The Tragedy of Orcs

Lore Story Forum
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Hi. Longtime orc fan here. Now, I’ve lamented the fate of the story, and the Horde in particular, in the same apathetic, stunned way as many of us here on these forums have in the past few months. But this time I’d like to talk about orcs.

It’s commonly said that the Warcraft games introduced the concept of an orc race which served as something more than just cannon fodder for fantasy heroes to slay. As the universe progressed, the orcs became sympathetic (or at least were presented with the same emotional and mental capacity as the humans they were fighting). It was relatively new, and in my eyes deeply refreshing.

Some background on me: when I was in elementary school, I started puberty. I very quickly became larger and hairier than all the other kids. Combine this with ADHD and you’ve got a big, hairy monster hefting kids up under both arms and swinging them around like pool noodles, with no concept of social cues yet. You can understand why I would find a deep sympathy with monstrous races often vilified for their ugliness and lack of subtlety. Forgive the anecdote, but I hope it helps people orient themselves to my perspective.

Blizzard has prided itself on its orc lore, and the Horde fantasy of monstrous races banding together for the right to exist in a world which has beaten them down. However, like much of its lore, Blizzard can struggle with keeping its stories straight.

Are the orcs evil or not evil? WCIII is famous for completely changing the orcs’ role in the story, from one of pig-snouted conquest and villainy to presenting a more complex moral question: if a man does something evil without his knowledge or control (i.e. disease, mental disorder, demon blood), should he pay for his crimes when/if his mind clears?

Blizzard would probably say the orcs AREN’T evil. That’s what I would say as well. But that comes with a healthy heaping of cognitive dissonance when all the players, both Horde and Alliance, continue to face off against definitively evil orcs who operate within the exact same mindset, structure, and cultural trappings as the Horde orcs. I’d say it’s comparable to the Cata Forsaken, worryingly utilizing all the same tactics as the Scourge, yet: “Isn’t it obvious, Warchief? I serve the Horde.”

This, obviously, leads to the predicament in which Sylvanas orders Teldrassil to burn and orcs happily go along, a Horde captain orders the attack on Brennadam (an orc, iirc) and uses the same burn-and-slaughter tactics as the Old Horde. So, if the orcs are so redeemed, and aren’t evil, but they behave exactly as they did before they went evil (and while they were evil), then what has changed about the orcs as a people and a culture? Who’s to say, if their cultural structure allowed for them to be tempted by the Legion not once, but like three times collectively as a race, that the orcs are, if not outright prone to evil, at least extremely prone to being so brutish and stupid that they can be manipulated by any glowy dark force so long as it promises power?

Back to my original question: if a man does something evil without his knowledge or control, should he pay for his crimes when/if his mind clears? That depends on whether or not he continues doing evil actions, even with a clear mind.

WoD’s concept is honestly not that bad to me. While I can’t shake the feeling that it was all an elaborate scheme to set up Legion and tie in with the Warcraft movie, the idea of going back in time and seeing Draenor restored was exciting to me. Lo and behold, the uncorrupted orcs, supposedly so peaceful and spiritual before the demon blood, are just as viciously eager to do evil and get manipulated. and then they drink the demon blood lol

This leaves an orc fan with two options, based on the narrative Blizzard has presented: either the orcs, generally, are just as stupid and brutish as every other orc presented in every other fantasy story, or the orcs are just instinctively predisposed–destined, almost–to be evil, no matter the circumstance, no matter their mental state.

When humans die, Blizzard puts out rows of coffins and a weeping widow/sister/child and gives us a nice little questline to mourn their passing. Humans can be civilians and have nuance and crack jokes that don’t have to do with them being human, or them being stupid and big and ugly. Their right to exist on Azeroth is never questioned, because Blizzard never gives it any room to be questioned, because humans are presented, and perceived, as complex creatures with many facets and morals. I could say the same of just about any Alliance race, or the “pretty” races of the Horde.

The orcs are not afforded that same level of basic respect by both the writers and a portion of the fanbase. They are treated as a monolith when written, and due to this consistency, some players see their actions as reflecting on the race on a biological level. I’ve seen some people say, outright, the orcs should have been slaughtered to the last infant following WCII, as they have destroyed far more on Azeroth than they have ever built, from their first invasion to now, in BfA. I can’t honestly disagree with that anymore. Despite Blizzard’s claims that the orcs have learned and repented, the cycle continues. And I think that’s a little tragic.

PS: If you still think it’s funny to make mud hut jokes and talk about how stupid and ugly orcs are, and how superior you are because you RP as a human/blood elf/draenei/nightborne/WHATEVER instead of a lul filthy savage, I want you to know that you sound like what would happen if Governor Ratcliffe from Pocahontas possessed the body of a blood elf femboy.

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I’d like to, but ERP is not allowed in this forum.

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yikes, was that last bit of hostility really necessary?

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I didn’t mean any genuine ill will behind it, hence the silliness of comparing someone to a Disney character trapped in a belf femboy’s body.

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OP is aware that s/he’s not an orc IRL, right? Seems extremely hostile and defensive.

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I think the first and most important thing to remember is this: Evil is subjective.

It is not a quantifiable metric. Not only that, but you cannot apply the term, ‘Evil,’ to an entire race under any circumstance.

The differences between the Horde and Alliance, Humans and Orcs, are those between Pragmatism, and Morality. The Orcs are a pragmatic people. So when you view the acts of the Orcs through the lens of morality (which is easy to do as we, the players, are humans living in an age where morality is the social construct for acceptance), then you’re not looking at them from the perspective they see themselves.

I’m not saying this forgives/redeems the Orcs for their actions, but it does explain those actions. As a pragmatic people, they do what they feel they must for survival. While these actions are, ‘Evil,’ to anyone with a moral lens to observe them through, if you drop that and look at the Orc’s actions, then what they’re doing isn’t necessarily wrong.

They come from a world where it’s Survival of the Fittest. Survival is the goal. If they survive, then they have achieved victory.

Where this all gets messy is, ‘Honor.’ Honor is a construct of morality. It’s a concept that requires a certain moral code for one to adhere to. The Orcs were described as honorable, as, ‘noble savages,’ but the issue is this conflicts with their pragmatic culture.

And that’s not exactly a bad thing.

The Orcs as a race are still evolving, both biologically and culturally. If you brought Cavemen from the Past to the present, I guarantee you would see as many problems and issues as you see in game between Orcs and Humans. I doubt Cavemen would think twice about destroying a town if they felt it threatened their survival.

Now while this might sound like an insult, comparing Orcs to Cavemen, I don’t mean it to be one. Every race starts somewhere. Even the mighty Zandalari Trolls once were rolling around in the mud. Humans, Elves, Draenei, etc… all races come from humble origins.

And I think that’s why Orcs can feel like other races behave condescendingly towards them. It’s like being a child and having a Teenager lecture you. It doesn’t matter if they’re right, they come off as jerks who have no right to judge you.

So to wrap up this long thought, I don’t think the Orcs are evil. As a people, a culture, a society, they have not progressed to the point where they can make such distinctions, though they are certainly on their way. Their attempts to determine and adhere to a sense of Honor is living proof that the Orcs are evolving as a society.

Right now I’d say you can chalk up all the nonsense in WoW as growing pains.

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OP admitted to identifying with orcs, so he (I’m guessing he from the reference to hairiness) knows he’s taking it personally. Which is fair, I think; stories keep us all going sometimes.

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Expected this response. Yeah, I’m aware I’m not an orc. And other than the addendum at the bottom, what seems hostile about my post?

She. I didn’t want to mention it outright because I know how touchy people are about gender politics on here. Italian girls get hairy, what can you do?

I’ll be the first to admit I let WoW lore affect me sometimes, and I recognize that those feelings have colored the tone of my post, but I think I did a decent job of laying out my point based on Blizzard’s past decisions, and not just subjective opinion and interpretation.

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Here is the problem here. The Demon Blood did not send the orcs into a Murderous frenzy. It did not enslave the orcs to the Will of the Demons. It simply made them physically more capable and ferocious. The Orcs drank the Demon Blood Willingly, even when Grom said “What must we give in return?” and Gul’dan’s answer was “Everything.”

Despite the Demon Blood, Ogrim Doomhammer (Also affected by Demon Blood) still had the foresight to dethrone Blackhand and the Shadow Council. This pretty much relieved the Orcs from any Demonic control, yet despite that, they went ahead and did exactly what the Burning Legion wanted them to do anyway… Conquest of Azeroth.

Which might be partly true. Not EVERY orc is evil, but they are a race defined by nomadic and warlike culture. They are expansionists by their nature. I, personally, would call that evil. People like to apologize for culture, saying “It’s not evil, their culture is just different than yours.” But I would say, when your culture drives you to conquest against people who did nothing to you, then that is an evil culture.

The political structure of the Horde also leaves something to be desired. The Warcheif has always had totally authority, the Horde’s members seemed to be bound by a Blood Oath. Orcs in particular have always been fiercely loyal to their Warcheif, even when they KNOW something isn’t right. (Look at Nazgrim and all the Orcs who follow Garrosh, despite the events at the Vale of Eternal Blossoms.)

The Orcs seem to struggle with going against authority, even Saurfang was conflicted about what to do about Sylvanas for a long time. I think the most damning piece of evidence for this is the fact that the Horde exists in general. The Horde’s history is one of Demonic influence and merciless conquest. You would think the Horde flag would be to an Orc, what the N-zi flag would be to a German.

It is weird… I, myself, do feel like we have to assume that many orcs are of a lower intelligence than most other races. Their tendency for blind obedience, their history of bad leadership, and Peons are characteristically not smart.

I’ll give this one to you, my hope for WoD was that the orcs would get some cultural diversity. We got that on paper, but they all seem to act the same regardless. With the introduction of the Mag’har, and their leadering being a Frostwolf… Who are supposed to be the most sensible of Orc Clans, it does little to prove how sensible they are. I wouldn’t expect the Frostwolves to Morally agree with what they Horde has been doing, yet they are actively participating.

I am pretty brutal when it comes to judging the Horde. I often argue how the Horde has always been characteristically evil, even during WC3, Vanillia, TBC and Wrath.

This is mostly because a lot of Horde players want the Orcs to be good guys, but without them sacrificing their expansionist, war-like culture. Without realizing that is what makes the Horde evil to begin with.

We all know killing civilians is evil… but you know what is also evil? Invading placing in general. Had the Horde of not killed Civilians leading up to an occupation of Teldrassil… They would still be evil for doing so.

Horde players call out Baine for being a push-over, because he wants to negotiate with the Alliance. But… That’s the morally right thing to do. It all comes down to a desire to militarily dominate the Alliance and be morally justified in doing it, but you can’t do that unless the Alliance does something to provoke it (Liking invading a Horde territory unprovoked, similarly to what the Horde did in War of Thorns). That was always unlikely to happen, with the number of peaceful leaders in the Alliance.

Sylvanas on the other hand… did any of us actually believe that she wouldn’t do something crazy? Did any of us believe that we wouldn’t have to deal with her at some point?

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It’s because you are posting on an orc. That makes your words SEEM more hostile than if you’d posted on a cute gnome girl. You should consider paying for a race change.

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I have said this before, but it bears repeating. There is a definite cycle to the way they write orcs in WoW.

  1. Orcs are badass.
  2. Orcs do badass stuff.
  3. Orcs do super-badass stuff.
  4. Actually, that’s not badass, it’s just straight-up genocidal.
  5. Well, it wasn’t really their fault because fell blood/rude spirits/Garrosh/etc.
  6. Retcon to make whatever happened not their fault, orcs have learned their lesson.
  7. Return to step 1.

How many times have we gone through this cycle? I assume this is because the writers keep reverting to the standard Tolkien/D&D orcs that are so ingrained into most geeks imaginations.

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Oh god. Am…am I the human paladin in this one? Is this what it feels like?

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Maybe… I’m not quite sold on that theory.

I think part of the issue is that we’ve hit the, ‘Slippery Slope,’ trope. They turned a traditional monster race into something heroic. Bad guys into good guys. Well… why can’t they do that for other interesting villain races? Well, they did. Evil trolls, now good guys. Scourge are cool? Have some Forsaken. Blood Elves start practicing demonic magic and working for the Legion/Illidan? Let’s make them super holy warriors.

At some point when you keep making all of your villains into relatable protagonists, you start to run out of antagonists. This becomes an even bigger issue when you factor in Warcraft’s Horde vs. Alliance staple narrative.

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::He would look at Tichondrius.::

:thinking:

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…… Who never enslaved any orcs? lol

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You are correct to the best of my knowledge.

He does, however, speak to the topic.

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Please go back to your mudhut, you stupid, ugly orc. Filthy savage.

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/cracks fingers

Thanks for the replies, guys! I understand I’m not infallible, so any other viewpoint is only helping everyone here to, if not agree, then at least become better arguers.

I’m not sure if I understand what you’re getting at here. Are you saying that because a few villain races have been redeemed, the orcs should just go back to being a generic villain race, and even expect such treatment from the writers for the sake of a faction conflict story?

This is a good point that I do keep in mind–there are many views in orc culture that exist along an axis far removed from any traditional morality at all.

This is where I think we’re both seeing Blizzard’s inconsistencies, and where the HONOR meme was born. My central point, as above, was to point out the fact that Blizzard has built orcs up as these honorable savages, distinct from dime-a-dozen orcs of typical fantasy. The orcs do, indeed, have the tug-of-war between honor and raw pragmatism as a central theme, (Garrosh slid too far towards pragmatism, Saurfang is a little too deep in honor, etc.), and yet Blizzard corrodes this interesting intersection between Orc Honor and Orc Pragmatism by just framing it as good vs. evil, suicidal vs. survivalist to the point of brutality, etc. What we end up with is a confused mess of two extremes with no compromise being afforded because the writers write orcs with very little nuance.

Hurt me more.

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I’ve spoken about something similar before, and to be honest I’ve felt bad for people who are orc fans since Cataclysm. Forsaken fans as well, to a lesser degree, but orcs really took it on the chin in terms of narrative for… years, and really still are.

Questing Hordeside from BC, then Wrath, and then Cataclysm is like getting whiplash, to the point where narrative-wise when it comes to orcs it almost feels like BC and Wrath come after Cata. Blizzard went all in with some stuff and then tried to band-aid it by saying that “the majority of orcs didn’t support Garrosh” despite there being enough orcs to hold off the entirety of the Alliance and the rest of the Horde for a good portion of time.

And then there’s WoD… good old WoD, which basically takes all the themes the orcs had in Classic, and BC, and Wrath, and tosses it off a cliff. It’s basically a retcon without being a retcon, the ‘noble, shamanistic orcs’ not even needing Felblood to try and wipe out the draenei, where they are ruthless and cruel until they suckerpunch someone who hits them right back, and then they go running off to the nearest source of dark power. And still lose. They’re framed as a race of bullies who infight and dislike each other when they don’t have a war to fight.

Chronicle just drives this home by tossing yet more new info to us, about how an entire clan of orcs was capturing and enslaving draenei long before the war, and how the orcs had tried to attack Shattrath beforehand only to be scared off by Velen. And they even take away some of the orc’s power when describing the final battle at the same city. It went from using the red mist and their own numbers to using both those things, and the Dark Star, and corrupted elementals, and demons.

Every new media seems to be trying to make the orcs ‘metal’ or ‘badass’ without taking into account actual logic. Blizzard shows orc favoritism, but it’s not favoritism to the orcs many of us think of when we think Warcraft orc, instead trying to push this new/old version that popped up with Garrosh, that still gets treated as a heroic race in the narrative.

Even the new allied race is afflicted by this, expressing the desire to wipe out the draenei on Azeroth because of stuff the other draenei on another planet in another timeline did.

Orcs, draenei, and night elves… we should form a union or something…

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No, I’m more stating that Blizzard needs to learn when and where to draw a line. Blizzard needs to come out and say, “Look guys, the Orcs aren’t an antagonist force in the narrative. That was a conscious choice we made, to make something new from a tired old trope, and we loved that. However, if we make every single villain we come across in a redeemable protagonist, we’ll run out of villains. That’s why <Naga/Mantid/Demons/Insert Evil Here> will not become a playable race and will not become a relatable protagonist race.”

With every evil race/faction that is made into a protagonist, it cheapens the line between protagonist and antagonist, and when an antagonist is hard to find, it becomes far too easy to slip into the mindset of relying on the dark past of former antagonists. It’s like putting on old clothes; they’re comfortable. The issue is, they’re also worn out and out of fashion.

What Blizzard needs to do is show us, through the narrative and the content, the evolution of the Orcs as a race, as a culture, and as a society, moving from their savage past, into a more modern form of society, and it needs to happen naturally, on it’s own. One can argue when the Orcs were exposed to Humans in large numbers, a race that had already moved on from a pragmatic culture to a moral one, they were forced to adapt faster than they could.

It’s a bit like modern society today. A lot of new innovations in technology and melding of cultures is resulting in a lot of suffering.

The Orcs haven’t been given the time necessary to transition naturally. It’s realistic that we’d see some Orcs falling back to Pragmatic practices. The issue is that the leaders of the Orcs should be in a position to admonish this. Garrosh’s actions in Stonetalon, punishing Krom’gar, were exactly the sort of thing the Orcs needed. We need more leaders punishing dishonorable acts. We need more leaders defining Orcish Honor, and in a way Orcs both pragmatic and honorable can accept.

It’s not easy, and without focusing on the Orcs as a narrative I don’t even think it’s possible. Thrall did such excellent work in this for a long time, until Cataclysm. It’s a shame, but it is what it is.

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