The search box for wildcard emotes used to search for emotes with implied wildcards at both ends of the string (i.e. searchstring). Now it only wildcards the end of the string (i.e. searchstring*), meaning only emotes that begin with the search string are matched.
This means if you want to find emotes that have to do with a certain subject (e.g. batman), you'll only find emotes that start with 'batman', and miss out on emotes such as the many examples of FeelsBatMan.
Was this change intentional?