Ever since the first Diablo back in 1996, multiplayer has been a consistent part of the experience. Whether it was via LAN (Local Area Network) or online through Blizzard's Battle.net in later games, players have always had the option to dungeon crawl together. Diablo 4 expands on this further, by including features that make the game feel more like an MMO.
As players go through the story or simply explore Sanctuary, they will encounter other players doing the exact same thing as them. While voice communication is the ideal method when playing with others, that isn't always an option. It can also be difficult to stop and use text chat when in the middle of battle. This is where emotes come into play as another means of communication.
What Are Emotes?
In the context of games like Diablo 4, emotes are unique visual animations for the player character. They can be used at will to convey a wide variety of actions to other players or to simply get into character if players want to roleplay. While emotes don't always have voice over, they do in Diablo 4. Emoting can be useful for a lot of situations. Whether it is saying 'hello' to another player or saying 'goodbye', emotes can help with almost any kind of situation.
How to Emote
Emoting in Diablo 4 has been improved to make it both simple and consistent across all platforms. On PC with the default key bindings, players simply have to press 'E'. This will open up a wheel with eight slots. There are only a handful of emotes assigned to the slots by default. There are 14 Emotes in total, and they are as follows.
Help | Sorry |
Thanks | Hello |
Point | Yes |
Wait | Wave |
Follow | Cheer |
No | Bye |
Taunt | Wings of the Creator |
One important thing to keep in mind is that the Wings of the Creator emote is available exclusively for players who purchased the Ultimate Edition of Diablo 4. While the in-game shop currently only has cosmetics like armor sets and mounts, it is not out of the question that additional emotes may be added to the shop in the future.
Something that players may notice is that there are three wheels for players to customize with emotes. The slots for emotes can be used for other functions as well. For example, players can assign actions like inspecting other players and requesting trades. Consumables like elixirs can also be put into the emote wheel as well, which allows for a great deal of customization.
Emotes are useful for more than just communicating with other players. In fact, early on in Diablo 4 there are several side quests where an objective involves players emoting. In one case, players have to cheer to raise morale among some troops.
Diablo 4 releases on June 6th for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Early Access is available now.