As it is right now, you have a choice. You can type /emotename for a mute emote or /emotename_s for an emote with sound. The latter only doesn't appear under the emote window, but appears if you type /emote to list all available emotes.

We received numerous complaints about how cartoonish and out of place the sounds were on some emotes. While I would've preferred to keep the sound on emotes that had normal sounds like roars and growls, I suppose it was all or nothing and now you at least have the choice of which you prefer.

We do not want to force players to turn off their game sounds because of emotes. That is counter-productive; it was better to give a choice.

That being said, we are considering what sounds to place on the emotes that might be more fitting. Making the emotes silent by default is mostly a temporary measure before we figure out something else.