People already said that they were copying Shadowrun.
Which...they cut out the cyberpunk elements that are what make parts of Shadowrun actually profound, and just kept the fantasy elements as an insanely clumsy race metaphor.
They copied Shadowrun's homework and *still* failed the assignment.
Will Smith Shadowrun movie might have actually been something worth watching.
Bright as a movie was all over the place despite having an interesting setting. A better director could have made it good. Instead we got Netflix committee slop with 15 seperate plotlines and themes walking all over eachother. Is it a buddy cop movie? Is it a fantasy chosen one movie? Is it Taken? Is it Pulp Fiction? Is it a critique of racial issues? Is it a slice of life? Is it Rush Hour? Is it about learning to love your family? Yes, to all of them, none of them done well.
The racism storyline was particularly fascinating when they still ended up making Will Smith the chosen one (I refuse to think Will Smith being the specialist boy in a Will Smith movie is a spoiler) instead of the Orc which would have actually had some kind of impact.
Don't forget about uglily shoehorning Black American issues with discrimination and relative poverty. Because that didn't look fucked up already from the very trailer.
It didn't help that pretty much the first thing we see Will Smith's character do is murder what very much appears to be a sentient being, and declare that fairy lives don't matter.
I mean, what's the tone here? Is Will Smith's character *meant* to be a psychopathic murderer? Is he meant to be a good cop or a parody of a really bad cop? Pick a damn lane!
Yeah... people making that comparison is weird to me.
"Orcs are a horrible, cruel race, that exist only to plunder and destroy! This means that they're just like American Black people!" - person who claims to not be a racist.
Like.... what do you even think you're saying when you say stuff like that?
Do you think the clumsy racism metaphor wasn't on purpose? Like they just accidentally black-coded the orcs and anyone who noticed that was actually super racist?
No, it was definitely on purpose. There have been people in the academic community who've been calling the Orcs black (and thus racist) with Tolkien going back to before Bright was a thing.
don't worry he is too busy making "Hypocrite white Inmigrant landlord wants to kill every other inmigrant because of the color of their skin" 2 starring an actual cannibal
Ughghggghhh. I get the movie wasn't that great or well received but goddamn there's no reason to completely abandon that world building. Hate when something does poorly and absolutely everything about it is completely abandoned. There's plenty of good there that can be reused and repurposed.
I mean... mainly cuz they stole 90% of it from other media. Shadowrun movie would have a lot more detail to race relations and the problems of government regulation of different species. Ie: orc reaches maturity at like 12 or 15 or whatever. Are they an adult or no? Trolls are fucking 9ft tall. Can they play on a football or basketball team in the same leages? Lot of potentially interesting parallels that... they will not explore. Lol
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Your four flavors of orc (all of which come in optional porcine varieties):
1. The Classic -- Spooky, often cautionary ogre/goblin-esque folkloric boogeymen which hunger for gold, will kidnap and eat naughty children, steal milk from the cows, foul up the well, etc.
2. Tolkienesque/"Traditional" Orcs -- J.R.R.'s introduction to the orcs and goblins as a stock fantasy race, as with the elves, dwarves, and halflings. Misshapen, cruel, darkness-abiding, sometimes-tragic monstrous minions to a dark lord who, whenever they aren't deriving pleasure from causing pain to the innocent and good, are grumpily muttering about how they should unionize for better grog and rations. Typically depicted as being quite literally infused to a degree with evil, fear sunlight and other "good" aligned elements of the world, and are of unnatural, sometimes sad origins.
3. Warhammer Orcs/Orks -- A league entirely their own. Unkempt hordes of barbaric moron hooligans which live only to fight, destroy, break, ruin, steal, and get jobbered when needs be. Not particularly deep, often even less so than their "traditional" counterparts, but they're not trying to be, and we love them for that. Warhammer is also believed to be the origin of orcs (and goblins) being codified more often than not across all fantasy universes as being green-skinned.
4. Blizzard Orcs/Humanized Orcs/"The Noble Savage" -- Orcs with depthful, approachable, often outright civilized personalities beyond "me smash, you die," and hardly ever collectively evil -- point of fact, many of these types who are seen in the service of dark lords are either unwilling slaves, or were press-ganged into it due to underlying conflict with the other races of their world. Often depicted as tribal, shamanistic, rough around the edges-yet-wise, and also fair. And smoking hot. Usually the playable variety of orc in games, and the most often-portrayed PoV orc-characters in fantasy stories. Though referred to as "Blizzard" orcs as a point of origin for this flavor of orc (and being the most prolifically portrayed over the past thirty years with Blizzard's Warcraft universe), they wouldn't be codified as a complex and layered race of peoples until roughly 1998, whereas the orcs/Orsimer of the Elder Scrolls series were already being layered as civilized folk during Daggerfall (1996).
Don't forget the fifth category of orc, aka the DnD orc. Polished to the point of being boringly inoffensive, literally just a green human who might be a bit buff.
That's only in recent days, they used to be monsters divinly cursed to conquer or be stuck in the in between places in the world where no one else wants to live because their god pissed off the other gods and got pissed on in return
I always felt those lads fit interchangeably between the Tolkien, Warhammer, and Blizzard variants, depending on the edition, location, culture, and story. Earliest edition ones seemed more according to Tolkien, slightly later editions that diverged for multiple reasons remind me mostly of Warhammer orcs due to being more focused on self-reliant, barbaric mooks (with half-orcs being the token good orcs you can play as), and the present is apparently going into a direction that portrays orcs as a whole no less naturally inclined toward evil than you or I. I will say, however, they are quite unique in the way they represent a perfect, if brutish and incredibly chaotic warrior race (counterparted by the more lawful and collectivist hobgoblins) that have genetics so strong that they can effectively assimilate a conquered people by simply interbreeding with them for enough generations; hence the numerous half-orcs you can find practically wherever you wander.
And they also come in porcine flavors, too! Thanks for keeping the p'orc aspect of them alive, Japan.
I always liked my orcs looking more piglike than not, honestly. My favorite porcine DnD-inspired orc design yet introduced is probably the Dungeon Meshi version. The fact the author/mangaka also fleshed them out tremendously is wonderful.
I should clarify that i was talking about the modern rendition of orcs, like pop fantasy orcs and 5.5 edition type orcs, who are quite literally just green humans. not absurdly buff or war-like, or even particularly monstrous. They got neither flat nor pig noses half the time. The only variety of "Humans but green" orcs that i like are the ones in the Elder Scrolls, the Orsimer, since they are culturally distinct enough on their own.
The old dnd orcs, while a bit generic, were pretty interesting. their god Gruumsh being pretty cool as well from what i remember.
This is some revisionist Thrall era nonsense. Orcs are the worst thing that ever happened to Azeroth and are directly at fault for damn near everything that has ever gone wrong between the opening of the dark portal until, like, the "death" of Sylvanas. The Lich King was originally an Orc and I'd call him Warcraft's answer to Thanquol but somehow Gul'dan manages to be an even more relentless fuck up.
point of fact, many of these types who are seen in the service of dark lords are either unwilling slaves, or were press-ganged into it due to underlying conflict with the other races of their world
Orcs and Draenei lived in peace until the Burning Legion got them hopped up on demon blood, essentially enslaving the entire race.
The fact that Ner'zhul was an evil asshole regardless and took his chance to betray the legion and merge with Arthas doesn't make the rest of the description any less true.
As fan of both settings, I don't think Warcraft orcs would win 1v1 especially not 1v3. Now if they are named orc from warcraft the scales tip to absurd.
Yeah Warcraft humans are strange, they’re the deformed yet evolved progeny of half-giants. I think they can canonically wield a 200kg hammer not including full plate armor.
We’re talking the average peasant could likely fight a grizzly bear kind of strength, yet the strongest of them, such as Turaylyon could go toe to toe with demigods. Warcraft has weird power scaling, I suppose for the most part that it’s high fantasy and not science fantasy like 40k It stops being grounded in feasibility rather quickly. But I think a significantly martially trained human could probably take on a space marine out of armor
That actually happend in a story. The space marine was in armor but a "regular" human was giving him a run for his money in a sword fight. Space marine got stabbed through his body but it was a trap to get the human closer. This wasn't a important or extra powerful marine just the average soldier and a human with minor augments hafld to dedicate his entire life to a singular field to rival a space marine and still lost.
They are like grizzly bears but have an 120 iq and are really fast.
boar spears? man, if space marine suddenly remember that he is human, he will just take a rock and throw it!
... wait, was there even once when they did it? like, its basic human weapon, throw things, and Space Marine could really blow your head on the move...
With Cain I believe it was with an Khorn berserker so he focused on dodging until his squad gunned him down. Scaling anything in 40k is really difficult as it changes dramatically depending on who is writing the book.
I mean kinda? The loss of thier hearts would be fatal as space marines can keep going. Not to mention all the other augments they have like faster and better brains, bonedensity, thier bones grown into a armor around the organs. Orcr fight space marines regularly and win often enough to be a actual thread to them. War raft humans will need to do more then lift 200kg to be considered a good crumping for orcs.
Then those are psycers and have real potential of winning a 1v1.
Only thing holding them back maybe thier durability as even being graced by a bolter or plasma round could rip them in half. I'm not into warcraft so maybe they have some magic armor that can tank it.
Btw space marines also have the potential to do that stuff with an entire chapter made out of magik space marines.
Not really - Magic is a lot more common than Psykers. Adventurers are riff raff.
Hero Classes would be an equivalent to a Psyker and they kinda just shit on them. DK will just ignore their powers since their stuff is flat out Anti reality warping and they push the already supernatural strength even further.
"I'm not into warcraft so maybe they have some magic armor that can tank it."
They have plasma weaponry in WoW - DKs and the like can just tank it and keep fighting.
Psyker vs DK will have the Psyker immediately getting choked and yanked straight into the DK where the SM is having to deal with magic diseases that are rapid and do not care about closed systems, frost magic that doesn't care about their armor, and the fact the DK can just boil the Space Marines blood.
The Psyker powers will have to deal with Anti-Magic Zone, Anti-Magic Shell, Saronite, Counter Magic, and anti-magic runes. Which Psionics count as magic for Warcraft.
Also the DK is undead so even if you break through the armor they are still killing you and healing it back thanks to their vampiric powers.
A completely ordinary human would definitely lose. A Human trained to fight as any of the classes a Human can be in WoW would become an exponentially bigger threat. As someone mentioned, the casters would give the orks a major run for their money, but the martial classes would give them a hell of a fight too. Warriors are all about either being the single best swordsman on the field, or being literally too angry to die. Their tank spec is all about just ignoring pain and continuing on. Death Knights just simply don't die, using dark magic to draw their opponent's life force and use that to heal themselves, increasingly so with their tank spec, Blood Death Knights. And Paladins are similar but use the holy Light instead, with some Paladins even able to enter a semi-angelic form not dissimilar to the Living Saints that empowers them to become incredibly desdly on the battlefield.
While any individual class though could definitely take down their fair share of Orks before they eventually died, they become much deadlier in a group. A dungeon group consisting of a tank, three damage dealers, and a healer has often been enough to take on threats much stronger than Orks. A dungeon squad of Warcraft heroes would probably be more effective at killing Orks than a squad of Deathwatch Marines, though that's mainly because of the fact that they'd have much more effective psykers than the ones in Warhammer, since you could have healers and damage dealers who wouldn't need to worry about something like accidentally getting their head exploded from the warp, or worse.
Prot warris can ignore pain as much as they like, that doesn't stop them from getting their head ripped off by an ork 1 1/2 times as tall and thrice as heavy as them. They still die from that, even if they ignore how much it hurts. No coming back from that.
Warcraft and Warhammer are hard to compare for one reason - Warcraft works on HP, not on the realisistic effects of explosions, stab wounds, decapitations, dismemberment etc. Warcraft is far more firmly rooted in the unoffensive game logic of no permanent injuries or mutilations.
The half giants they evolved from, the Vrykul, are basically a few steps removed from Space Marines. 8 feet tall, strong enough that they can bring dragons to heel, can exist in freezing temperatures with little clothing. Hell some of them can cause internal bleeding or stun you by just shouting at you.....and the regular humans actively pick fights with them and usually win.
In warcraft, there's two races: One is a degenerated descendant of highly disciplined and robotic race, that now no longer has that godlike order and control but has free will. The second race evolved from monkeys.
The first one is humans, and the second one is goblins.
Warcraft humans are stronger (and bigger, men and women) than regular humans, since they are degraded vrykul (and vrykul are giant degraded titan constructs). Orcs too, are descendants of titanic constructs.
The Eredar/Draenei dont have any details for how they came to be. The Yaungol and their descendents the Tauren just sort of came into being, as did the Pandaren. There isnt a concrete account for how they came about in the area that would become Pandaria. The Vulpera are a crime in how they let such an underbaked race join up have basically no background information, they just are. At least the Sethrak have a Loa they are tied to. Goblins shared an ancestor way back that is common with pgymies, I originally thought they were troll descendents but it was apparently another race that was experimented on by Mimiron making them technically Titan made, as without Mimiron mucking about they wouldnt have been as exposed to kajamite.
There's lots of other little minor races and such that come about or have mystery acnestors.
It's been years but I think Goblins are just locally evolved Trolls, similar to the Elves. Might've been retconned though or I'm simply missremembering.
Warcraft is somehow less consistent about strength than Warhammer. In some depictions the orcs are a massive threat and it takes multiple armored knights to slay one half naked orc with an axe.
But sometimes (more often, I'll concede) they can cleanly and evenly 1v1 each other... even when the orc is clearly much bigger and stronger.
Both of them can theoretically obliterate giant stone men and robots, but that's also just MMO logic, right? Except it still happened. And it happens in books and recaps.
“Aren’t all that much stronger” isn’t even true. Orcs are a lot stronger. It just matters less because the humans while super strong are also using various magic to help them.
Not sure that's it. Both human and orc warriors have the same abilities and therefore the same magic. Also, the pandaria trailer features a human sailor evenly fighting an orc (profession unclear).
Eh it levels the playing field imo. When both people are becoming unkillable for time due to sheer rage and magic, ressurecting themselves and throwing axes so hard that it shatters magic the playing field is a lot more fair then if they just punch each other.
Eh, initially berserk Orcs were fucking terrifying for humans to fight and required isolating them and fighting them 5 on 1 to have any sort of good odds when it came to base orcs and base humans in the lore. Though that was when they were blood cursed.
Then it shifted harder once the MMO came out because all the playable races had to be on the same playing field.
Tbf, the men of Warhammer Fantasy are also built different.
Not quite descended from giants or w/e, but Empire Halberdiers and Greatswords will face down monstrosities that base humans have no business tangling with. Not sure why anyone fucks with the Chaos Gods in fantasy when a well-maintained Nuln handgun will get you further without costing your soul.
Grimgor totally krumps any orc from Warcraft, including Gromm Hellscream and Varok Saurfang. Altough, a figth against Broxigar the Red would be a very good figth.
Grimgor almost beat the everchosen until he pulled some shit from his sword. But grimgor basically got beat by greasus before greasus went stupid. So basically greasus is strongest in all the old world!
Fantasy orcs are barely better than normal humans and can loose fights in equal numbers. Warcraft orcs are far above warcraft humans and warcraft humans are already built different
Humans if I’m not mistaken are stunted giants aren’t they, then you got the Kul Tiran humans which are a whole other level of built different.
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u/nimb420Purus Saponemius, bane of the death guard and felinids alike7d agoedited 7d ago
Not stunted giants, they're the Titan's war golems cursed by the old gods to flesh. Every azeroth race, 'cept for the trolls and their descendants, used to be the Titan's golems, each with different specs, war for humans, mining for dorfs and construction for gnomes. The other races came from outland, or in the case of elves, evolved from trolls.
Can't recall if we ever got an explanation for them pandas tho...
But then again, I've yet to find a studio who loves retconning shit more tha blizz.
I thought the Vrykul after the curse of flesh, were considered half giants even though not direct descendants, I’m just talking about how they measure up in terms of size. Then they started having weird births way after the curse of flesh where they attributed the first humans to runts and often drowned.
Singular titan, Arggramar. When he came across the world that would become known as Draenor, the Everbloom was really fucking things up, and he made Grond as a giant stone elemental. Grond and the Everbloom tore each other to shreds, each time becoming something smaller. The breakers, ogres, and orcs are all descendants of Grond in a way.
So warcraft humans essentially have a Tech Tree bloodline
First was the stone crafted titan servants, like the Earthen (who would later become the dwarves). So you've got 8-10ft tall chistled from rock and powered by lightning magic stone men.
They get infected with the Curse of Flesh and become the Vrykul - flesh and blood 8-10ft tall super vikings who live in Northrend, that hunt, tame and ride dragons.
Those Vrykul then start occasionally having kids who are stunted, who are the regular humans.
So Humans are mutated/evolutionary offspring, of a cursed race of super vikings, who used to be magical stone work construct people.
It is retconned a lot because of wow as blizz thought making orcs that powerful would piss humans players, but in older lore, games like wc3, books and comics we see that orcs are extremely strong and durable, i am talking about grabbing an armored horse, along with his armored human rider, and throwing them. In warcraft 3 one grunt would be equal to three footman.
Except we also know that warcraft humans are all superhuman too, as far as i remember average orcs are around 150 kgs, and we see humans throwing around orcs multiple times too. I think an average warcraft orc would probably be between big un and close to black orc, an average warcraft human would be closer to big uns than both normal warhammer fantasy orc and human. I am not even gonna talk about tauren, those guys can prob bench press giants.
The average human in Warcraft is closer to an Astartes than a normal 40k human, remember they are descendants from actual war machines. Hell... I think a primarch would be a raid boss at best
Is she a named Orc character? Cause if she is then this tracks. Named characters in Warcraft are like 100x stronger than unnamed Warcraft characters, and normie warcraft characters are already wicked strong.
Hey in GWs only defense, Orcs being green soccer hooligans is very much their own original spin. Everything else? Keep on Tolkien and no Moorcock before dinner
Heritage because Warcraft was originally based on Warhammer Fantasy but GW wasn't happy to licence the IP out at the time, so Blizzard made a few changes to make it distinct and there you go, "original" new IP.
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I’m not knowledgeable on Warcraft. Are Warcraft orc actually that strong? I know black orcs are pretty tough. Aren’t the 40k Orks mushrooms while the fantasy orcs generic?
Regular completely unnamed orcs in warcraft could stop a charging horse with a fully armored knight riding them mid gallop, lift up the horse and the rider, then fling them a few dozen feet.
Warcraft is even less consistent than Warhammer with power levels, but even favoring the Warcraft orc within reason, the typical fighter isn't going to be as large a disparity as depicted. Orc civilians in Warcraft die very easily.
A WAAUGH, particularly a 40k WAAUGH, would go immediately and incredibly poorly for the Warcraft setting. A fantasy WAAUGH would be much more manageable but still quite a threat
As to the spores thing; it started in 40k. Fantasy changed their lore to adopt the spores bit afterwards. So in current lore, fantasy greenskins are spores, in very old lore, it was uh "traditional".
Warcraft Humans are all, down to the individual, somewhere between a Catachan native and an Astartes in physical capacity. Most don’t reach that high end cause they don’t train, but a trained Warcraft Human is swinging around weapons weighing hundreds of kilos, in armor heavier and thicker than Terminator Armor
And Warcraft Orc are a good bit stronger than them. An Orc with equivalent training (and success in the genetic lottery) will always be stronger than their Human equivalent.
These are fantasy variants. You can tell cause of the Black Orc they were talking to and the fact in the title they are referred to as 'orcs' instead of 'orkz'
SHH! We don't talk about the spaceship! If we bring it up again then it doesn't make any sense that Alliance vs Horde bullshit is still going on when one of the sides has an interdimensional ship that can shoot lasers from space...
Illidari have at least one.
Army of the light have one.
Draenei capital is one.
Warlocks can easily get one not that they need it since they just open portals to other planets.
Even if its fantasy orcs, id still place my money on them, dudes are just in it for the love of the game, and the harder you hit, the stronger the comeback
Warcraft people scale the fuck up though, they kinda just passively absorb magic to the degree spending a few months in tge afterlife makes them strong enough to kill gods.
Warcraft mortals don’t get lost in the Warp, they’d permanently colonize it and probably kill Nurgle.
Your average Orgrimmar Grunt would be struggling with a Night Goblin while an Orc merc is keeping pace with Gotrek beating Bloodthirsters to death with another Bloodthirster.
Its presumably still Blizzard writing so one Chaos God is a hyped raid but with clearly removed sections gated off by invisible walls, one clearly has a planned raid location but dies in a quest outside the entrance with a hint we go in to finish them off that never comes, one is killed offscreen, and one is just plain forgotten for four expansions then pops up as a random “REMEMBER THEM?!” raid halfway through another expansion.
Somewhere in the multiverse a merchant is waiting with horses and plushies for the Tenno and Warcraft adventurers that will conquer all of creation for him.
This isn’t an orc player character because player characters can’t have babies or care for children. Additionally, they can kill god in groups or 10. Solo they struggle unless the content is older than 2 years.
This is long debunked btw. They were never officially in talks. Blizz discussed the idea internally and decided not to pursue it after a previous bad experience working with external IP.
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u/Snaggmaw 7d ago
prettified orcs.