Despite WoW being around for 20 years, it gives next to no insight into how Orcish society actually works.
So how do you think it works? How do the Orcs organise themselves? Is it a caste society where the peons are born into servitude? Or can they raise themselves out of their position and work their way into Grunt-dom? What about the orcs who sell goods or maintain a trade?
The Orcs were shamanic cavemen who eventually got bamboozled out their shamans and turned into a full on cancer that Horde players will still insist has redeeming qualities. They're dumbfrick oogs booga cavemen that the Alliance should have wiped out when they had the chance. There's your (you)
Damn homie check out that sexy babe on the left
>How do the Orcs organise themselves?
Through clans, which changed after orcohomosexual Thrall got into power and made everyone a clanless mutt, until Dragonflight where he decided clans were cool after all.
>Is it a caste society where the peons are born into servitude? Or can they raise themselves out of their position and work their way into Grunt-dom?
First was true before Thrall, the second is true after Thrall gave them rights
>Through clans, which changed after orcohomosexual Thrall got into power and made everyone a clanless mutt
I think most of the orcs in Thrall's Horde came from Frostwolf or Warsong clans, with a few ex-Blackrock Clan members mixed in. Also, the Warsongs never abandoned their clan identity. All of the other clans were either rogue, members of the "Dark Horde" operating near Blackrock Mountain, or were operating independently in Outland (pre-Burning Crusade).
Thoughts?
So my 'autism' got the better of me and I did some research on what clans actually were part of Thrall's Horde or not. Here's the list:
>Clans that were members of Thrall's Horde (pre-WoW)
>Majority: Frostwolf, Warsong
>Large Minorities: Blackrock, Shattered Hand, >Bleeding Hollow
>Very small/endangered Minority: Burning Blade
>Clans that weren't members of Thrall's Horde: Dragonmaw, Twilight's Hammer, Bonechewer, Laughing Skull, Shadowmoon Clan, Thunderlord, Black Tooth Grin (reabsorbed back into Blackrock Clan), Stormreaver Clan (defunct), Lightning's Blade (defunct)
Based thread.
I think that this is correct, Haven't touched WarCraft since 2011 though...
>First was true before Thrall
Gul'dan existing singlehandedly indicates otherwise. His entire origin is a tribal leader saying "I know he's a cripple but THE SPIRITS tell me he's powerful" and him getting an automatic promotion from the bottom of the totem pole. Social mobility existed long before Thrall was born.
>it gives next to no insight into how Orcish society actually works.
It's in the name. "Horde". "Clans". The pre-Thrall society is modelled after Mongolian clans. Blackhand formulates it into a Mongolian Horde. Then the Horde collapses in the Second War with almost all of the Orcs on Azeroth either dead or interred, with only a handful of clans like the Frostwolves running around. Then Thrall gathers most of the Orcs and takes them to Kalimdor and breaks up the clan structure and tries modelling his new Horde off of human kingdoms. Then Thrall becomes unpopular due to settling the Orcs in the middle of a desert and the orcs who still romanticize the good old days of paving roads with the bones of Draenei children come into power. "Hellscream's eyes are upon you". It's effectively a fascist dictatorship up until the position of Warchief is abolished. Now it is just Red Alliance, a republic where the representatives of each race vote on what to do next.
I have heard that the Orcish clans are brought up again in the new Orc heritage questline, though that sounds strange since the Orcish clans were mostly nonexistent in the playable Horde in WoW. The only Orcish clans in WoW are not part of the playable Horde (the Frostwolves left behind in the Eastern Kingdoms who did not follow Thrall, and refuse Garrosh's and Sylvanas' call to action in Cata and in BFA. The Dragonmaw clan in Twilight Highlands who later ally with Garrosh's True Horde. The AU Frostwolf Clan. All other Orcish clans seen ingame are hostile factions, namely the TBC clans like Shattered Hand or the AU Draenor clans apart of the Iron Horde).
>Then Thrall becomes unpopular due to settling the Orcs in the middle of a desert and the orcs who still romanticize the good old days of paving roads with the bones of Draenei children come into power.
that's not what happened. garrosh is a perfect encapsulation of why orc society is moronic.
>grom is rewritten into a mythological hero for his one single act of heroism after a lifetime of being a mass murdering moron and selling his own people to demons twice
>garrosh initially hates grom because he is very aware of how he fricked everything up
>thrall rolls into nagrand and preaches the newly revised gospel of grom
>garrosh drinks the koolaid and starts worshiping grom too
>fast forward to cata
>thrall forces leadership onto garrosh entirely because of his own bullshit revisionism about grom being an amazing heroic leader
>garrosh is hated by the other faction leaders and thrall's old advisors
>decides the only way forward is to start being a "real orc" like dear old dad
>proceeds to repeat every single bad thing grom ever did including selling his people out to an old god
So many problems could have been avoided if Thrall weren't such an orcaboo.
Not entirely true. The stiry was far more in-depth than that, and the previous anon was somewhat correct. The main problem since WC3 was that Thrall was too diplomatic and gave too many concesions to the Night Elves. Intead of settling somewhere more north in southern Ashenvale, he settled in a desolate shithole, partially to not piss off the elves, partially as a form of attonement for Orcish crimes.
Fast forward to around before WotLK, and the Orcs are in a very shit place - lack of proper water, food or resource sources lead to an impoverished economy. Apparently in novels there was a whole story how Garrosh came from Outland and was amazed by how bad it was, and how he met other, let's say Orc Nationalists, who, unhappy with the state of things, wanted to conquer what was their right in their view. Garrosh was the embodyment of this movement, and Thrall, not only having caused the issue, made it worse due to his blind sofspot for Grom and made Garrosh warchief. Rest is, as they say, history. Obviously, Grom worship also did a number on Garrosh, especially knowing that he was borderline suicidal looser before Thrall rallied him with the story of Grom.
WoW lore is garbage.
> Intead of settling somewhere more north in southern Ashenvale, he settled in a desolate shithole, partially to not piss off the elves, partially as a form of attonement for Orcish crimes.
1. Thrall wouldn't settle in the Elvish lands because as he said, the Orcs deserve their own lands.
2. Durotar reminded Thrall of Draenor. It's also where they first landed in Kalimdor. That's why they live there. They also probably like the fact that it's desolate. It toughens them up.
Vanilla wasn't that bad, but it gets worse after that. My biggest criticism is that the Alliance rebuilds too much and too fast.
>My biggest criticism is that the Alliance rebuilds too much and too fast.
Kul'Tiras, Dalaran, Lordaeron, and Gilneas survived the First and Second Wars intact. They - along with the Dwarves, Elves, and Gnomes - could have easily helped speed the recovery of Stormwind and its satelite settlements along quickly. It is only Stormwind that recovers by the time of WoW. Stromgarde, Alterac, and Tol Barad are still in ruins.
>that's not what happened.
That is exactly what happened in the Garrosh short story in Cata.
putting game shit in books pissed me off so much.
thrall wasn't significantly unpopular, there was always a minority of hardcore clangays trying to undermine him but it never worked, he only left because shaman stuff. the real problem is that he constantly undermined his own goal of rehabilitating orc society. he personally contributed heavily to the moronic ancestor worship and whitewashing that orcs love so much, not just with grom, he larped as doomhammer for years.
Peons are the weakest orcs. They probably failed some necessary fighting or hunting test when becoming adults and were relegated to the worker caste. Nobody is born a peon
But how they are kept in line? How is their treatment? How is their rights when it comes to land? Do private property exists? Is there a landed class? Is there a merchantile class? How is the size the warrior class in comparison to the peon/serf class? Are they akin to Spartans? Or like romans? Being proletarii? How the orcish war machine is sustained? How long is the orc gestational cycle? How many children they usually sire to keep their armies afloat?
Lots of questions risen up by the mere concept of "orc peons".
Study pastoral cultures dumbass
NTA, but...
Peons, as seen by the lack of them in thr trad orc clans during WoD, seem to be a byproduct of the hyper militarization and barbarism of the Demonic Horde. Its safe to assume that all the lesser fighters (gatherers, craftsmen etc) were pressed into this slave class.
However, Thralls Horde still needs labour power, so I see the peons as a hold over, just not as brutal as in the Demonic Horde. With that in mind, the questions:
>But how they are kept in line?
Cultural pressure that someone must work and that this is their only obvious path if they fail to be a fighter, a shaman or a skilled crafstman
>How is their treatment?
Pretty shit working conditions, however it seems their class position has changed over time. With horde becoming more developed, it seems that they slowly transformed into normal laborers, at least those who aren't working in extractive industries. This is seen in the Vulpera questline that is centered around union-busting orc laborers.
>How is their rights when it comes to land?
Pressumably the deal is something akin to being an early post-serf era farmhand (don't know if this term means in english what "boys" mean in my language but its the best I got - basically landless, practically rightless proles living on and working on a landowners property for a meager wage, usually with shit social mobility and being put in this position after failing to be born as a firstborn and not being smart enough for priest school (shaman for this example), in some ways the original incels), so technically I'd guess they can move up but usually don't. Do note that this only applies to the farm/lumberjack/miner peons, and not the more industrial ones mentioned above.
>Do private property exists?
Yes. We see from Vanilla onwards that Orcs do have private businesses, usually inns, armor shops, pawn shops etc, however main industry is purely in state hands.
>Is there a landed class?
Yes. We see many independant farmers trying to colonize Kalimdor. Likely they live very high risk high reward lives, as its really hard to make a living in Kalimdors savanas, but Ogrimar is in desperate need of food (at least it was all the way until the end of MoP, now its less clear, maybe the situation improved).
>Is there a merchantile class?
Small business owners only. Larger trade is done by Goblin caravaneers.
>How is the size the warrior class in comparison to the peon/serf class?
Unknown.
>Are they akin to Spartans?
A little. It seems that everyone must serve (likely for a limited time), with peonhood being one of the options.
>Or like romans? Being proletarii?
Not really. Although we know very little of city-orcs outside of business owners. Most likely a prole class of business employees exists.
>How the orcish war machine is sustained?
Like any other war machine?
>How long is the orc gestational cycle? How many children they usually sire to keep their armies afloat?
Identical to humans most likely, as they are fully reproductively compatible
>Ogrimar is in desperate need of food (at least it was all the way until the end of MoP, now its less clear, maybe the situation improved).
Probably not. We know from the Exploring Kalimdor book that the goblins have polutted the Southfury River. Drinking water has to be piped in from Stonebull Lake in Mulgore. And there are numerous other examples in the book showcasing how Kalimdor has been ruined underneath the Horde's tenure, whereas Exploring Eastern Kingdoms depicts a successfully healing and developing continent under the direction of the Alliance.
Damn, I really need to read those some time. Mayhaps you know where I can pirate a pdf or epub? Had shit luck with finding WoW book downloads since the pre-Shadowlands one.
>Exploring Eastern Kingdoms depicts a successfully healing and developing continent under the direction of the Alliance.
>Kingdom of Azeroth destroyed after first war
>Alterac, Stromgarde, and Dalaran destroyed after second war
>Lordaeron and Quel'Thalas destroyed and permanently polluted by undead and demons in third war. World Tree destroyed.
>Theramore nuked. Gnomeregan gassed
>WE'REEE REEEBUILLDDDINGG!!
Come on now. This is just silly.
Stormwind was rebuilt by Vanilla. In EEE Westfall is being resettled and fixed up.
Dalaran was rebuilt by Wrath. Stromgarde was being resettled and rebuilt in BFA.
Quel'thelas was canonically being rebuilt during Cata/MoP era short stories.
The Plaguelands are being cleansed.
Theramore and World Tree are not located on the EE.
Only glaring issue for the EE that the Gnomes are still homeless.
>Stormwind was rebuilt by Vanilla.
How though? The place was leveled twice and you know the original Horde left no survivors. That's the second time it was rebuilt, but from who and what?
>Dalaran was rebuilt by Wrath.
Same thing as Stormwind, leveled and rebuilt at least twice. I guess they have the excuse of literally using magic though, so I'll let this one pass.
>Stromgarde Quel'thelas Plagueland
Same thing though Stromgarde is the most believable, seeing as it only seems like its capitol city is destroyed in Warcraft 2. Plagueland is most ridiculous since 90% of the population are dead or undead.
You'd need a cloning machine to repopulate half this shit even if you can magically rebuild large stone cities that were mostly leveled within a few years.
Just seems cheap that the Horde could destroy all this shit and then it just gets handwaved as rebuilt somehow, magically.
>How though
When a man and a woman love each other...
>When a man and a woman love each other...
When you have like 95% of the population of a country wiped out and the rest become refugees, I just don't think all the survivors having 10 kids is going to make up for that anon. Especially when your city full of refugees and their children gets nuked.
Not all of the cities got completely razed with no survivors though. For example it's not unreasonable to assume that wizards teleported away or somehow just escaped Dalaran when it was under attack. Stormwind could've been repopulated by the people running away from Lordareon etc. Humans exist all over the continent, it just happens that the game minifies the scale of everything.
But yeah, Blizzard doesn't really address the demographics problem at any point. You get the same questions when looking at WoW cinematics as well - Alliance armies have thousands of soldiers, and a lot of them die, and the next cutscene has just as many soldiers. Your statements are fairly reasonable in that aspect.
>How though?
By underpaying the Mason's guild
>Alliance still building stone castles when tech for gunpowder siege (and above) is widely available
>Horde going through mass industrialization
The alliance is falling behind lmao. The mere fact that Garrosh could still stand his ground against half the Horde plus the entire alliance show how far ahead his modernization push got him
>Do private property exists? Is there a landed class? Is there a merchantile class?
You would enjoy asoiaf a lot better than this franchise.
I guarantee you nobody at Blizzard has sat down and thought this through to any serious degree.
I guarantee you they have, they just were not allowed to do anything about it.
Ironically, the RPG books in the 2000's might've. But a lot of that was work that was outsourced.
I assume they are somewhere in the middle between late stone age and early bronze age culturally wise. No God Kings yet, tribes are more or less communal with little division of labour outside of having a seperate shaman caste that is implied to live away from the other clans in their own sacred places instead, enjoying neutral status. However, this is all about Draenor orcs, and not the actual Horde that exists at present. For it? Well, at least in classic I'd say they were basically a sort of war-communist society. All manpower was directed by the will of the Warchief Thrall into infrastructure efforts, armed forces (for which the player character gets trained in Valley of Trials) and agriculture (which is overseen by local Chiefs and the senior military officers under their command, best example seen in game being Crossroads. Shamans are a seperate cultural entity that is loyal to the Warchief but are more independant. A secret service in form of Shattered Hand and its recruits exists. Other races of the Horde are given autonomy, but war efforts (and the expeditionary bases made there of) are very much lead in an Orcy manner. Orcish culture generally seems to have been transformed into a Horde culture, with Shamans being the only real tie to the tribal past (although in my head cannon the old clans still play some social role, mostly as a form of social capital and having an ingrouo outside of the rest of the orcs). Other Horde races that move outside of their autonomous teritories integrate into the Orcy way of life, but don't really assimilate, meaning that the culture is mticultural, at least in the long run.
I can only tell you about space orkz, not this fan fiction knockoff, but:
>The Orks are the pinnacle of creation. For them, the great struggle is won. They have evolved a society which knows no stress or angst. Who are we to judge them? We Eldar who have failed, or the Humans, on the road to ruin in their turn? And why? Because we sought answers to questions that an Ork wouldn't even bother to ask! We see a culture that is strong and despise it as crude. -a space elf
Honestly I never really got this comparison with Warhammer orks
They were never JUST mindless killing mobs
Right from the first game, Warcraft orcs were depicted as a complex society, with their own politics and intrigue, which sets them apart from other regular fantasy orcs.
For example in the orc campaign you enact a coup against Blackhand, who is afterwards assasinated by the Shadow Council in order to gain favour with you. This has been retconned at least twice since then but that's not the point.
>Honestly I never really got this comparison with Warhammer orks
It's just salty tabletop fans who wish that their game wasn't the one that became THE fantasy war game in the American consciousness.
Where are the eyes of that orc on the right?
They just inserted Doomhammer as your player character in Warcraft 1. I hardly see how it would matter much anyway.
it´s actually embarassing how little lore and world Blizz tries to build. They only introduce le current edgy evil thing that wants power and that´s it. They could have so much dialogue and books that you oculd read ingame
one of the very first quests horde Black folk have is where you beat up sleeping peons and it's pretty much treated as a joke, they clearly have no rights even in nuhorde
who cares theyre green Black folk
I don't really see the similarity
>Wide nose: checked.
>Low IQ: checked.
>Overly aggressive behavior: checked.
>Weird skin color: checked.
OFC you can't see the similarity, you're a Black person yourself.
>>Wide nose
Their nose looks quite small actually
>>Low IQ: checked.
true when you look at their lowest denominators but Gul'dan and Doomhammer are quite intelligent
Op here. Do orcs get married or mate for life? It's shown in WoW they do, but that always seemed ridiculous given their roots (Thralls wedding being the most absurd example). I imagined they would have harems or something, but the retcon of the females being warriors throws that into doubt.
Thrall's wedding was inserted because Metzen was settling into full husband + father mode at the time, I wouldn't really give it much baring on the overall picture
Nope, I am pretty sure they are entirely monogamous across their whole history:
>Makrik had a romantic childhood crush on his wife since tgey lived on Draenor, and swore a bloody vedetta on her killers during the start of Thrall's Horde
>Nerzhul, leader of Shadowmoon Orcs on Draenor, had a single wife
>Thrall's parents on Draenor were in a monogamous relationship
>Alternate-universe Garrosh wasn't born because in it Ogres killed Groms mate
>Blackhand on alternate Draenor had one of the Iron Maidens as his consort
>There's a grieving single mother in Durotar that sends you off to get her sons remains
I think in the WoD starting zone the laughing skull women were called breeders
I think I prefer to imagine that WoD and everything in WoW after it never happened.
Go to >>>Ganker or
you dumb piece of shit.
Lol mad.
exists if you can't function normally in this board, anon.
Not an RPG.
It is though.
From the RTS manuals:
WC1
>The lowliest of the Orcs, these dogs were good for little more than rough work. They were commanded to cut wood or mine the pits for gold. They also made strong laborers in the construction of all manner of buildings. They were all cowards, and would run like little children if attacked.
WC2:
>The label of peon denoted the lowest station amongst those in the Orcish Horde. Inferior in all skills of import, these dogs were relegated to menial tasks such as harvesting lumber and mining gold. Their labor was also required for the construction and maintenance of buildings necessary to support the vast undertakings of the Horde. Downtrodden, the orc peons slaved thanklessly to please their overseers.
WC3:
>The label of peon denotes the lowest station amongst those in the orcish horde. Inferior in all skills of import, these dredges are relegated to menial tasks such as harvesting lumber and mining gold. Their labor is also required for the construction and maintenance of buildings necessary to support the vast undertakings of the horde. Downtrodden, but exceedingly loyal, the orc peons toil endlessly to provide for the greater horde.
orcs are Black folk.
Orcs are mongols, Black folk are completely incompetent at warfare.
fair
Pig farm based society, at least it should be.
>slay enemies
>feed enemies to pigs
>eat pigs
The strong fricks the weak in the ass, is simple as that.
Russian or Arab?
Orc.
it is tribal, what is not to understand. it's not complicated.
Orc society? It's simple. Elf chicks luv Orc dicks. They go to the orc village to help make more orcs then the grunts to fight. Nuthin else to it.