My mud has a 60 character limit on emotes. I know all you guys are gonna say horror horror, but let's face it, do we really NEED to know all this unimportant drivel that people tend to put in when they have free rein? Given half a chance, a lot of RPers will write a novel to say what could've been said equally well in 5 words. If I wanna read a novel, I'll read a novel. Whatever happened to leaving things up to the imagination, anyway?
> Baron Zydel says in common, "Hello there."
Baron Zydel grins.
Is this just a simple greeting with good feeling attatched? Or is Baron Zydel grinning because while you're standing there talking, his forces are off in the distance taking over your castle? Or maybe he's grinning about something entirely different, like maybe he just saw Lady Veilin naked and you walked in and surprised him with drool on his chin. I kind of like never knowing what someone's thinking, unless they choose to say it out loud or show it in some obvious manner. There's a lot of potential for misunderstanding here, which is probably the greatest human failing there is, and leads to all sorts of interesting possibilities gamewise.
Short emotes can be just as effective as long ones, if you pay attention to the context:
> Demiar exclaims in common, "Yay I just got promoted to Archmage!"
Demiar dances with you.
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> Demiar says in common, "Now that I've got you alone..."
Demiar dances with you.
Short and sweet, but it's obvious we're talking about two entirely different kinds of dancing. And if you want to use emotes, you can always alias them (providing your mud allows that, which the few I've seen do) and not hafta worry about how fast you type. You know, stuff like an ogre trying to count his fingers, a noblewoman adjusting the folds of her dress, all those little mannerisms you can easily do to add color without slowing everything down to the point of mass boredom.
> OnyxFlame wanders off looking for coffee to the south.
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