We roleplayers are generally a talkative bunch. It is our main real life form of communication, after all, so it naturally follows that it would also be in game. However, RP communication can be a huge bottleneck in between characters when there isn’t time or desire to type out a long wordy sentence to express a thought or feeling from your character. That’s where emotes come in.
Emotes are a fast and easy way to express your (character) self to another. Instead of typing out “you think everyone around you is a son of a motherless ogre”, you can simply type /insult and the game mechanics will show your character as having said that entire sentence. For roleplayers, and everyone who wants to quickly ‘say’ something, this is the way to go.
As wonderful as emotes are, though, even they have their limits. Right now, there are a finite number of emotes built into the game. As a way to bolster this communicative game mechanic, the Blizzard wizards gave us the /e command, and it is also a wonderful thing. Yet again, it does also have a drawback to its usage, which brings the problems of in game communication full circle. Emotes allow characters to say an fully expressive comment by typing in but a short word. The /e command allows characters to extend their expression even further, and can make for more personal and detailed communication. Striking the proper balance of usage with these comes down to two factors, as I see it: time and situation.
When it comes to making a choice as to what you want your character to say, a good roleplayer will look at how much time is available for a comment, and at what would be a proper comment for the situation at hand. Is there a short and sweet emote I can use to express an emotion in the middle of combat, or would a /e followed by a verbose battle cry with a %T command included be a good match for the situation and my character’s personality? When roleplaying, these are examples of the thoughts constantly running through the mind of a roleplayer, and even the best of us struggle with this balance.
Enter Emotomania! RP addons are a godsend for us roleplayers, and after using and testing this one over the last month, I have added it to my list of core RP addons which I recommend to every avid roleplayer.
Emotomania greatly extends the stock emotes that can be used in game. By my count, WoW comes with 186 basic emotes (not counting voice emotes), though some of those trigger the same text to be displayed despite being a different emote. Again, by my probably slightly inaccurate count, Emotomania adds another 163 emotes for glorious RP use!
Take a look at these following examples and you’ll see for yourselves how much an asset Emotomania could be to your RP:
Emote: /np
Target Self: “tells everyone it was no problem!”
Target Other: “tells TARGET it was no problem!”
Emote: /ack
Target Self: “acknowledges with a small nod.”
Target Other: “acknowledges TARGET with a small nod.”
Emote: /gl
Target Self: “wishes everyone the very best of luck!”
Target Other: “wishes TARGET the very best of luck!”
Emote: /sheepl
Target Self: “indicates that <he/she/it> wants the enemy on the left taken out of commission!”
Target Other: “indicates that <he/she/it> wants TARGET on the left taken out of commission!”
Emote: /halt
Target Self: “stops dead.”
Target Other: “commands TARGET to halt!”
Emote: /ohno
Target Self: “senses impending doom.”
Target Other: “looks at TARGET with a sense of impending doom.”
There are a whole lot more of course, but you can see just how useful those would be when you don’t have the time to type out a string of words, or when you can’t quite think of a well worded sentence for the current situation. Emotomania has these and many more built in, ready for your RP needs!
But that’s not all! Emotomania even allows for the shortening of some of the emotes made by Blizzard. For instance, instead of typing in the emote /congrats, you can just type in grats or /gz to get the same text. Instead of typing in the full /incoming, simply type in /inc for the same text result. Now that’s groovy.
Yet, I saved the best for last: yes, you can even create your own emotes within Emotomania, thereby extending your RP emote options as far as your imagination can go! I’ve yet to give this a go, since the emotes already here I have found to be very adequate for most of my RP events, but I am starting to think of some very detailed and character-specific emotes the more I play around with it. I’ve not had this much fun with an RP addon since Roleplaying Helper!
So, click over and download Emotomania at Curse now, and let me know about any outstanding RP emotes you create. Role on!
