Emotes are animations that allow you to express your character visually. When thanking someone, for example, you could use an emote to make your character bow, or when saying goodbye, you could use an emote to make them wave.

There are many different types of emote in City of Heroes and City of Villains. Some just trigger an animation, others involve an animation and ‘speech’ in the form of text, and some have sounds or music associated with them.

Similarly, some emotes have more than one animation or more than one version. The ‘dance’ emote, for example, has several different styles of dancing, and one is picked randomly each time you use the emote. The various ‘BB’ emotes, on the other hand, each play a different tune.

Using Emotes

There are three ways to use emotes in City of Heroes and City of Villains.

The first is to click on the small ‘speech bubble’ symbol at the end of the chat bar - this will open a menu allowing you to choose from many common emotes, either by clicking on the emote name or pressing the keyboard shortcut indicated by a white highlight in the emote’s name (‘Hi’ is accessed by pressing H when the ‘Greetings’ submenu is open, for example).

The second is to use the ‘/em’ slash command - just type /em followed by the name of the emote from the list below. So to use the ‘Hi’ emote, you would type /em hi and hit Return. (For more information on slash commands, see the User Interface and Basic Controls section.)

The third is to type a semi-colon followed by the name of the mote from the list below. So to use the ‘Hi’ emote, you would type ;hi and hit Return.

Emote List

Below is a list of all the emotes currently available in City of Heroes and City of Villains. Have fun trying them out and using them!