World of Warcraft’s major 11.2 Ghosts of K’aresh update will add a highly-requested feature fans have been waiting years for–the ability to lean.
Yes, as spotted by Wowhead, the /lean emote is finally being added to Blizzard’s MMORPG. It’s the first major emote addition since 2008, when a large list of emotes were added as part of the game’s Wrath of the Lich King expansion.
Lean is something players, and particularly roleplayers, have wanted for quite some time, as the ability for NPC characters to lean against terrain was added during 2018’s Battle for Azeroth expansion. In 11.2, characters can use the lean emote to prop up against a wall and give off that oh-so-important mysterious adventurer vibe or practice being a mime and just lean in mid-air against nothing at all.
When compared to all the major new content coming with the Ghosts of K’aresh update, including a new upgradeable artifact cloak, the Ecological Succession world activity, and an encounter against a Stormwind city-sized raid boss (the biggest boss in WoW’s history, according to Blizzard), the addition of a new emote doesn’t sound like a big deal. It is, however, a major win for the game’s roleplayers, a community within WoW that Blizzard has stated (like in this interview about WoW’s 20th anniversary) it is looking to do more for. Maybe players will get fully-animated hugs or high-fives next?
While it’s the first time in a long time Blizzard has added an emote, it changed or removed some emotes entirely in 2021 in the wake of a state of California lawsuit that was later settled.
Blizzard, however, took various steps in its games while the lawsuit was still ongoing to make its communities more welcoming, including in WoW. Emotes like /kick, /moan, /rear, /smell and others were removed entirely, while some, like /drool and /whistle, were made so they could no longer target specific players.
The new lean emote is just one of Ghosts of K’aresh’s new social features, as the update will also add Dark Souls’-like asynchronous multiplayer functions to WoW’s endgame Delves. WoW’s 11.2 update does not yet have a release date and isn’t yet available for testing on the game’s public test realm, but players are already theorizing based on datamining that a new Void-themed Demon Hunter specialization could be coming soon.