After watching the Warcraft movie, I now have a huge respect for Stormwind, especially since they’re up against enemies that are much more powerful than they are. That movie, regardless of it’s inaccuracies to the lore, is also the reason I now main a human.
Now, I heard people say that the Orcs we’re way too big in the movie and that they’re the size of humans, but that can’t be right, in the cinematics they look larger than the humans, which leads me to this question:
When it comes to size, are the Orcs lorewise as big as they are in the movie, or are they really just slightly bigger than humans?
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There’s some inconsistencies to be sure, but I’ve always been under the impression that orcs are built bigger all around compared to humans.
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They would likely be the size they are in the movie, with actual size depending on what kind of roles the Orc fills in their life.
Warcraft 2 and 3 probably give more realistic proportions but they probably made them smaller in WoW to give more of a 1:1 feel. They couldn’t be made stronger for balance reason, but yes the actual undertaking to defend stormwind would have been very difficult.
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Think of it like that, an orc normally would be worth at minimum 2 humans in term of strenght. Humans devised tactics to be able to beat the orcs, but were always bigger in numbers.
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The Orcs in the movies are not just somewhat too big, but are also too physically strong, too. You have them tossing horses around, for instance. Of course, some outliers would have been about the size of what you see in the movie, but a good indication for size would be watching the BfA cinematics where you see Saurfang next to Anduin, or Thrall in the same shot as Anduin.
Anduin isn’t exactly huge by human standards but he’s of average height, so that’s a good marker.
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So I guess that means the Orcs are three times larger than humans, that makes battles between the two much more interesting to me.
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Orcs are described often as the perfect war-machines. But they are also subject to the rules of cool in term of size, it’s used in mangas too. Basicly the stronger you are the bigger you will be represented xd Also the Anduin scenes were basicly camera angles to make Anduin bigger.
There’s a size chart somewhere
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Was watching a video earlier where it talked a little about the original Orcs vs Humans game and the artwork depicted them as slightly larger and stronger than humans. Not the hulking behemoths throwing around horses like in the move. And that was before even drinking the demon juice. The movie was way out of proportion. I think if you rewatch the MoP intro cinematic it is more realistic in that they are more evenly matched in size and strength. The orc is slightly larger than the human, but not by a crazy amount.
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it isn’t canon. For anything closer to canon check chronicles art and cinematics.
My understanding based is that your standard Orc is bigger than the standard human, a big human is as big as a standard Orc, and a big Orc is bigger than any human.
I dont take the clusterfudge that was the movie as standard for anything.
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Humans in Warcraft are much larger than real life due to their vrykul heritage. That being said, the orcs are somewhat taller while being much, much more muscly while lacking in other areas such as magic, agriculture, and ship building.
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Dam! I never knew Kul’tirans were over 7’ tall! They sure don’t look that tall in Boralus! I also never knew pandas were taller than Orcs, must be from eatting all those mutant veggies at the farms in pandaria. 
Pandaren should normally be kinda grizzly bear kinda scary, but well they kinda did this mop cartoony thing to them.
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I say orks are bigger them humans and trolls are around the size of humans
I was just thinking if Kul’tirans are over 7’, and Jaina is a Kultiran, how tall do you think she is cuz in most pictures she appears a to be shorter than Anduin and Thrall. Which doesn’t jive if she’s kultiran.
It’s an average basicly she has a weaker constitution.
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There are three different types if Kul’tiran the skinny ones and normal human sized ones like Jaina aren’t playable. We only get the giant ones.
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Orcs were absurdly large in the movie, but generally Orcs are far larger and stronger than humans. It’s not just height or overall size but their density and size of bone, muscle, ligament, and tendon which in combination would give them a non-linear increase in strength.
It’s also worth noting that both male and female in-game humans are ~4 inches taller than average real-world humans.
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