Emote

The term emote means to express an emotion. In MMORPGs, emotes make your character express emotion.

In World of Warcraft, you can make your character "emote" by using predefined slash commands. These commands generate a chat message (typically in a special color) that describes what your character is doing. This chat message is often accompanied by audio and some character action.

For example, using the /thanks command, text displays ("Character thanks target."), an audio file is played (character voice: "Thank you."), and a character animation occurs (character gesticulates).

There are 5 kinds of emotes in World of Warcraft:

• 1) Text only
• 2) Text + Vocalization
• 3) Text + Character Animation
• 4) Text + Vocalization + Character Animation
• 5) Vocalization + Character Animation

Most emotes have no gameplay effect, but the /lie, /laydown, /sleep, and /sit commands cause the character to assume those positions, from which they must rise to enter combat. In addition, some emotes are involved in achievements or in triggering certain NPC reactions.

You can create your own emotes using the /e or /me slash commands, which will send a message to nearby players starting with your name and ending with the action you type (or anything else you might type). For example, if your name is Thrall, then entering:

will cause nearby players to see:

Thrall scrabbles in the dirt.

You can use certain substitution codes in your emotes. For instance, if your command contains %t, the %t will be replaced with the name of your currently selected target when the emote is sent. For instance, if Thrall is targeting a creature called Animal:

produces:

Thrall scrabbles in the dirt, and finds Animal's shoe.

Custom emotes will not be understandable by the opposing faction. The following will be the only thing the opposing faction will see:

Thrall makes some strange gestures.

You can emote and cast spells or summons such as this macro for a warlock: /e prepares a dark ritual. /y Come to me, Felhorse! /cast summon felsteed

Will appear as:

• Leaferran prepares a dark ritual.
• [Leaferran] yells: Come to me, Felhorse!
• Leaferran casts Summon Felsteed

• Tauren are the only race that produce the proper sound effect when the "/moo" emote is used.
• Worgen also have an animation and sound for the "/sniff" command.
• Entering "lol" without a slash will also make your character laugh.

• Emotes (list)
• Emotes page on the official site.