An astute player raised this question, and it's worth giving the answer to all of you:

"Out of curiosity do the changes mentioned in announce #3579 apply to mob reactions, or are there any plans to do something like this there?"

Yes! They do! You can now include advanced emotes as part of mob reactions (HELP REACTIONS), to properly address targets or include the mob's name elsewhere in the emote. To use them, you need to embed the normal reaction variables within the message, and it will be parsed first to place them in, then again for the emote replacements.

For example, the following action would work:
reaction <mob> <reaction number> action emote Pondering, ^ looks #$(who) over, considering #$(who)_him.

The person acting would see:
Pondering, an awesome mobile looks you over, considering you.

While other viewers would see:
Pondering, an awesome mobile looks Actor over, considering him.

Because this opens up more capability for emote actions, individuals who wish to modify the already existing emote actions on their various pets and other mobiles can contact me either via message, or by sending an email to eoghan@imperian.com, and we'll waive the fee to unlock (and thus allow modification) of those actions.

Penned by my hand on the 4th of Halitus, in the year 135 AM.