Why We Can't Be Done With Orcs

Shortly after the announcement of Warlords of Draenor, I wrote a little editorial (though given that this is a blog on which I am the only contributor, all articles are essentially editorials) about how I'm sick of dealing with Orcs and the various permutations of the Horde. This is not a contradiction of that article, but I will acknowledge that there are reasons why we need to deal with Orcs some more.

But the reason is not what I think Blizzard thinks it is. The reason I think we need to deal some more with the Orcs is that we need to reestablish them as heroes.

Like most players, I would guess, my first exposure to the Warcraft universe was through World of Warcraft itself. Indeed, if you count each expansion, literally half the franchise has been WoW, both in terms of time and titles (unless there's a Warcraft I expansion that I've overlooked - here's my list: Orcs and Humans, Tides of Darkness, Beyond the Dark Portal, Reign of Chaos, the Frozen Throne.)

I'm fully in favor of Warcraft growing beyond its initial premise - the machinations of Titans, the Burning Legion, the Old Gods, and hopefully someone else good to balance out the latter two, have all managed to raise the stakes of a series that was once really just about a large barbarian army attacking an unsuspecting kingdom. But that doesn't mean that they can just leave behind that initial conceit. While I'd love to see the Alliance and Horde conflict settle into a Cold War (with all the intrigue that comes with it,) I know that Orcs vs Humans is right there in the genes.

Granted, I think that they focus way more on the Orc side of that equation than the humans, and while many would say "well duh, the humans are boring because they're just like us," I will counter with the argument "Warcraft humans are not anything like real humans. They are pygmy offspring of giant viking-like barbarians who are themselves flesh-cursed descendants of sentient robots created by space-gods."

But I don't think that we always need to have the Orcs represent a barbarian army. Indeed, much of the development for the Orcs that started in Warcraft III was about establishing them as something much more than that. It was suggested that the Orcs only became so aggressive because of a perceived threat, which was then exacerbated by the whole "drinking demon blood" thing.

A lot of that development kind of back-slid, though, and while the story of Garrosh and his rise and fall makes for a decent story, it has also, I would contend, really ruined the good will the Orcs earned while under Thrall's leadership. One could argue, though, that it makes things a little more nuanced (and nuance is almost always a good thing for making interesting characters.) Essentially, what Garrosh proved is that while the Orcs might not be evil at heart, it's pretty easy to whip them up into a belligerent and, frankly, genocidal frenzy. And Warlords of Draenor suggests that even without a past precedent of a violent, aggressive Horde fueled by demonic magic, Orcs were always capable of that.

And that's fine. But here's what we need now:

We need to see whether Thrall's relatively peaceful (or at least responsible) Horde, which focused more on creating a sustainable society instead of subsisting entirely on conquest, was a fluke, or if it was the way that the Horde can redefine itself moving forward.

The appointment of Vol'jin as the first non-Orc Warchief was an interesting move, but I also fear we might not hear much from him in Warlords of Draenor. It might be best to think of Warlords as more of a throwback to celebrate 20 years of Warcraft and 10 of WoW. Whether a throwback is enough to base an expansion around remains to be seen.

But what I want to see is the Orcs working to redeem themselves again. During Mists, we barely saw any Orcs opposing Garrosh. Basically there was Thrall, Aggra, and Saurfang. Granted, we did see people like Nazgrim, who clearly didn't want to back Garrosh but did so out of a sense of duty, but there was very little sense of a resistance among the Orcs.

I think that was a bit of a missed opportunity, frankly. Players could be those Orc representatives, but there wasn't much in the way of lore. And that doesn't really paint the Orcs in a positive light.

I know that Warcraft can't be all smiles and rainbows, like Diablo, but for all the darkness and brutality of the world, it's actually a fairly optimistic setting. The idea of the Orcs being fundamentally good is, I think, one of the most powerful ideas of the setting. It's fine if they need to go through dark periods, like a drug addict having a relapse, but I want to see the Orcs fighting hard to walk that straight and narrow path.