Express Yourself – Emotes Part One

When I first joined ESO my character was wandering around Sky Reach when he stumbled across a large crowd of players all facing the stage, you know the one at the bottom of the stairs, just inside the main gate. Now when I say large crowd I really mean large, at this point I had not visited Cyrodiil so I had not seen a Zerg yet but thinking back I would say that this crowd was even bigger than the biggest Zerg. I mean this crowd was so big the server was lagging. Anyway suddenly the crowd erupted into spontaneous applause and people were cheering and jumping about. I got onto chat box and asked someone what was going on. He told me that the guy on stage had written an adventure story and had read it to the crowd. Then another guy got up on stage and by his actions I could tell he was telling jokes and the crowd was reacting with laughter and other expressions. I was amazed at the high level of cooperation and group participation. Since then I have stumbled across groups of uniformed soldiers practicing marching manoeuvres in the palace court yard on the Gold Coast and an army on foot just slowly walking through Craglorn as well as Tabard wearing groups on horseback galloping through Cold-Harbour. I never really got into the role playing side of the game but clearly there were huge groups who broke away from questing and harvesting loot to express themselves in different ways.

My main way of communicating with other players had always been through Chat box and Voice box with occasional dance moves and playing musical instruments while waiting for the odd Dolman to pop but little did I realize there existed a whole range of other emotes available to me. The actual Role playing bit had never been a big thing but now after attending a few Role playing events I realise that a whole new world has opened up.

One group was pirate themed and so their characters all wore appropriate outfits and colours while another all wore swim wear and gathered in a player’s home all splashing about in the pool. They even had a wedding with guests all dressed formally and putting away their weapons and taking up cups of wine and mugs of mead. I was told that the pyjama party was a riot but I missed that one. I realized that to be a part of these kind of parties I would have to tune my emote skills.

There is a huge range of standard emotes to suit all occasions and you can access them from the help screen, as shown above. A quick look at the menu and you will see that all types of situations are catered for. The accompanying picture just shows a small example of these standard emotes.

However there are many other ways that you can express yourself within the game. As you progress through the game you are awarded special emotes for various achievements. These can be found on your menu bar under Collections and include emotes like Belly Laugh, Bull Horns, Kick the dirt and others. These are accessed in the usual way, for example type “/Belly Laugh.” Also under the same menu settings you will find Memento’s. These are more special emotes that you can use to express novelty emotions and they come with sound effects, lights, bells and many other really great tricks. There are thirty six of these for you to use.
Under the heading of special emotes come the range of Dazzler Effects. These are emotes that shower your neighbours with flowers and other interesting effects.

Also as a reward for some of the annual festival you get emotes like juggling, fire eating and a sword swallowing party trick. There seems to be new ones released every now and then so keep your eyes open for them as they come along.

The other way to express yourself is by adopting any one of the ten Personalities that you can assign to your character. Personalities are bundles of emotes that include silly walks and poses. My favourite is the Jester but there is Cheerful, Heroic, Melancholy, Thief, Assassin and others.

It doesn’t take much imagination to have your character relating to other players in new and interesting ways. Even if you are not into the whole role playing bit I am sure the use of these tricks will make your game play interesting and fun. If you discover any other ways you can express yourself please put your thoughts in the comments boxes below. I hope this has wet your appetite and that you have learned a little about how to make you game play more interesting.