Guild Wars 2

First, sorry if this has been asked before.

I was hoing through the list of ‘built in’ emotes from the Wiki https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Emote and I’ve always wondered why /afk does ‘t work. I would have thought it a useful indicator but I suppose it may have been exploited somehow – although I can’t imagine how…

What’s the scoop here?

/sleep work fine. No need for afk.

Or /dance. Its not like people gonna think you are busy dancing in rl if you dont respond.

/sleep , to me, at least, would make me think the character is asleep in game but its puppetmaster is still at large watching the screen…

I think it’s a bit silly that there isn’t a working /afk emote. You can change your status to away in the Contacts and LFG screen, there’s a drop down menu next to your name there, but I don’t believe it means that the game replies to whispers with a “playername.1234 is away at the moment” message it only affects your status when people are looking at the guild window or friends lists.

What would an /afk emote do?

I know some people use /sit or /sleep if they want a visual indicator that they’re not actively participating in whatever’s going on. But I can’t think of many situations where you need a clear sign that someone is afk, maybe when starting dungeons but that can be worked out by process of elimination – if you ask if everyone’s ready and they don’t answer then they’re not there.

We have dance, sit, sleep, talk, cross arms, and a small set of idle animations….. what possible emote could /afk use to convey that you aren’t there, that any of the above listed can’t? Or are you suggesting a /toilet emote where they fidget in place?

Or are you confusing an away message with an “emote”:
e·mote
??m?t/
verb
verb: emote; 3rd person present: emotes; past tense: emoted; past participle: emoted; gerund or present participle: emoting

• portray emotion in a theatrical manner.*

Where I come from, /afk has the same command line structure as /dance hence my use of the word ‘emote’.

As to its use, are we saying its a pointless flag when it clearly indicares a persons non-presence? To my mind, /dance or /sleep tells me the avatar is emoting the action but with controller present. I just thought it would be a handy insta-indicator of human not at keyboard – it was just a thought.

Yeah I think emote is the wrong term really, I think the OP is referring to a /afk command. Generally in MMOs an AFK command will put a visible flag on your character (often just adding AFK to your nameplate) and the game will auto reply to anyone whispering to you telling the person that you’re away from keyboard.

The auto reply is generally the most important part, but if you see someone standing still with AFK over their head you won’t whisper them at all.

Pifil.5193:

Yeah I think emote is the wrong term really, I think the OP is referring to a /afk command. Generally in MMOs an AFK command will put a visible flag on your character (often just adding AFK to your nameplate) and the game will auto reply to anyone whispering to you telling the person that you’re away from keyboard.

The auto reply is generally the most important part, but if you see someone standing still with AFK over their head you won’t whisper them at all.

Yes, this is exactly what I was trying to get at – apologies for not being clear. And I’d forgotten about the auto-reply which, in actuality, I am familiar with! D’oh! Thanks for pointin stuff out in a better way than I did!

Pifil.5193:

The auto reply is generally the most important part, but if you see someone standing still with AFK over their head you won’t whisper them at all.

Or res them…

Was fun to use it in open world pvp in WoW. /afk and people thought you were afk so started to attack and realise you were not afk!

However i dont really and never seen any real use of this emote.

DocRimpel.5280:

Pifil.5193:

The auto reply is generally the most important part, but if you see someone standing still with AFK over their head you won’t whisper them at all.

Or res them…

Yeah, I always laugh when I see a half-naked character idling next at a waypoint and wonder just how much of their equipment will be broken when they return.

To be honest, I would still res them.