Hearthstone's Most Wanted Emotes
Emotes. It’s a wonder how something so simple, so brief, and so seemingly innocent can cause such strong feelings. Emotes are a surprisingly divisive topic among the Hearthstone community, so with that in mind, it seems prudent to acknowledge a few things before we get started:
- A lot of players want there to be NO emotes in the game at all, let alone any more then we currently have available.
- A lot of players want there to be an auto-squelch feature instead of any more emotes.
- A lot of players feel that no matter what emotes there are or aren’t the majority of opponents are going to use them in bad manners (BM), so what’s the point?
If you fall into one of the above categories, reader beware! The rest of this article is going to talk about the emotes that the community most wants to see added to the game. Feel free to skip right ahead to the comments section and let us know which category you’re in and why! That being said, let’s begin!
“Sorry”
By and large, the most wished for emote was one we actually used to have. “Sorry” was replaced with the “Wow” emote around the time that the Whispers of the Old Gods expansion was released. Pretty much since then, players have been clamoring for its return. Not big fans of its replacement, even a year and a half later the request is still going strong.
So why did it disappear and why do people want it back? Well, according to Ben Brode, it just wasn’t very useful and they already had “Wow” recorded…but a large portion of the internet suspects it was because players were abusing it and it got annoying.
The people who want it back seem to want it to genuinely express an apology. Maybe they had to answer the doorbell and accidentally roped their opponent, or their opponent had a terrible run of RNG and they want to express something like “that was bad luck”. The “Sorry” emote could encompass a lot of different meanings in one, and sure not all of them were polite, but that’s life.
“Good Game”
I know, I know, doesn’t “Well Played” already cover this? Well, it does…and it doesn’t. A lot of players want a dedicated emote instead of having to rely on “Well Played” for everything. They argue that “Well Played” is too generic, or too overused, or too perfunctory.
Many complain that “Well Played” is used sarcastically too often for it to serve the purpose of genuinely wishing your opponent a good game. A common wish is to be able to say some variation of “Thanks stranger, for taking the time out of your day to play a game with me for our mutual enjoyment” but since that won’t fit in a speech bubble some form of “Good Game” would work.
Perhaps you wouldn’t want to use this with every opponent, for instance with a habitual roper, but some games just stand out as being exceptionally fun or well played and you want something a little more meaningful than an end of game “Well Played”. Considering this emote would be used only at the end of a match, it might not be realistic for Blizzard to create an emote that’s a one-trick pony, but who knows? Keep hope alive, GG-ers!
“You’re Welcome”
We already have a “Thanks” emote and a large number of players wish there was a companion emote to go along with it, a simple “You’re Welcome” emote. Whether that’s because they want to genuinely say “You’re Welcome” to a genuine “Thanks” or use it for more nefarious reasons, that’s up the individual player and game. Either way, this emote has been requested again and again by community members.
Polite players looking to respond to their opponents “Thanks” currently only have the option of saying “Thanks” back and hoping their meaning gets across.
Overall, the majority of requests for new emotes seemed to be serious and genuine. Most players who want more emotes want them for additional interaction with their opponent. Sure, there was a fair amount of sarcastic suggestions and plenty of emotes that could only be meant to BM, but they weren’t the main part of the conversation.
Bonus Emotes
The following suggestions weren’t as popular or discussed as seriously. Even if it’s highly unlikely they’d make their way into the game, they’re still worth mentioning. Whether that’s because they’d be dead useful or just good for a few laughs is up to you to decide.
- “Seriously?”
- *sigh*
- “Hurry up!”
- “BRB”
It’s impossible to predict if Blizzard will add or change any emotes in the future, but what do you think? Do you wish emotes would go the way of the dinosaur? Do you think emotes would just result in more BMing or would it make the game friendlier? Do you tend to use emotes in a genuine or sarcastic manner? Are there any emotes you want to see added? Let us know in the comments!
Where’s...
“You lucky *inset expletive here*!” ?
I just want something to the effect of haha
"Seriously?" fills kinda the same role as "Wow". It's more precise, but "Wow" has wider range of appliance. So it's not obvious how useful it would be.
"Hurry up!" seems really bad. I doubt it can motivate anyone to move faster, only to squelch you. And we already have "Greetings" emote, which can be used for exactly the same purpose.
"BRB" seems too niche. To begin with, you shouldn't usually create situations when you have to use it, right? And if it happens, you can just use "Sorry" when you come back... oh, wait.
*sigh* looks pretty nice though.
And yes, people have been complaining about the auto-squelch option for nearly 4 years, so maybe it's time for Blizzard to start thinking about it. Every other card game has it, so I believe Blizzard will somehow manage to implement it too. Maybe it will even lower the amount of BM a little bit, since people will know that all oversensitive players have the emotes squelched and there isn't much point in BMing them.
I personally am not sure what bm people are complaining about that autosquelch deals with. If you mean people saying greetings at the start of the game, and occasionally using wow sarcastically, I find it at worst to be just a thing, and at best to be slightly funny. The bm I hate is when people friend to rage, which actually happens a lot less now. Though most of that rage happened over me playing weird decks, so I don't think I understand the hearthstone community at all, despite having played the game since before naxxramas.
Because some people are oversensitive and percieve every emote used by an opponent as a personal offence. So they squelch their opponents at the beginning of every game. Also sometimes they forget about it and become very upset when an opponent use some emote. So it would be much easier if they could just turn off the emotes once and for all.
Arena. My opponent topdecks a UI with zero cards left in hand.
What is this super informative dialogue?
- Greetings, friend.
- My greetings.
Why can't I tell him that he's a degenerate? Blizz plz.
First of all, because you are a degenerate yourself, if you call someone a degenerate for topdecking UI. So that's actually a good thing.
because it is funny, mildly. I see that and there is a moment of oh shit, and then they play the card. It makes me angry they got that card, but them emoting is kind of enjoyable. Respond with a simple wow, or if they implemented sorry again, I might say sorry before killing them. They thought they had hope and tried to crush mine, sorry, not happening. Those kinds of interactions are why emotes, and just saying screw you is not a fun dialogue, it is being a degenerate.
Thats first of all, but where is your second and third similarly fascinating argument against this guy? At least be consistent when calling soneone a degenerate, cuz if not, you may seem one as well...
Also SamTheHam meant, that he couldnt express his thoughts on how unfairly lucky was his opponent, and he only lost due to a bullshit topdeck... And I actually agree, there is just no way to communicate properly, this game is not social at all...
I don't need to bring the second argument if there is no objection to the first one. A person who calls someone a degenerate for being lucky (which is a blatant fallacy) shows more signs of degeneration than a person who got a lucky topdeck.
Also SamTheHam meant, that he couldnt express his thoughts on his opponent being a degenerate. Woah, you are pretty bad at reading.
By the way, to express that your opponent is unfairly lucky, you can use "Wow" emote. Not that there is much meaning in expressing it. And the game is much more social than the people demanding auto-squelch want.
I still just want a good old fashioned "f*ck you" emote. That's all you need.
In Kripp's voice
You mean in Van Darkholme's voice.
an option that I hope Blizzard sees as a useless feature that does not actually solve anything. Because spending time on that over dealing with friend bm is a waste. I feel like squelching is annoying too because I genuinely want to express things in battle, and the room for being a jerk is not that big. I think the emotes are there for a reason, and that squelch is there to stop spamming, but I rarely see spamming, a well timed wow or greetings is funny, and autosquelch just removes those little bits of joy in some games.
So you want to force everyone to listen to your emoting because you find it so joyous? How about the people who like emoting like you are free to do that, but people who don't want to listen to you have that option as well? An auto-squelch option would be great.
D U H O F C O U R S E I P L A Y E D W E L L I M K E L T H U - F R E K I N G - Z A D
Best emote- Greeting cancer
What they should do is to introduce the respect feature from Gwent. After a game you can give your respect to the opponent and if both do, they get a tiny amount of dust (let it be 1-3 dust). That just makes you feel more friendly towards the last game, even when you lost. A much better gg than any emote could express.
I mostly want the Sorry back, it was my second most used Emote behind Well Played, Greetings was a close contender but I just don't really use Wow or any of the other ones... I guess I would like a LOL or some kind of laugh. I really liked the Lich King fight when Jaina said "Are you serious right now?" and I guess I would like that emote, too, Basically, I want the things that I would like to say to my opponent, which is almost never thanks(since there's a Well Played for the end of the game), almost never Oops(it's always WAY worse than that), almost never Wow(people play netdecks, there's not much special, ever) and never Threaten(I don't think it has its place, seems disrespectful)
If they ever add new emotes they should at least call back the original voice actors. The "Wow" and Mirror start emote for Gul'dan and Rexxar were made by a different dude in the French version (I don't know for other languages) and that's really annoying.