emotes
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Leaf Trombone out now in the App Store
I've been down on the fine folks at Smule in the past -- I've said that their app Ocarina seems kind of silly (even if people have created some pretty awesome stuff with it and other less annoying music apps). And about the only thing they could have done to make it up to me was to develop some sort of super massively multiplayer music app, some app in which you could play a tune and have it sent all around the world. So I guess I have to call off my pretend grudge against them once and for all, because that's exactly what they did: Leaf Trombone: World Stage is in the App Store right now.This is, of course, the app with the strange name that we saw at Apple's iPhone 3.0 demo. It features a Chinese leaf-type instrument that sounds, as you can hear above, like a trombone. But the World Stage part is the most interesting -- Smule has set up a way to share the songs you play in the app with people around the world, and the people who hear your work can send back short messages and emotes to say how they felt. It's an interesting idea -- kind of combines what they were trying to do with Zephyr into a more Ocarina-like app.At just 99 cents, there will undoubtedly be lots of musicians out there picking it up. And while the video above is... cute... we're sure there'll be some even better stuff to listen to soon.
Breakfast Topic: Emotes to improve cross faction communication
Some days, I just don't feel like playing my main character, so I hop onto an alt. Before long, I encounter some poor clothie of the opposite faction camping an elite quest mob hoping that someone else will show up and offer to group. Usually, the ground is speckled with skeletons. Then the dance ensues. I salute, and the Mage waves. The Mage starts /saying things that I don't understand. I shrug. I wait for awhile, hoping that this will signal that I am willing to let the Mage go first. I'm hoping that my politeness infers that I will help. Finally, I point at the Mage, then at the mob. Taking a leap of faith, the Mage tags it, and I run around behind to help, perhaps with a guildmate at my side. After our parting farewells, I sit down to await a respawn. Personally, I think it would be much easier if I could say "I'm here to save the day!" or "I come in peace." Of course, there is some charm involved in finding a way to use our current emotes to communicate other messages, especially after Blizz added new ones in 2008. How do you communicate to a player of the opposite faction messages that aren't directly built-in to emotes? Are you aching for a certain emote that would help you do this, or do you enjoy having to puzzle it out by piecing together existing ones?
Why you should be playing City of Heroes: Emotes
Sure, almost all MMOGs have emotes. They've been there forever. But much like the incredibly involved character creator, City of Heroes boasts a wide range of very silly and fun choices, perfect for those who love to add in that little oomph when role-playing or just messing around with friends. Also, unlike the fire-and-forget-it emote development of many other MMOs, the City of Heroes developers continue to slowly add new emotes in to the game, both through patches and microtransaction packs. Some are easy to find through the chat menus, while others are a bit off the beaten path, and short of hunting down a listing, you may not have seen them all.For those who haven't ever experienced the wide range of City of Heroes emotes, I've compiled a gallery of some of my personal favorites. That said, this gallery is nowhere nearly the entirety of the emotes in the game. In researching this, I realized there were quite a few I hadn't even seen yet - despite playing CoH for a couple of years now! There are also a few emotes that have multiple /em commands to activate. That being said, there is really no substitute for seeing them in action. So, if you've been considering trying on some tights, there's no time like the present! A handful of cool emotes >> %Gallery-40380%
The Queue: Overkill and delicious tears
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.The image I used for yesterday's The Queue raised some eyebrows, with a lot of people wondering what it was or where it was from. It's just one of a series of paintings throughout Dalaran of the various player races. There are some hanging in the inns, some in the shops, et cetera. My plan was to cycle through them all over the next week or so, and random selection gave me the incredibusty human female first. It might be interesting to note that I'm pretty sure that painting is a nod to Tifa Lockhart of Final Fantasy 7. It could also just be a regular ol' human female wearing the level 1 Warrior starting gear. Who knows?Today you get the Female Blood Elf, and now let's get the Q&A started.Plaguenog said... Any chance they'll let me use Badges of Justice to buy new badges? Or possibly a reduction in prices for lvl 7o badge gear? I'm basically looking for any reason NOT to use as many of my lvl 70 badges for gems to Auction off.
Just /dance the night away
About how long are you in a new game before you decide to check out the emotes? These gestures have become an integral part of the personalities we ascribe to our characters - and perhaps none more than the /dance emote. Ravious over on KillTenRats recently explored dancing in MMOs since newer games without the dance animations have had to spell out why they opted to step off of the dance floor. Many games have more than one animation for dancing. In fact, RuneScape has moves that can only be accessed by paid members and Lord of the Rings Online has dances that can only be gained after completing festival quests.It remains to be seen if dancing is what truly brings a sense of community to the city squares as Ravious seems to allude. But one thing's for sure - anything's better than sitting around watching the toy train set that never ends!
Blizzard updates emote list, you applaud. Bravo!
We knew that Wrath was going to bring new emotes (and some of them were even suggested by players), and now Blizzard has posted the full list, complete with which emotes have animations and voices, and none or both. The /cower is the most hilarious one I've seen so far -- the Night Elf /cower is just terrific. And some of these are old and just not very well known -- /nosepick, I'm pretty sure, has been in there since the beginning, but I don't remember ever seeing anyone use it in game.Unfortunately, they don't mark which are new and which aren't, but I believe /incoming is a new one. I've never tried out /sing or /ding. and /doh looks new to me as well. But odds are that there are at least a few you haven't tried yet, and we do know that lots of the animations are new for sure.So get in there and try out some emoting -- if there's an especially funny one you find, let us know for sure.Update: Commenter Jason M. nabbed this cache of the page from the Wayback machine so we can see what's old and new for sure. Thanks!
Ask a Beta Tester: More mounts, raid gear, and emotes
We have a few more questions about the passenger mounts today, but a lot of Mammoth-related questions are repeats of ones we've answered previously. So if you still have a question about them after today, I recommend checking the last few editions of Ask a Beta Tester to see if it's been answered already. Now, let's get started with Iceman's question...Are the flying passenger mounts? Ground mounts are lovely and all, but once everyone takes to the skies will they become useless to everyone with cold weather flying?I haven't seen any flying passenger mounts yet. Whether the passenger ground mounts are 'useless' or not with Cold Weather Flying is really up to the individual. You can still use it in the old world, you can still use the Mammoth's vendors. There are also places like Lake Wintergrasp where flying is turned off permanently so you don't 'cheat' and skip over all of the fighting to get from Point A to Point B. You and a bunch of your friends charging people down in a huge Mammoth is sweet.If you don't care about any of that stuff though, yeah it could be seen as useless. It's an optional purchase, though. You don't need to spend the money if you don't want to do so.
Check out video of Warhammer Online's /special emotes
In most MMOs, avatars have the opportunity to get down with their bad selves. The /dance emote is a perennial favorite emote, begun in the days of online gaming lore and arguably perfected by World of Warcraft's hilarious pop-culture shout-outs. Warhammer Online is a different sort of animal, though. You don't dance during war, damnit! When this was first announced back in March, people were a bit confused. Is Mythic anti-fun?It turns out they're just anti-dance. Every race in Warhammer Online has at least one wacky antic they can do by typing /special. In fact, typing /dance actually prompts you with the text "[your character] doesn't feel like dancing, they feel like doing /special." Not all of them are in the game yet, and some of them still have to have some kinks worked out, but we have videos of everything in the game as of right now. Click on through below the cut to check out the first (and funniest) of the WAR /specials: The Greenskins! Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out all of our previous Warhammer Online features, and don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
Video of Warhammer Online's /special emotes pt. 3
The Empire /special This is the special used for all three Empire classes: Bright Wizard, Witch Hunter, and Warrior Priest. We imagine eventually that talking hand is going to be covered by a puppet ... maybe? It looks like the character is taking something out of his pocket, but we can't be sure. We hope that additional specials highlight the intrinsic weirdness of some of the Empire classes; if our Bright Wizard /special doesn't set us on fire, I don't know what will! The Dwarven /special The Dwarves are a comptemplative lot, apparently. All three classes (the Engineer, the Ironbreaker, and the Rune Priest) currently use this pipe-smoking emote. We're thinking the Engie at least needs something more evocative. Maybe a nice "say hello to my little friend" moment with a handy turret? We're just saying ... The High Elf /special Right now the elves are missing their mirror, but you get the idea. We think the White Lion class definitely deserves it's own emote; we'd put money on something awesome like braiding the kitty's hair, or petting the giant man-eating death machine petitely on its head.Obviously not all of the /special emotes are in the game yet, but they still have some time before launch to get them in. Others aren't finished, but those will take even less effort to to get them finished an into the game world. We hope you've enjoyed this unique look at one of Warhammer's special features! << BACK Did you enjoy this? Make sure to check out all of our previous Warhammer Online features, and don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!
Video of Warhammer Online's /special emotes pt. 2
The Chaos Chosen / Marauder Special Raaaa! These two fearsome warriors ripple and surge with energy when they /special. We're hoping the Marauder eventually gets some sort of tentacle-based hilarity here. The Magus / Zealot Special The arcane workers of the Chaos faction have a lot of power rippling through their frames. As a result, they've got enough to spare to just 'hang out'. Not only would that be fun at parties, but we think it'd be great for relaxing after a hard day of slaughter and soul-draining. The Dark Elf Specials ... are not in the game yet. We imagine Mythic wants to put some polish on these savage raider's 'fun'.Now click through to check out the specials of Order! A /special emote each for the High Elves, Dwarves, and Empire humans! << BACK NEXT >>
New bear animations for eating and fishing discovered
Everyone knows that bears are actually pretty good fishermen, but for some reason Ferals have to shift back out of form and use a pole like everyone else. That may be changing, however. Andrige, the same person who bought us the new data-mined Hairstyles, has discovered the animations showcased in the above video, which point to the possibility of more life injected into the old Druid Feral forms. One animation called EmoteEat shows the bear bracing a piece of food against the ground with his paw while tearing off a chunk with his teeth, while another is a fishing animation where the bear looks to be pawing at the water, waiting to slap out a fish. The other exciting thing in the video is the possibility of a closed mouth on my bear! Do you know how many flies he's caught with that constantly open mouth of his? I logged onto my Druid on the Beta servers to check on the status of the animations. While you can now eat, drink and use potions in Feral forms on Beta, there are still no animations associated with the act (You simply sit down while eating). In addition, you can't fish at all in Feral forms (Trying to cast my line put me back in Night Elf form). Unfortunately, the fact that these animations haven't been implemented yet does lead me to a bit of pessimistic thought: They simply be meant for bear mobs, and not for Feral bears at all. Blizzard's been adding a lot of cool little idle animations to mobs, such as mama beasts who flush out critters for their cubs to chase and eat, so this may simply be one more set. Still, since they exist, they could easily be added on to the Feral bear's animation list in a future patch even if they aren't originally meant for Ferals. Here's hoping we see them there!
Tabula Rasa to get emote-tional at Comic-Con
With all the flaws we've seen in Tabula Rasa over the last eight months, one thing we'd never criticize the game for is a lack of creativity from the community team. They've consistently done their best to keep their community engaged, despite the fact that said community is disbursed around the internet due to the lack of an official forum. Their support team has pulled in similar praise in the past as well.Continuing their reign of awesomeness, the Tabula Rasa community team is going to be spear-heading a new event at this year's Comic-Con. Critters and co. will be setting up a booth giving away free Tabula Rasa goodies, an exclusive Lumin pet, and filming fans performing their best real-world emotes. They'll take the footage back to their Austin offices and vote on which one is the best, and actually recreate it in-game. It's a pretty neat contest, and we recommend you check it out (booth #5209) if you're headed to Comic-Con this year.
WWI '08 Panel: Death Knight
Understandably, everyone is begging to know more about the Death Knight class. At WWI, the Blizzard developers discussed the class in depth at both the main Development panel as well as at the Q&A panel. So you don't have to go fishing everywhere to find what you want to know, here's a roundup of new information about Death Knights from WWI so far.Starting AreaThe Death Knight starting area will be an extended area in Northern Plaguelands. The developers feel strongly about keeping people interested in playing in the Old World so they are creating this new zone. I personally hate every zone that has the word "plague" associated with it. Admittedly, I didn't reach either of the current Plaguelands until after I'd upgraded to The Burning Crusade, which meant I really had no time for grinding there since Outland awaited alluringly. However, it will be interesting to see if they make changes to the existing Western and Eastern Plaguelands along with adding content to the North to make these areas more interesting to players -- be they Death Knights or not.
Exemplary conduct: WoW expansion adds over 80 new emotes
There have been some leaks from the "friends & family" alpha test for World of Warcraft's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Our sister site WoW Insider has kept up with some of the finer details from the leak, but one recent bit of info got us thinking.The info: WotLK will add over 80 new emotes to WoW players' social repertoire. That's awesome, but it leads us to ask a question: why don't social emotes get more attention in the MMO genre? In general, things like that are sporadically tacked on as small bonuses, if they get added at all. Developers don't make them a big priority. We understand the reasons; gameplay always comes first, right?Well, maybe not always. MMOs are unique in gaming because of their social and community aspects. Emote animations play a part in social interactions. Maybe developers should think about more than just raid mechanics. Maybe they should consider devoting resources to expanding social interaction features. You don't have to be a Bartle Socializer to appreciate emotes, do you?[Via WoW Insider]
WoTLK to bring new emotes
I know I've complained a bit about Warcraft's lack of character customization, but I must say that it seems like they've been slowly but surely taking steps to make things better on that front. There's the dance studio and the barber shop incoming, of course, but here's another leak that's popped up from the Alpha: New emotes! I know it sounds silly, but having pre-made emotes can really add to the fun factor of playing your character. Add them in macros (but don't spam them, that's just annoying) or use them to register your enjoyment, surprise, shock, or disgust at the situation. There's some really good ones in here that I've been wanting for a while -- although, word to wise, Blizzard: Facepalming is generally done with one palm, not two. I know you've seen the facepalm ASCII on the General Forums, too. Also, I would like to thank you for allowing me to finally act as my hero, Phoenix Wright, through the magic of emotes. I know it's just a minor thing, but still, I'm looking forward to having a bit more variety in playing with my character in the social part of the game. Now if we could only get outfits and player housing too... [Via Deathknight.info]
AoC video guide to emote animations
Ten Ton Hammer has done it once again, providing us with one of the most entertaining guides we've seen yet on Age of Conan: a video guide to /emotes! If you're still apprehensive (which has its own /emote) about getting that pre-order for AoC, this might just do it for you. Seriously though, these emotes are not only entertaining, they're a testament to the amount of detail that has gone into this game. Mostly, emotes are useful in social roleplaying situations, but to find a game that has this many otherwise seemingly-mundane character animations this early before launch shows that either they got the important stuff out of the way first, or they decided emotes are more important than anything else. Um, we're pretty sure it's the latter. May we suggest the /chicken?
Breakfast Topic: Emote humor
I have mentioned before that I am a sucker for practical jokes. I fall for emote humor all the time. In EQ, I fell for the pickpocket joke. And the BG joke that is definitely a little mean has gotten me as well. So I am always happy to hear that I am not the only sucker around and tonight much of my guild fell for a little ninja loot humor.Narayan is a Boomkin. So there is no way he should be looting the Seventh Ring of the Tirisfalen. Even if he were a Feral Druid, he still wouldn't need all of that shield stuff. But for a minute, most of the people in Tempest Keep seemed to forget that loot text is green and not orange. To say that the tank was a little miffed would be an understatement. But my guildies have a great sense of humor, so there will be no ensuing drama reported in Guildwatch.Have you fallen for an emote practical joke? Or are you the emote joke perpetrator? What is your favorite /e humor?
WoW Rookie: Communication Part 1
WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know. The joy of MMORPGS is being able to interact with other players.At some point we all group up for quests, instances, raids, battlegrounds, arenas, guilds, just for company.This column is dedicated to the basics of how we communicate in game.Next week we'll discuss the third party programs that are frequently used in games.
Footloose in WAR
When you and your family move from big-city Chicago to a small town out west, you're in for a real case of culture shock. You try hard to fit in, but you can't quite believe you're living in a place where rock music and dancing are illegal. There is a glimmer of hope, however: a troubled but lovely blonde with an exceedingly strict father, who is responsible for keeping the town dance-free. You and your classmates want to do away with this ordinance, especially since the senior prom is around the corner. Only YOU have the courage to initiate a battle to abolish the ban and revitalize the spirit of the repressed townspeople! Sound familiar? If you're a child of the 80's you might recognize this as the plot for the rebellious teen drama Footloose, but recently Warhammer Online announced that it will not include a /dance emote in their game. Is this the decision of EA Mythic, Games Workshop or an overly restrictive minister who oddly resembles John Lithgow? More importantly, how drastically will this affect the economy if players can't /dance for gold in town?
New content for Pirates of the Caribbean
As previously mentioned, Pirates of the Caribbean Online is the surprisingly fun corporate-giant-backed MMO that could. Refreshingly, the dev team on PotCO isn't resting on their brand name to keep them afloat (no pun intended -- well, okay, you got me), but instead continue to bring new content to their constituents. Currently, this takes the form of new emotes, hairstyles, tattoos, jewelry, and clothing, as well as the new 'Looking For Crew' feature, which lets other players know when you want a PUG. Additionally, Unlimited Access Members can get their hands on a new skull bandana, available until midnight tonight from any tailor. Disney Online has additional content planned for 2008 including a new Black Pearl Boss Battle as well as the expansion of ship customization, extension of quest story lines, and the addition of more enemies and challenges. More than ever, this is a great time for new users to jump in and ply the seas in search of tentacular adventure! If you want more information, our hands-on tour is available for your perusal.
