WoW Classic takes /spit emote away from you

Spitting is probably too nasty in WoW Classic. The emote will soon be taken away from players – at least when they want to spit on someone.

On the PTR for the upcoming Burning Crusade Classic patch, players noticed a small but significant change. Apparently there is an adjustment to the emote system. The spit command can no longer be used on other players.

What was done with the emote? Apparently Blizzard has changed the programming for the emote /spit. The emote is no longer displayed in chat when targeting another player. The emote works fine if you don’t have a player in the target. Then, as usual, the message “[Player name] is spitting on the floor.”

Why is the emote being disabled? There is no official reason for this from Blizzard so far, but the players have an obvious suspicion. In Burning Crusade Classic, spitting at players with the shop mount has become common practice on many realms. For many players, the shop mount stands for the bad, new changes from World of Warcraft that you don’t want. As a result, players who use the shop mount are often spat at. Some have even set up a macro or parts of an add-on so that players with the mount are automatically detected and spat on.

On the one hand, this should clearly fall under “harassment”, and on the other hand, gamers with the shop mount feel bad if they are always spat at. Blizzard might want to avoid just that.

This is how the community reacts: In the World of Warcraft subreddit, this change is mostly made fun of. It seems clear to the players that they will simply agree on a different emote, such as /slap. In addition, it is still possible to simply write the emotes by hand, so that deactivating the emote is of little use. The reactions are correspondingly cynical and sarcastic.

Note that this is currently a change from the PTR. This change does not yet exist in the live game.