The PetEmote Design Poll
While reading comments and feedback on PetEmote, I lately had an idea which I like to implement in one of the next versions. In that I can’t estimate if this small but nice modification would arrive safely at all you PetEmote freaks out there, I decided to start a poll and find out, what you think about it.
As most of you might know, PetEmote uses normal emotes, like the ones you can write by typing /me, to send its messages to other players. Because all emotes have to start with the name of the player who is sending them and a following space, it creates sentences like the following one and sends them to all players:
Jorna ‘s Gorilla Chuck stomps on the ground.
With all players, who have PetEmote installed, the arriving message will be cut from the beginning unto the pet’s name. This way, it looks like the emote is coming from the pet.
Well, it is not the best way at all, but it works. What I don’t like in it is the space before the apostrophe. That seems to be not a big deal, but maybe you know that there must not be an apostrope in German (against the rule, I put it there for that the single “s” doesn’t look so forlornly). The pet family, which is only used for a better sentence structure, also blows the emotes up, makes them monotonous and therefore is asked to turn off by many players.
So my idea is to yield to these terms and change the output like this:
Jorna » Chuck stomps on the ground.
This might look a bit uncommon in the first place, but I think it is an improvement. The double arrow symbolizes the relationship between the pet and its master in a way – it looks like Chuck, Jorna’s companion, has to tell the world something about himself. At the same time, it creates a border between the necessary means and the beginning of the emote in fact. Alternatively I could imagine a dash instead of the arrow, but I think it’s the second choice:
Jorna — Chuck stomps on the ground.
The picture above is showing all three options using the game grafics. I like to underline, that this output will only be visible to players, who have PetEmote not installed. Friends of the addon will of course carry on seeing all emotes starting with the pet’s name.
I’d be pleased, if the poll on the right side would end with a useful result. I’m also very thankful about any idea in the form of comments to this article.

Kinf
October 28th, 2008 · 10:27 PM
Personaly I love the messages the way they are. My wife and I play right next to each other, and I get to see my pet’s emotes on her system, and they look just fine.
Danny
November 1st, 2008 · 07:18 AM
Personally i have no problem with the way the messages appear now. Although i have no idea what the german writing rules are it fits fine within english rules and that space is easy to get over. The only complaints might be from others who dont have petemote blowing up the sentence structure but that in itself could be motivation for them to download it. =p I am looking forward to the next update. Keep up the good work
Kristy
November 17th, 2008 · 11:31 PM
Come on, update the Pet Emote add-on with Devilsaur and rhino /emotes already!
Makklor
November 21st, 2008 · 10:12 PM
I know you are very busy with the new group of Hunter pets, but I just wanted to make sure that you remembered the Unholy DeathKnights Pet Ghoul. By the way, my wife, our son, a family friend, and I all use the addon and love it! Thank you!
Jorna
November 21st, 2008 · 11:00 PM
Oh – the Ghoul, of course! Thank you for remembering!