Us orcs used to be honorable you know?

Lore Story Forum
1

Obviously, I love orcs—I’m still upset about Garrosh’s character assassination. My first characters were orcs, and most of my toons are still orcs. (For the record, I also love trolls, night elves, and dwarves too!)

That said, I always find it funny when orcs claim, “It was the demon blood that tainted our honor.” But then WoD shows us that even without the demon blood, they were still fighting the draenei and enslaving them.

The thing is—it’s not really a writing mistake, although I think it was unintentional. It actually reflects something interesting: the blur between cultures and how different societies define things like “honor.” It’s a concept that wouldn’t always translate well in today’s world. For example, as a human in the real world, I’d say showing mercy and not murdering people is honorable. But to an orc, honor might just mean fighting well and “fairly” (whatever that means).

If you dig into the lore (and even alternate timelines), the orcs have always been savages to some extent. In fact, modern orcs probably have the most honor they’ve ever had. Look at the pre-demon blood clans:

  • The Bonechewers were cannibals.
  • The Bleeding Hollow did ritual sacrifices.
  • The Shattered Hand mutilated themselves for an edge in battle.
  • The Warsong let their weak die instead of helping them survive.

So yeah, these so-called “noble old ways” weren’t all that noble. Yet that’s what modern orcs seem to idolize. They have this romanticized view of their past, holding onto the idea that their fathers had it better before the demon blood was ever drank.

To me, this is a brilliant use of unreliable narration—it’s almost a parallel to the real world. Think about how people say, “Life was better before,” or “The world was safer back in the day,” completely forgetting the first 80 years of the 20th century were nothing but bloodshed, endless conflict, and mass genocide. People hold themselves to these idealized standards of a past that didn’t really exist, and the orcs do the same thing with their so-called “honor.”

Honestly, whether intentional or not, this is an accidental stroke of genius in the writing.

10 Likes
2

The big problem with orcish “honor” in the game is that the writers don’t have a strong concept of what it means, or probably different writers use it to mean different things. It’s become just an empty buzzword.

17 Likes
3

That’s the problem with honor in general. It’s not a universal thing and means something different to everyone. Even in IRL

9 Likes
4

All the more reason why they should take the trouble to define what it means in-game and stick to that definition.

12 Likes
5

Yeah what the others said… basically orcs haven’t been develop enough in WoW to define what is honor to that culture nowadays. (IMO)

3 Likes
6

I’ve seen people argue that it’s a good thing lmao. But I have always felt that the defenses for it don’t really understand the situation of the Orcs of the Horde vs the Orcs of the past. Each clan having it’s own idea of what’s honorable is fine, for some Orcs who still maintained their clan structure mostly, like the Warsong, the roots should be there. But so many Orcs -don’t- really have that because of the Internment Camps and how much of their own cultures were destroyed in wars for resources after Draenor was corrupted. Interpretive and cultural honor is fine, but a ‘generic Horde Orc’ concept of honor also absolutely should exist within the Horde as the main facet of Orcish culture that many had if they didn’t have strong clan ties on Azeroth. Because regardless of clan you may have been before internment, the orcs of the camps were given hope and a new destiny by Thrall, who at one point was a visionary and a guide compared to old dogs like Saurfang who understand honor and their failures but aren’t necessarily the guides to lead them out of their failures.

A lot of Orc players misinterpret a lot of their lore, least on RP servers, to sort of make something to stroke their own ego and power fantasy imagining them as just mini-Hulks (and not even the complex, ‘sons trying to be better than their fathers’ trauma side of Bruce Banner that makes him compelling, just like a 10 year old oggling Hulk smashing things lmao). It is so much more than Orcs are from a violent world and violence is everything they are. Their shamanism is more harmonious than Azerothian shamanism generally is, it’s spirits are innately more co-operative. The clans possessed all these different values that arent purely about wrecking crap. Many were already pretty terrible before they drank Mannoroth’s blood, but even in the context of the original retcon of Orcs having been corrupted, Warcraft 3 asserted through Grom that the Chieftain’s like him willingly drank the blood with the underlying implication of full knowledge of what it was.

There is something compelling but I think misrepresented so much about the Orcs and their complicated past and mistakes I think is a facet for great storytelling if blizz could just lay down some things like a standard for honor in Orcs as their post-corruption culture and were willing to let them develop. I have always thought, on a smaller character level, there are interesting parallels to be had with other races, some not even Alliance, that can be explored because of the history of mistakes some have tried to grow from and others have misinterpreted as a point of strength to emulate.

7

Bfa nearly butchered my love for the orcs and wow in general. The whole concept of honor got tossed around to make the Orcs like Klingons, rather than the brutal barbarians almost like the cinmerians in Conan.

I enjoy playing as the orcs in Warcraft III, but now they’re run down in the ground by too much in the spotlight in WoW.

2 Likes
8

I think shadowlands was a whole lot worse in terms of killing my love for the lore.

Shadowlands had a lot of potential, and the only “saving grace” about it is the writers said “well actually there are nearly limitless afterlives”

The big 4 are horrible afterlives and are basically just hell. No reuniting with ancestors on the plains or hunting, nah you get to be a living tumor or sentient skeleton head in a massive bonefield for the rest of time. Cool.

9

Could have seen this angle at one point, but Sylvanas kinda put the final nail in the coffin in BFA—Orcs just like slaughtering things. They don’t need a good reason, or honor as a cloak, they just need someone in charge pointing and saying “we’re going to try to make that extinct now.”

10

I would say, as individuals they are closely like modern day humans… One seem innocent enough, old ones have regrets or even saw what they did as a necessary evil or hell in some cases even proud---- but get a nation together and point a new generation at an enemy and they go berserk

11

Yeah, Orc honor is kind of like Klingon Honor from Star Trek. It changes from Writer to Writer, from character to character, and in general doesn’t make a lot of sense.

… Honestly Orcs and Klingons are actually kind of similar. Supposed to be Honorable, Mighty warriors, but outside of the main characters, every one you come across is an insane, bloodthirsty idiot almost.

1 Like
12

I liked how they portrayed it in Lower Decks. For all their blathering about honour, most of the time it was political maneuvering and bothering by the rules. But in the end, it came down to a duel to the death ended when one combatant cheap shotted the other, so he pulled the blade out of his back and ran the guy through with it while telling him to go Klingon hell.

1 Like
13

For me it’s that as the final nail, but WoD being all like “well, remember when we kept saying it was the demon blood? Nah, they are just predisposed to genocide” already damaged things beyond repair.

I mean sure, you could have salvaged it by saying… What, it isn’t the orcs’ fault, they just happened to be easily swayed into believing the drainos were gonna come for them and some far-away planet with no contact is to blame? So the orcs aren’t naturally evil, just so increadibly gullible they’re easily turned evil?

But yeah, then when everyone was all like “well the Warchief said we gotta murder elfses, so elfses is on the menu boys” it was too far gone.

2 Likes
14

That, and the whole “The Frost Wolves won’t go along with us, so now we gotta kill them and sacrifice them to fuel a portal.”

1 Like
15

How does BfA prove this? Much as I dislike the whole Saurfang arc, it isn’t about that, and that’s really all I remember about orc content in BfA.

To be fair, I think the whole setup in which they became convinced that the Draenei were going to attack them was actually very well done initially. Fake message from the ancestors, and all that. And the Draenei used to stick to their own little enclaves, and furthermore, they were actually concealing the fact that they were on the run from some threats to the orcs. I didn’t feel that the original story damaged the orcs’ credibility.

16

Orcs in WC3, not counting the Warsong clan and those we see in the human campaign, are probably the most noble display of orcs we have ever had though. The goodiest of goody two shoes of orcs.

17

I think glory or fame is a better fit for orcs so they can celebrate those who have achieved greatness.

1 Like
18

When the Legion did it, sure.

But once Garrosh talked them into repeating the same atrocity with just simple Garrosh tactics, the entire Legion story starts to look like they put inmore effort than was necessary. As much as we all hate Shadowlands, and deservedly so, for my money nothing caused as much permanent long-term and irrevocable damage as WoD just making orcs natural dupes, willing to genocide as long as a charismatic leader thinks its a good plan.

And we also have WoD to blame for starting the trend of “One Legion, one Twisting Nether, connecting all worlds and timelines… Therefore only one Shadowlands too” bit.

1 Like
19

Because they all went along with Sylvanas without question or reservation. Not when The Horde invaded Ashenvale, not when it burned Teldrassil down, not when Sylvanas blighted her own soldiers and raised them into undeath at the gates of Lordaeron.

And they did all of this for a Warchief they didn’t even like. No one trusted Sylvanas. She did nothing during Legion to win them over. She skipped off to Stormheim to do something nefarious and then was not seen again until Azerite showed up.

2 Likes
20

That’s true of the entire Horde in BfA, though. It reflects badly on all of them; I don’t see that it is particularly bad for orcs over anyone else.

Also, at least Saurfang, the orc representative, was shown thinking about the war and deciding to do it for semi-logical reasons in A Good War. Not just sheer bloodlust or because he “likes slaughtering things.”