Quote from: SHARK on February 20, 2025, 09:30:47 PMThere is no deeper meaning.

SHARK

Spoken like a true orc.

I've been brushing up on Warcraft lore for reasons of my own lately, so I'll throw in a little extra context which might be interesting.

Warcraft: Orcs and Humans (1994) was originally going to be an adaptation of the Warhammer Fantasy tabletop game, but Blizzard couldn't get the license, so they made up their own lore. The end result in both that game and Warcraft II (1995) is that the portrayal of orcs is kind of a half step between Warhammer and Tolkien orcs. Original Warcraft orcs are a tribal society bent on conquest and destruction, like in Warhammer, but more intelligent, capable of carrying out alliances and industrialized warfare, more like Tolkien's orcs. Cosmetically they're kind of a toned down version of Warhammer orcs as well.

They're also literal aliens that arrived on Azeroth through a stargate, but that's kind of beside the point.

The real heel-face turn comes in Warcraft III (2002), where the backstory of the orcs gets retconned so that they were semi-unwitting pawns of the demonic Burning Legion, and puts them on the redemption arc to being the fantasy Klingons they are by World of Warcraft (2004).

The interesting thing is that Warcraft III and World of Warcraft were actually in development at the same time. The Orc redemption story was originally conceived for a point-and-click adventure game in development in the late 90s which was later canceled, but it is still quite likely that the reason the orcs got face-turned is that Blizzard knew they were making an MMO and were going to need them as a playable race for it.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 06:12:10 PM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on February 20, 2025, 05:11:41 PM

Quote from: estar on February 20, 2025, 03:48:58 PMI stated what the archetype is. But perhaps I wasn't clear, the prototypical orc is a sentient being, corrupted from their original form by dark powers to be used as rank and file servants for their evil plans for the world.

This archetype diversified in major ways at three different time.

The first was Orcs as depicted in OD&D in 1974, this was reinforced by D&D rise in popularity and it ability to remain as the market leader for decades.

The second was Orcs as depicted in Warhammer in the mid-80s; this was further reinforced by Warcraft adopting a similar interpretation.

Finally, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films marked the return of Orcs as creatures corrupted by evil powers. This was reinforced by Jackson explicitly showed Saruman creating the Uruk-hai.

https://www.tk421.net/lotr/film/fotr/27.html

All three have a foothold in the minds of today's hobbyists.

Yep.  Orcs are the stormtroopers of fantasy RPGs.  Or maybe stormtroopers are the orcs of space opera (orcs did come first)?

I agree with estar that D&D, Warhammer, and Warcraft were significant splits to the archetype. Most of those did not highlight orcs as being corrupted from an original form.

In D&D, the orc background was majorly influenced by Roger Moore's creation myth in Dragon #62. That portrayed orcs not as a corruption, but as a force in themselves - seeking revenge on other races.



It also seems to me that in D&D modules, orcs were often a force in their own right - rather than henchmen of a dark lord. G1 had orc servants to the giants, say, but B2 had orcs as their own faction - with orcish leaders rather than a non-orc dark lord.

That was reinforced in The Orcs of Thar (1988), the official D&D module that made orcs and other humanoids as optional player races for BECMI. Orcs and other humanoids aren't servants - they are their own savage civilization. The tongue-in-cheek nature of this is more like Warhammer 40K's space orks.

As also introduced in the 1980s, Warcraft orcs are distinctly more like Klingons - the big powerful proud warrior race.



The more Klingon-ish orcs were folded back into D&D with 3rd edition, which re-introduced the half-orc as a player race.

I didnt read the whole thread so maybe someone brought it up, but the Orcs in Warcraft are corrupted. Natural orcs are reddish brown skinned and the green ones are infected with evil magic from drinking demon blood. The proud, honirable warrior race thing is actually new to them too they adopted that identity when Thrall made the new Horde like 10 years ago of in game time. Orcish honor is also played up by Garrosh Hellscream because he hates the other races in the Horde and wants to kick them out. Granted i think thats a retcon cause they were trying to character assassinate him HARD when they wanted him to be a raid boss. While a few things did happen before, for the most part everything about Warcraft Orcs people know is recent, within living memory. I think at most 60 years. Before that the only notable thing is they lived underground while the bigger races of their homeworld Draenor killed one another and they, for the most part, killed off the majority of the remaining Ogres.  This is part of why i don't like the Warcraft Orcs.

Quote from: RNGm on February 21, 2025, 08:56:37 AM

Quote from: estar on February 20, 2025, 06:45:06 PMWell keep in mind the view that Klingons were honorable warriors was a TNG thing. The Orc as a vicious but honorable warrior came first in the mid 80s with Warhammer. Although, to be fair, Warcraft is the one that cemented this aspect of the orc, and the TNG honorable Klingon and Warcraft-style orc seem to have co-developed alongside each other throughout the 90s.

WHFB orcs were honorable?  Admittedly I've always been more into the 40k side of GW's offerings but I've never heard or seen that take on WHFB orcs.  I fully admit though that I've never been an expert on the fantasy side of the lore (skimming to reading through a couple editions of army books) but I've never heard of them been referred to as honorable.  Vicious and violent?  Absolutely.  The ultimate example of a violent might makes right society?  Sure.  But always chaotic on the verge of violence within their own units/society enforced only by even more severe violence from those (temporarily) in charge.  Are there any examples in the WHFB lore where you can point to orcs being honorable as opposed to just refraining temporarily from violence/aggression simply for an equally temporary more important benefit?  I do agree though that Warcraft introduced that more "noble savage" motif to their clearly inspired fantasy orcs though.

WHFB orcs are not honorable, unless its in some old lore i don't really know. They just enjoy violence for violences sake. Usually they don't abstain from violence for temporary benefit either, since an orc army that doesnt have an opponent will usually start infighting. Especially Grimgor Ironhide who will start killing his own army if he goes more than 3 days without a fight.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 21, 2025, 07:15:50 AM

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 03:55:05 AM*SIGH* I really don't understand all of the hand-wringing over Orcs. There somehow is this kind of deep-seated need to excuse the Orcs, to forgive them, to shelter them or lift them up as somehow good and virtuous and redeemable.

Why all of this desperate need to have Orcs be just misunderstood, and ultimately redeemable to the Light?

It's really pretty simple at heart, as are most big lies. For some people, the very concept of "evil" is beyond the pale, to the point that it needs to be rooted out of all thought.  This isn't a form of moral nihilism alone (though it is that too) so much as a deep-seated fear.  I forget who said it about the post-moderns or the exact quote, but it went something like:  "Unlike Nietzsche who looked into the Abyss with fear and loathing, they took one glance and gleefully jumped in."

Just as Chesterton commented, "the lesson of dragons is not that dragons exist but that they can be slain," well the lesson of orcs is not that orcs exist but that evil is a thing.  If evil is a thing for orcs, then it could be a thing lurking in anyone. If it could be in anyone, it could be in me.  Some people need desperately for there not to be orcs, because they think they might be part one.

Greetings!

Hmmm...That's damn insightful, Steven Mitchell! I like that, my friend! "The lesson of dragons is not that dragons exist, but that they can be slain." Yeah! Talk about a good cigar-worthy truth to chew on there!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 03:55:05 AMGreetings!

*SIGH* I really don't understand all of the hand-wringing over Orcs. There somehow is this kind of deep-seated need to excuse the Orcs, to forgive them, to shelter them or lift them up as somehow good and virtuous and redeemable.

Why all of this desperate need to have Orcs be just misunderstood, and ultimately redeemable to the Light?

Speaking only for myself, it's my basic Catholic disposition that, like Tolkien, wrestles with the moral implications of a race of sapient beings created irredeemable.

I realize this isn't a problem if you're playing in some dualistic (good and evil as balanced opposites required for stability of the cosmos) hell-dimension of a setting, but if your setting at all echoes a Christian ethos (as all of mine do) then you need to consider the moral issue of souls created for eternal damnation (rather that choosing it).

In my case, this led me first to a version of goblins, orcs, and ogres that were "the shadows of murdered men"; soulless corruptions of the shadows left behind when someone died before their natural time. The shadows of the 'small folk' became goblins, the shadows of warriors became orcs, and those of lords and 'great men who cast long shadows' became ogres. They are literally soulless aberrations created by necromancers to prey on mankind... essentially a type of undead that avoids all those issues of Christian morality.

However, a fair number of players I was testing my system with expressed a desire for something more akin to a Warcraft orc and, as my system already included the ability to play more fantastical beings like unicorns and dragons, I renamed a few things.

The "shadows of murdered men" became simply Shades, identical save for the name.

What now carried the name Orc (and Ogre) was a particular lineage of Mutants (an existing PC race of humans mutated by the Cataclysm that includes Trolls, Troglodytes, and others as "true-breeding" subspecies). I decided they were the descendants of the last Emperor and his Praetorian Guard who were determined to reclaim all of their former Empire to restore it to glory. Basically, they're fanatics ruling a Roman rump state with "Restore the Glory of Rome (including slavery and forced worship of the Emperor as a living god)" as their holy mission. They're also mutants whose adrenal system is now always on at 110%... with all the issues that causes.

In short, they're bad neighbors to all the free cities and other successor states that arose after the Cataclysm wiped the Empire off the map along with 99.9% of the population. They're an evil empire-in-the making and you definitely shouldn't have moral qualms about killing their soldiers in the process of liberating villages and slave camps from their clutches. But they also aren't intrinsically evil. They grow up in an evil culture and most start committing grave moral evils as soon as they reach the age of reason; but if you were to raise them free of their culture they'd just be another mutant with a particular mixed-bag of "cursed blessings" that all mutants in the setting have.

That also solves the moral issues of the orcs, just in the opposite direction of the Shade version. They have moral agency and choose to do evil like the worst stereotypes of the Roman Empire they're built on.

The only type of Orc I genuinely dislike is the "born irredeemably damned" version, but more often than not those only really exist in settings designed by Tolkein/D&D cargo-cultists who never even stopped to consider any moral implications at all (sorta like how the Forgotten Realms cosmology became a hell dimension where the most ethical action if you can't escape is embrace undeath didn't happen as a deliberate decision, but because of a pile of choices made by different writers without any deep consideration beyond solving an immediate plot issue). As such, most of those usually have bigger issues than just the nature of its orcs.

Quote from: RNGm on February 21, 2025, 08:56:37 AMWHFB orcs were honorable?  Admittedly I've always been more into the 40k side of GW's offerings but I've never heard or seen that take on WHFB orcs.  I fully admit though that I've never been an expert on the fantasy side of the lore (skimming to reading through a couple editions of army books) but I've never heard of them been referred to as honorable.  Vicious and violent?  Absolutely.  The ultimate example of a violent might makes right society?  Sure.  But always chaotic on the verge of violence within their own units/society enforced only by even more severe violence from those (temporarily) in charge.  Are there any examples in the WHFB lore where you can point to orcs being honorable as opposed to just refraining temporarily from violence/aggression simply for an equally temporary more important benefit?  I do agree though that Warcraft introduced that more "noble savage" motif to their clearly inspired fantasy orcs though.

I looked it up and turned out I conflated the two.
https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/friz30/do_40k_orks_have_their_own_code_of_honour_like/

It appears that 40K Orks are a form of corrupted being.

QuoteWarhammer 40,000 orks are different in the fact that instead of a species of mammal or mammal like creature, they are fungus. They shed spores which cam grow almost anywhere, and these spores grow everything from their food (shrooms, squigs, grots), slaves (grots, gretchin) and all of the boyz, who grow in fungal sacs underground and emerge effectively a young adult that is fully capable of fighting. They dont have to band together like Warcraft orcs to ensure their survival as a tribe and species. In 40k, if a 'newborn' ork cant win a fight and dies then he wasnt orky enough and the boyz got a laugh out of it.

Warhammer Fantasy Orks as well if this is accurate
https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Greenskins

I made the mistake because their aesthetics were so similar. But Warcraft is the true source of the honorable warrior Orc.

Still I think modified my original point stands. The basic archetype of orcs was estabilshed by Tolkien. And there were three times that archtype got modified and diversified. D&D, Warhammer/Warcraft, and the LoTR Films.

with the added note that Warhammer created an iconic look for the orcs, and Warcraft copied that look and added to it the idea of the orcs as vicious, honorable warriors.

Quote from: estar on February 21, 2025, 11:47:28 AMwith the added note that Warhammer created an iconic look for the orcs, and Warcraft copied that look and added to it the idea of the orcs as vicious, honorable warriors.

Another unspoken element I think could be argued played into the transformation of some orcs into the vicious honorable warriors in the late 80's/early 90's was Star Trek TNG's expansion of the Klingons from basically TOS' space commies into a "proud warrior race."

Basically, a lot of those versions of orcs amount to "fantasy Klingons" and the impulse to have playable ones runs parallel to the adoption of Klingon culture (including an entire constructed language) by a certain subset of sci-fi fandom.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 21, 2025, 11:25:05 AM

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 03:55:05 AM*SIGH* I really don't understand all of the hand-wringing over Orcs. There somehow is this kind of deep-seated need to excuse the Orcs, to forgive them, to shelter them or lift them up as somehow good and virtuous and redeemable.

Why all of this desperate need to have Orcs be just misunderstood, and ultimately redeemable to the Light?

Speaking only for myself, it's my basic Catholic disposition that, like Tolkien, wrestles with the moral implications of a race of sapient beings created irredeemable.

To SHARK and Steven Mitchell - Tolkien is the one who created the current archetype of orc, and he is the one who wrote at length about moral implications and said they were not irredeemable -- back in 1954. One of his central themes was about mercy, summed up by Gandalf's quote that Brad posted earlier, "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."

So the thought of orc redemption isn't a modern SJW thing -- it was something that Tolkien wrestled with in the 1950s.

You're free to have orcs however you want in your campaign. The orcs in my Shadowrun campaign aren't the same as orcs in Tolkien's Middle Earth or orcs in your world of Thandor.

To Chris24601:

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 21, 2025, 11:25:05 AMIn short, they're bad neighbors to all the free cities and other successor states that arose after the Cataclysm wiped the Empire off the map along with 99.9% of the population. They're an evil empire-in-the making and you definitely shouldn't have moral qualms about killing their soldiers in the process of liberating villages and slave camps from their clutches. But they also aren't intrinsically evil. They grow up in an evil culture and most start committing grave moral evils as soon as they reach the age of reason; but if you were to raise them free of their culture they'd just be another mutant with a particular mixed-bag of "cursed blessings" that all mutants in the setting have.

That also solves the moral issues of the orcs, just in the opposite direction of the Shade version. They have moral agency and choose to do evil like the worst stereotypes of the Roman Empire they're built on.

Thanks for the overview of orcs in your campaign world. In my recent campaign world, the Solar Empire (based on the Incans) is objectively good - ruled by a divinely-inspired king chosen by the good-aligned sun god. So you're taking the worst stereotypes of the Roman Empire, and I'm taking the best stereotypes of the Incan Empire.

It's fantasy, so we can do what we want in our own worlds. But in this case, it's made your Roman-inspired orcs evil and my Incan-inspired orcs good.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 21, 2025, 11:25:05 AMWhat now carried the name Orc (and Ogre) was a particular lineage of Mutants (an existing PC race of humans mutated by the Cataclysm that includes Trolls, Troglodytes, and others as "true-breeding" subspecies). I decided they were the descendants of the last Emperor and his Praetorian Guard who were determined to reclaim all of their former Empire to restore it to glory. Basically, they're fanatics ruling a Roman rump state with "Restore the Glory of Rome (including slavery and forced worship of the Emperor as a living god)" as their holy mission. They're also mutants whose adrenal system is now always on at 110%... with all the issues that causes.

Yeah as a Catholic myself, a version of this is how I resolved the moral issues with Orcs. The Demons were seeking to create a warrior race that could be dominated by them.

The Demi-humans like Dwarves, Gnomes, and Halflings were just the first round of alterations they didn't modify their personalities just their physical abilities. The orcs, goblins, etc. were the second round where their bodies and minds were altered.

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 03:55:05 AM*SIGH* I really don't understand all of the hand-wringing over Orcs. There somehow is this kind of deep-seated need to excuse the Orcs, to forgive them, to shelter them or lift them up as somehow good and virtuous and redeemable.

I can only speak for myself but always liked to read and when it came to my Catholicism this meant reading some theology. Parallel and intersecting this was some of the musings of golden age science fiction and fantasy authors on the nature of free will and the different ways of handling it. It was not a big thing but it was there and to me interesting.

The final piece of the puzzle is how I was running sandbox campaigns from the start. Sure the term was only coined in the 2000s, what I was doing was fleshing out my setting enough so that the players, if they wanted too, could plot a way to found kingdoms, become kings, and conquer. That naturally led to running things as a sandbox campaign because who knows where their next ally will come from or what they will have to do to gain their trust.

One challenge was to make that interesting, and shades of grey rather than black and white was more interesting to run and for them to play in a campaign where the focus is on making a mark upon the world.

Hence, I jettisoned alignments early on and came up with more nuanced depictions of religions and races. So even if you managed to get the Church of Mitra on your side you still need to keep an eye on them because they have their dark side despite overall being a force for good. With the Orcs, describing them the way I do means if the players need to get an orc tribe off their back in order to deal with a more pressing issue, there are ways of doing that beyond waging a costly war of extermination.

Quote from: SHARK on February 21, 2025, 03:55:05 AMWhy all of this desperate need to have Orcs be just misunderstood, and ultimately redeemable to the Light?

The situation of the Orcs in the Majestic Wilderlands/Majestic Fantasy Realms is tragic but given what the demons did to them peaceful co-existance is not possible except for rare individuals whose aggressive nature is at the low end of the bell curve.

The demons represent irreparable evil in my setting. I am not a fan of Milton or the devil as an antihero. Demons have managed to maim themselves spiritually so badly that they are incapable of doing good. Everything they do is for their own selfish reasons.

Quote from: Slambo on February 21, 2025, 10:35:46 AMWHFB orcs are not honorable, unless its in some old lore i don't really know. They just enjoy violence for violences sake. Usually they don't abstain from violence for temporary benefit either, since an orc army that doesnt have an opponent will usually start infighting. Especially Grimgor Ironhide who will start killing his own army if he goes more than 3 days without a fight.

Sorry that it wasn't clear but that abstaining from violence probably should have wrote "abstaining from violence temporarily against you" and that might be a more 40k thing than WHFB and was partly based off of this 40k Ork codex quote:

"They cannot be bargained with or bought save with weapons that they will inevitable turn against those who tried to bribe them."   https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ork_Quotes

Quote from: estar on February 21, 2025, 11:47:28 AMI made the mistake because their aesthetics were so similar. But Warcraft is the true source of the honorable warrior Orc.

It's an easy mistake to make to conflate the two especially given that one was based on the other when a licensing agreement didn't work out.   I agree on the Warcraft source as it eventually turned out by WoW but it didn't seem to be the case originally in the games I mainly played back in the day (Warcraft 1 & 2) as confirmed above already.  Regardless, I'm not a fan of the honorable warrior savage motif for orcs and think it's better served with other fictional fantasy (it's sad that nowadays you have to specify both adjectives for the "modern audience" that may be reading) races.

Quote from: estar on February 21, 2025, 12:40:53 PMThe demons represent irreparable evil in my setting. I am not a fan of Milton or the devil as an antihero. Demons have managed to maim themselves spiritually so badly that they are incapable of doing good. Everything they do is for their own selfish reasons.

My demons are the same; literally fallen angels who knowingly chose evil. They also ended up consigned to The Outer Darkness (i.e. Hell) unless summoned by mortals (and there's more than enough stupid, greedy and desperate souls to make them a recurring issue).

For my setting its the undead (including the aforementioned Shades) who fill the role of irredeemable evil; soulless mockeries of life and lost souls that chose evil in life and rejected God in death. They're empowered by the Demon Emperor (Satan analogue) himself as the embodiment of his hatred for all God's creation and his desire to drag as many souls as possible into The Outer Darkness out of spite.

My Orcs ended up as a more human evil largely because I didn't feel a need to have yet another irredeemable evil in the setting what with demons and undead already existing. After you've got "soulless" and "soul/spirit that chose evil" covered I can't think of any other types of irredeemable natures that I'd want to include in a fundamentally Christian mythos.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 21, 2025, 11:25:05 AM

QuoteGreetings!

*SIGH* I really don't understand all of the hand-wringing over Orcs. There somehow is this kind of deep-seated need to excuse the Orcs, to forgive them, to shelter them or lift them up as somehow good and virtuous and redeemable.

Why all of this desperate need to have Orcs be just misunderstood, and ultimately redeemable to the Light?

Speaking only for myself, it's my basic Catholic disposition that, like Tolkien, wrestles with the moral implications of a race of sapient beings created irredeemable.

I realize this isn't a problem if you're playing in some dualistic (good and evil as balanced opposites required for stability of the cosmos) hell-dimension of a setting, but if your setting at all echoes a Christian ethos (as all of mine do) then you need to consider the moral issue of souls created for eternal damnation (rather that choosing it).

In a weird way, it's also an issue from a secular point of view. Without a metaphysical force driving them, you start to wonder how an entirely evil culture could actually function. The only examples we have in the real world are human, of course, but it looks like amorality, selfishness and vice are not scalable or sustainable to a societal level. You almost have to give orcs some kind of honor culture or internal ethics in order to conceive of them being functional enough as a group to actually pose a threat to a developed human culture.

Quote from: RNGm on February 21, 2025, 01:08:24 PM

Quote from: estar on February 21, 2025, 11:47:28 AMI made the mistake because their aesthetics were so similar. But Warcraft is the true source of the honorable warrior Orc.

It's an easy mistake to make to conflate the two especially given that one was based on the other when a licensing agreement didn't work out.   I agree on the Warcraft source as it eventually turned out by WoW but it didn't seem to be the case originally in the games I mainly played back in the day (Warcraft 1 & 2) as confirmed above already.  Regardless, I'm not a fan of the honorable warrior savage motif for orcs and think it's better served with other fictional fantasy (it's sad that nowadays you have to specify both adjectives for the "modern audience" that may be reading) races.

I'm leaning towards three broad archetypes, and subtypes within those. However, I only know Warhammer 40K and Warcraft by reputation and descriptions on the web. I haven't played them. So I'd love thoughts from someone with experience. The three broad archetypes:

• The Minion / Goblin - short, fiendishly inventive, quarrelsome
• The Brute - big, strong, tough, dumb
• The Savage - big, warrior culture, aggressive

Minion/Goblin is most descriptive of Tolkien's orcs. The Uruk-Hai were taller and prouder than regular orcs, but in the books they were no taller or stronger than humans. Standard orcs were short and cruel, not chest-beating manly men.

Brute is more like Warhammer 40K orks. They come in a comedic horde, supposedly a satire of European football hooligans.

Savage is more like Warcraft orcs - and the Earthdawn orcs. They might be corrupted or not, but they still have a code and some form of honor.

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 21, 2025, 02:04:33 PMIn a weird way, it's also an issue from a secular point of view. Without a metaphysical force driving them, you start to wonder how an entirely evil culture could actually function. The only examples we have in the real world are human, of course, but it looks like amorality, selfishness and vice are not scalable or sustainable to a societal level. You almost have to give orcs some kind of honor culture or internal ethics in order to conceive of them being functional enough as a group to actually pose a threat to a developed human culture.

I'd say Minion/Goblin type orcs by themselves aren't a threat. They're just henchmen of a dark lord.

Brutes like Warhammer 40K are a threat by numbers of their horde and/or magic. Their fungus biology lets them quickly turn into hordes, and their magic lets them create technology despite their stupidity.

Savages like Warcraft have the honor code that makes them a dangerous warrior race.

Quote from: jhkim on February 20, 2025, 06:12:10 PMI agree with estar that D&D, Warhammer, and Warcraft were significant splits to the archetype. Most of those did not highlight orcs as being corrupted from an original form.

...

As also introduced in the 1980s, Warcraft orcs are distinctly more like Klingons - the big powerful proud warrior race.

Other people have addressed this to some extent, but with respect to Warcraft, this isn't accurate at all.  The corrupted nature of the orcs is pretty central to the narrative of the second and third games in the series.  Since you're looking for alternate interpretations of orcs, it's probably worth going into a little more detail.

In the first two games, the orcs are depicted as thoroughly vicious and evil.  They lust for conquest.  They enslave the races they defeat.  Their spellcasters are all demon-summoning necromancers.  Orc society is ruled from the shadows by an immensely powerful orcish warlock, making the entire race effectively henchmen of an evil wizard.  They have already committed genocide against one race at the behest of a demon lord.  While it is never stated outright that orcs are a corrupted and degenerate race, there are hints that this is the case.  Orcish necromancy is revealed to be a perversion of ancestor worship.  The strange alien home world of the orcs is dying around them, but once they come through the portal to Azeroth (the earthlike fantasy world that is the setting for the games), this taint seems to follow them and transform the landscape.

In the third game, after being defeated and subjugated, the orcs unexpectedly fall into a state of lethargy.  This is initially interpreted by humans as a disease, but it turns out that orcs have been under the influence of evil magics and demonic corruption for so long that they can't function without them.  That's where the storyline of the orc campaign in the third game begins, and the proud barbarian warrior orcs that you're talking about emerge from that.