tbc-classic Spit Emote No Longer Works If You Have Someone Targeted on Burning Crusade Classic PTR

[Stan 5,239]

With Overlords of Outlands now available for playtesting, players have noticed that the "/spit" emote no longer works if you have someone targeted on Burning Crusade Classic test servers.

While you can still use the /spit emote without a target to "spit on the ground," you will no longer see a message in the chat log saying "X spits on Y" if you have a target.

We are not sure at this time if this is a bug or Blizzard decided to remove it for a different reason, but there are multiple threads on the official forums discussing potential reasons for the removal.

AzAMOuS uploaded a video, which displays that you can no longer spit on other players.

[Babel 39]

I always wondered why it was implemented in the first place, since it promotes hostile and toxic behaviour. People get temp banned or get completely silenced for toxic behaviour, yet they can spit on you (which is a criminal offense in many countries) all they want.

[Nakzul 37]

11 minutes ago, Babel said:

I always wondered why it was implemented in the first place, since it promotes hostile and toxic behaviour. People get temp banned or get completely silenced for toxic behaviour, yet they can spit on you (which is a criminal offense in many countries) all they want.

Well if we have to use real world morality and laws then surely being able to kill other players is also fairly problematic?

[DahkCeles 18]

Jokes like this date back to text-based internet chats, when it could be silly to /slap someone with a large trout.

Before everyone jumps to the conclusion that it must inherently have been toxic from the get go... remember that once upon a time our lives weren't on the internet.   Things like smart phones and social media didn't exist yet.   If you /spit at some anonymous avatar, it wasn't the same thing as spitting at the actual person in real life.

Now-a-days, I neither carry a trout to work nor would I consider it advisable to type /slap in a tweet because it could get misunderstood very quickly.

[Nayrusa 50]

20 minutes ago, Nakzul said:

Well if we have to use real world morality and laws then surely being able to kill other players is also fairly problematic?

Well if you go down that road.

It is a game mechanic that needs to be used in order to progress in the game (killing)

Spitting on someone has absolutly no progression gain ingame

[Badadada 184]

1 hour ago, Babel said:

I always wondered why it was implemented in the first place, since it promotes hostile and toxic behaviour. People get temp banned or get completely silenced for toxic behaviour, yet they can spit on you (which is a criminal offense in many countries) all they want.

RPPvP seemed like a very realistic way of playing WoW in the early days - there's nothing wrong with spitting on orcs as a human for roleplaying reasons after you witnessed the story of WC3 and Frozen Throne. As the game progressed towards a universe where the two factions co-operate so much and players in general moved towards consuming more PvE content engaging less with non-NPC enemies I think we indeed reached a point where it is indeed misused even though that wasn't always the case.

[Arcling 898]

Sure, it can be spammed and abused, but so are many others. People can still use something like /insult or /rude on someone, are they going to restrict those as well?

Edited July 30, 2021 by Arcling

[Melcahia 36]

cant believe this is actually an issue, back in the days i use to macro /spit in every spell in pvp, and nobody cried about it.

[Migeru71 15]

8 hours ago, Nayrusa said:

Well if you go down that road.

It is a game mechanic that needs to be used in order to progress in the game (killing)

Spitting on someone has absolutly no progression gain ingame

How exactly does that make any sense? There are a ton of game features that do not contribute to progression. Illogical.

[Migeru71 15]

20 hours ago, Melcahia said:

cant believe this is actually an issue, back in the days i use to macro /spit in every spell in pvp, and nobody cried about it.

That was before the participation trophy generation. Now all the neurotic ninnies are in a race to be offended. It's a competition to see who's the most fragile. The winners get two seconds of faux affirmation on the internet and can change their bios to say how "brave" they are for standing up to the unthinkable hardship of being /spit on by a cartoon in a video game.

Edited July 31, 2021 by Migeru71
sp*

[Migeru71 15]

Blizzard: Has a toxic work environment for years and years.

Also Blizzard: In order to rectify this, we must remove /spit from WoW.

Now I can see how their toxic work environment persisted for so long. Their leadership is so utterly incompetent that they don't know how to identify and solve problems.

[Borgoff33 101]

the PCing wont stop till they turn WoW into Hello Kitty Island Adventure

[ORCSMASH 29]

I'm all for progressive thinking and removing toxic behavior from video game culture as a whole, but this is a whole other level of "too far". It's thematically appropriate to be able to spit on someone of the other faction, though I *might* understand if they removed the functionality for same-faction players.

Still, I don't like this at all. Pretty soon I won't be able to "brush up against you and fart loudly".

[Harvey 60]

If they are going to remove /spit, then they might as well remove /e since I can just achieve the same by doing "/e spat at %T". 😜
not to mention a whole lot of unmentionable actions. 
Personally, I hope they keep the /e as I often use it for pranking my raiding friends. But that command can be dangerously insulting, provocative, and law-breaking. 🙄

[Guest]

10 hours ago, ORCSMASH said:

I'm all for progressive thinking and removing toxic behavior from video game culture as a whole, but this is a whole other level of "too far". It's thematically appropriate to be able to spit on someone of the other faction, though I *might* understand if they removed the functionality for same-faction players.

Still, I don't like this at all. Pretty soon I won't be able to "brush up against you and fart loudly".

And I hope not as I don't know where that green behind has been!

[Zerti 9]

so blizzard decided to make their whales feel better instead of making their employees feel better. i swear, cancelling that sub feels better every day. how can a company this big make that many terrible PR moves in a row...

also, you can still type the n-word in chat in classic. that's not that important to blizzard. money is.

Edited August 1, 2021 by Zerti

[Babel 39]

On 7/30/2021 at 4:45 PM, Nakzul said:

Well if we have to use real world morality and laws then surely being able to kill other players is also fairly problematic?

Huh... Now that you mention it... I've never thought about killing a player in game as actually killing them, since the death state is not permanent. More of a defeating them temporarily.

Spitting on someone on the other hand, yeah, that tells you something about the person.

[ORCSMASH 29]

On 8/2/2021 at 6:01 AM, Babel said:

Huh... Now that you mention it... I've never thought about killing a player in game as actually killing them, since the death state is not permanent. More of a defeating them temporarily.

Spitting on someone on the other hand, yeah, that tells you something about the person.

OR - and I know this is crazy - they're playing a video game, are immersed in it and, for example, are a die-hard Horde player that hates Alliance dogs. That the person doing the emote is playing an RPG is all it really tells you about the person. I think it's quite disingenuous to try to add any deeper meaning past that without a bigger context.

I like to swing a giant, two-handed axe around in WoW, I guess that probably says a lot about who I am as a person, too, right? I also like to /fart on my guildmates during raids, so are you saying that too has some obvious connotation to who I am as a person? I'm not trying to be rude, just pointing out the silliness of your argument. People play RPGs and video games in general to do stuff they can't or won't do IRL. I could even go deeper and point out that your choice of avatar on this very website says 'something about you as a person', and makes you look like a serial killer (wannabe), but there is literally no connection between the aesthetics and things you like in video games or entertainment in general and who you are as a person IRL, so I won't. Cheers!

Edited September 4, 2021 by ORCSMASH
Added additional text.