In game this has always been portrayed as an insignificant difference, but lore wise, the average orc seems like they would be above what even the pinnacle of humans can achieve strength wise. I mean just look at the muscle mass difference.
We can discuss the 4 different kinds of orcs. Mag’har/uncorrupt, Green skin but uncorrupt, green skin but demon blood tainted, and fel orcs.
About ten strong.
It’s true that in game the difference is generally shown as insignificant, but then in game a gnome can hold its own in melee against a tauren.
In lore, orcs are always described as much stronger than humans, though the range varies.
So I don’t think it is possible to give an accurate answer to your question OP. Orcs are definitely stronger, but maybe not as much as the size difference would suggest.
This may be of dubious canonicty, but-
In the movie, Blackhand, a strong but un-augmented orc, was capable of lifting and throwing a full-grown horse wearing at least some metal barding several yards. He needed both hands to do it, but he appeared to exert himself relatively little to do so as this was near the being of the fight and he kept on going easily afterwards. Now, a horse’s weight varies by breed, but I would probably classify it as being at least a medium warhorse, putting it around 1200 to 1400 pounds.
That’s far more than most humans can lift, but not all. Professional weightlifters can and have exceeded it. But the sheer EASE Blackhand accomplished this with suggests that that’s far from the limits of his strength, as well as the fact that he THREW the horse, not simply lifted it over his head for a few seconds before setting it back down.
The ‘average’ orc is probably roughly as strong as the strongest humans to have ever lived, and roughly ten+ times strong than the average human. Scaling this up, the strongest orcs could easily be five-ten times stronger than the strongest humans.
Tauren are even stronger, but they’re also larger. Say, 2-4 feet taller and 200-400 pounds heavier. That makes me wonder if orcs are still proportionatly stronger even than them.
Keep in mind that Azeroth humans are probably stronger than real life humans. This is a fantasy world.
Doesn’t matter because WoW is high fantasy, not realistic in any way. Take for example that cinematic where the Orc and the human fight after their ships sank/crashed near Pandaria - they are pretty even.
The range of “how strong a human can get” is pretty ridiculous in this setting, so you won’t ever get an accurate comparison. It depends on who they are themselves, not so much the race they are.
They’re hulking brutes of course they’re far stronger than humans. Ignore the gameplay element, they’re made equal for the sake of balance.
But being a significant character, it’s entirely possible that Blackhand, among other notable orcs, is the exception rather than the rule.
It’s the same deal with Grom during the WoD cinematic. I’d imagine that metal-turret-ball thing he lifted weighed far more than a horse but he was able to do it because he’s Grom Hellscream.
The movie takes place during WC1, a time when the Orcs were strengthened by Demon Blood. I wouldn’t take any feat of strength performed by an Orc in that time period as an example of their natural strength.
And in one of the Pandaria short-stories a human soldier (not even someone big and important like Varian, just someone who’s been fighting in the wars) remembers the time he overpowered a Tauren in a struggle.
In short, people are as strong as the plot demands at that point in time.
Blackhand was explicitly not augmented with any fel or demon blood in the movie (that happens towards the end).
Can’t say I ever saw the movie, but I was under the impression all the Orcs were augmented before coming to Azeroth.
I’d say an orc could take on 2-3 humans in melee combat. They’re huge green mini hulks, it really is no contest. What makes the odds more equal is the lack of armor that an orc wears compared to a human.
In WoW’s canon, yes. But the movie alters it slightly by disregarding the demon blood and having some of the orcs be augmented by Gul’dan’s fel magic instead (it seems like it was optional for them instead of it being forced). It’s why some orcs have brown skin and others have green (except Kargath, in his brief cameos, being the only pale one).
Pretty sure that’s what we operate on, so we can just discard the entirety of the movie from anything we discuss. It’s a separate timeline doomed to fade. Who’s to say the Orcs in that timeline weren’t stronger than the Orcs in ours?
That’s why Skarm prefaced his post with
You’re perfectly fine to take the films events with a grain of salt for this discussion.
Felblood tends to be extremely powerful, it is reasonable to assume our green Orcs were physically enhanced in some way, although there is generally a lack of information about the difference between the Mag’har Orcs and the classical green Orcs.
It’s not impossible that the first dose of felblood they actually received from Mannaroth was simply a ruse to lure them into his enslavement with no actual tangible benefit.
The same can not be said for Fel Orcs however, where they have truly been blessed by fel that has given them power that vastly exceeds anything a regular Orc could ever hope to match in terms of physical ability. The felblood made them so physically powerful that it allowed only a small force of Orcs isolated in a foreign and unknown land to take on a vastly superior force that would otherwise have resulted in certain defeat, and even go toe to toe and slay a demigod in his home element.
Then again, The Burning Crusade; although it was a fun expansion; did trivialize the Fel Orcs in its portrayal of them.
If we go with the Warcraft 3 interpretation of Fel Orcs, then for a regular Orc to take on a Fel Orc in hand-to-hand combat would be about as foolish as a human attempting to take on a regular Orc in hand-to-hand combat.
In most fantasy worlds orcs are physically stronger than humans…but tend to make better Wisdom based casters. Humans are usually pretty good Int based casters…but are typically good to okay at most classes. But as other posters have pointed out orcs and humans are as strong as the WoW plot needs them to be.
We’ve seen humans and orcs go toe-to-toe multiple times in the WoW universe.
I think strength, like in the MCU or other fantasy/fiction universes, is not just character but scenario driven. A character might suddenly “find” the strength to win, but may not exhibit that power outwardly in normal circumstances.
Also to be considered: the strength of an orc is traditionally channeled through very physical means (i.e. muscles), while other characters can match their strength by channeling other forces through themselves. While a human may not have the everyday physicality of an orc, they can match their combative power by using the arcane, Light, battle tactics, etc.
On the reverse side, orcs that gravitate towards the mystic arts are typically shown to be inferior from a brute strength perspective when matched against the prototypical orc warrior. There seems to be an equally broad spectrum of strength within all races that allows for overlap when compared to races that, on average, would be weaker or stronger.
Also important to note that the orcs shown in the Warcraft movie are pretty much all warriors, the strongest available orcs selected for a conquering war band. Many of them were empowered by fel magic and it’s established within orc culture that Blackhand was notoriously overpowered & freakishly strong (even before the fel). The Horde forces in the Warcraft movie are not the most accurate representation of the average orc.
The humans in the film are also experiencing that raw physicality for the first time. Remember that something like 30-40 years pass between Warcraft 1 and the start of WoW. By that time, at least two generations of humans have been born and raised, berthed by the strongest surviving humans. In essence, the fight against the Horde literally strengthened the human race through war and natural selection.
According the Warcraft 2 and beyond the dark portal, they aren’t…