work when I read a line of Navimie’s that caught my attention.

Namely this one:

“And those people in arenas who laugh at you and spit on you.  Why must you do that? ”

First of all, I have to hold my hand up and admit that I am an emoter and I’ve also been known to be rude to people in battleground chat (however that’s a post for another day). In short, I’m a PvP hooligan who needs hitting with a handbag. I don’t however spit, tell people they stink or use any of what I class as the nastier emotes but that’s not an excuse. So what turns a nice well-brought up young lady into an emote spammer in PvP?

Tactics.

It annoys people and annoyed people often make mistakes. I pvp to win, sure I often have fun regardless of whether we win or not but victory is the icing on the cake (and who doesn’t like icing, especially if it’s laced with maple syrup!). I’ve lost count of the number of scenarios where we’ve come out on top in situations where we were outgunned due to tactical emoting on our part.

Back in vanilla, I farmed rank on a couple of characters but all apart from one were healers and we soon discovered that if my teammates and my husband (who played dps) used emotes as a sort of vocal taunt, other dpsers would stick to them like glue letting my healers bounce around doing whatever they felt like. We won games because people were trying to kill a well-geared warrior over me and then making lv 1s to whisper him comments like this:

Right, so you identified the problem but you still kept hitting the person in plate? This guy’s rage kept him from selecting the correct target even though I was only standing 20 feet away in plain sight. Although I do like the fact that he bothered to put a smile at the end of it, not sure if that was to sweeten the blow or to try and make it more insulting.

As a well-geared healer, I’ve used it in flag games to keep certain dpsers off the lesser geared healer/flag carrier. Not only does it mean we expend less mana as healing my 5000 resilience Gnome is a lot easier than healing someone in quest greens but it splits the attacker’s focus because whilst say Mr over-geared warrior desperately wants to smack my face in, his friends are usually hitting something else. Not only does “emote rage” push people into making bad target choices, it can also lead them to make simple mistakes because they’re focusing too hard on the wrong thing. By emoting in flag games like Arathi Basin you can lead the defenders away from the flag allowing your stealthed team-mate to tag without having to waste time killing everyone.

Yes, it doesn’t work on everyone but it works on enough people to be worth while. I’m not saying that everyone who /spits is trying to be tactical because I’m pretty sure a lot of them are just obnoxious angry people trying to express their rage within the limits of the game. For example my healers get spat on a lot by bad dpsers who don’t seem to have their interrupts key-bound (these I suspect are the same people who make furious threads all over the PvP forums about immortal healers, including those pesky Resto Druids!). Which leads me to my next point.

People who emote at you often can’t take it back. Picture the scene, the blacksmith in Arath Basin. My cute little Gnome running around clapping her hands in glee as Lady and Cleo chase each other about. Then suddenly the peace is shattered as a war party of marauding Horde come charging up, led by a spit spamming warrior. After a few minutes of my chat log being filled with /spit, I decided enough is enough and had a word with Mr Harpy. Surprise surprise, after a few deaths to the tune of a gnome rogue singing the chicken song the warrior actually afked.

If you don’t like it, you have a couple of options.

First of all, the ignore function does work on the opposing faction.

Next if you go to your chat settings.

You can stop emotes from turning up in your chat window. This stops all emotes from showing up but if one has sound, you’ll still heard it, you just won’t see it.

To access this, you right click on your General tab on the chat window. Go down to settings and you should see something identical to the screenshot, then all you have to do is deselect emotes.

Then to get rid of emotes with sound, i.e. /chicken and /flee all you have to do is go to Options -> Sound

and deselect Emote Sounds.

Do both of these and you’ll never be bothered with emotes ever again in PvP. You’ll never see your own side’s either but I suppose you could just turn them off before entering arena/battleground and then switch them back on again when you finish pvping for the day.

Whilst I fully admit I don’t like being spat on I’d never turn off emotes because occasionally you get ones which make it all worthwhile. I’ve been saluted with respect after some particular hard fought games as well being hugged, kissed and cuddled by opponents.

This was a particularly strange rogue who I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to or had any interaction with but who spent the better part of 5 minutes hanging out at the Blacksmith flirting with my Night Elf Priest. It’s little things like that, which make up for all soggy handkerchiefs of Orc, Undead and Goblin spit.

As for my emote of choice?

If you haven’t ever heard a female gnome call someone a /chicken go try it now, it’s both annoying and cute. I also like telling people to /flee or just yelling it myself whilst I run away from people. Although oddly enough I never used to be an emoter, I can’t imagine my Night Elf Priest ever resorting to such coarse tactics so it must be a direct result of playing a Gnome…. 

Now that’s an excuse which is bound to stand up in court.