Why are orcs green?

[Aniki22]

The other day I thought about this question, and many, probably, will immediately answer me that the Fel energy is to blame, but is it really so?
In order to explain my point of view, I will provide a few examples.
To begin with, according to the canon, the skin color of the orcs did not change from the use of Mannoroth's blood, but from the fel magic that the orc warlocks practiced, this explains why Thrall and his parents turned green skin even though they did not drink blood.
But does fel really have such qualities? Shouldn't all warlocks in the game be greenskinned?
The demons themselves drive a nail into the coffin of the green-skinned orc theory, as most demons either have red skin (such as fel orcs or eredar) or have retained their own skin color, such as demon hunters who did not turn green although with fel magic they dabble more than other playable races.
If we return to the same orcs, then in the game and in the canon, some orcs, for example Blackrock clan, who remained with gray skin, although they were surrounded by fel magic, and also many of them drank blood.
As for me, the answer is simple, Blizzard borrowed the orcs from the Warhammer universe where the orcs are green, but there the orcs are actually mushrooms and the race itself can hardly be called serious, while in Wow the orcs are wise and noble warriors who for some reason have a comical green skin color as if Is it Shrek or something like Hulk.

[Akarui]

their parents drunk mannoroth blood. Its a curse. U played for orc after invasion into azeroth, not before. orcs in blackrock i guess just dirty) and havent enough water for taking a shower. Play in warcraft campain and dont miss cutscenes

[Aniki22]

their parents drunk mannoroth blood. Its a curse. U played for orc after invasion into azeroth, not before. orcs in blackrock i guess just dirty) and havent enough water for taking a shower. Play in warcraft campain and dont miss cutscenes

Thrall's parents didn't drink blood, it's a well-known fact. And that doesn't explain why orcs are green!
And what difference does it make for which orcs you play before the invasion or after if both are green? or did they drink different blood of mannaroth?

[Jojothelich]

Fel corruption effects each race differently. Green skinned orcs are more of a mild corruption, Red with the addition of spikes on their backs, elongated tusks, and blood red glowing eyes are a more advanced state of the corruption for orcs.

Another example of fel corrupting a race without the race really touching the stuff is with the draenei and the de evolution into the broken.


It's also not just with Fel magic. Any type of concentrated magic source near a race can alter them greatly. Trolls near the Well of Eternity turning them into Highborne. Murlocs that turned into the Jinyu by being near the Vale of Eternal Blossoms.

[Aniki22]

Fel corruption effects each race differently. Green skinned orcs are more of a mild corruption, Red with the addition of spikes on their backs, elongated tusks, and blood red glowing eyes are a more advanced state of the corruption for orcs.

Another example of fel corrupting a race without the race really touching the stuff is with the draenei and the de evolution into the broken.


It's also not just with Fel magic. Any type of concentrated magic source near a race can alter them greatly. Trolls near the Well of Eternity turning them into Highborne. Murlocs that turned into the Jinyu by being near the Vale of Eternal Blossoms.

Thank you, but I already knew this, as I see it, they didn’t quite understand me, I’m hinting at the illogicality of changing the color of the orcs’ skin, or that they essentially received a unique mutation. (But since this is a fictional universe, orcs would still turn green)

[Aniki22]

1.The topic of race change under the influence of magic you touched on is a question that I have asked many times. And I think that here it is quite possible to trace the pattern of impact, where, for example, fel adds hooves, wings and horns (thorns) to races.
2.The light makes the skin lighter and probably some other changes, but since we have not seen too many light beings, except perhaps for the draenei and naaru, it is more difficult to say for sure.
3.Darkness (Abyss) adds various tentacles and extra eyes)
4.The magic of life makes creatures halfway between a humanoid and a plant (beast).
5.Death magic turns creatures into the living dead.
6.And the magic of order (what the titans lead) is not very clear how it works and whether it turns creatures into mechanisms or does not affect creatures at all, I personally don’t know. We saw how the creations of the titans came to life but did not see how living organisms became mechanisms (although I lied here, since Magni became a living crystal with us, but this is rather an exception).

But the orcs here again seem to be not their own, why then all the races that fell under the exposure of fel did not turn green. Someone will say that this is a unique mutation of the orcs, but I will answer that the ogres, as distant relatives of the orcs, should also have become green, since they were part of the first horde.

[Akarui]

their parents drunk mannoroth blood. Its a curse. U played for orc after invasion into azeroth, not before. orcs in blackrock i guess just dirty) and havent enough water for taking a shower. Play in warcraft campain and dont miss cutscenes

Thrall's parents didn't drink blood, it's a well-known fact. And that doesn't explain why orcs are green!
And what difference does it make for which orcs you play before the invasion or after if both are green? or did they drink different blood of mannaroth?

thrall was healed by gul`dan when was borned. The fel magic gave him a life.
u want to play fo orcs which stood on draenor and didnt go with otherinto azeroth. But they are not here)

[Aniki22]

But that still doesn't explain why the orcs' skin turned green. I'm talking about inconsistencies in the lore, yes, we were told why they turned green, but no one became green except for them, this fact worries me. And since we are talking about Thrall and his parents, the fact that they did not drink blood, but it was the fel energy that other orcs emitted that changed them, speaks in favor of the fact that everyone who deals with fel should turn green.

But following the already given fact that most of those who play with fel have red skin, or turn red, the orcs, respectively, should not turn green but turn red)

[Aniki22]

Can you tell me how to add an image from my computer to a message?

[Aniki22]

And I wanted to visually show what I mean.

[Allknighty]

One thing I know for sure.

When I saw Warcraft Orcs for the first time it immediately reminded me those of Warhammer.
You can clearly see the similar aesthetics in early Metzen drawings.

I think they were trying to get the license for a Warhammer videogame or something...

When you compare Metzen drawings to some of the art you can find in old Orks army book, you see they are almost the same.

[Aniki22]

One thing I know for sure.

When I saw Warcraft Orcs for the first time it immediately reminded me those of Warhammer.
You can clearly see the similar aesthetics in early Metzen drawings.

I think they were trying to get the license for a Warhammer videogame or something...

When you compare Metzen drawings to some of the art you can find in old Orks army book, you see they are almost the same.

I think you are absolutely right. Orcs from The Lord of the Rings were originally just evil and were almost half-beasts and natural monsters without feelings, but then they got more developed and began to look less like ordinary mobs. And as far as I know, in most universes, orcs are more of a gray skin color, and only a few depict them as green. True, now the green color is closely associated with the orcs, although in my opinion the orcs in Wow should not be green, since the reason for this, in my opinion, is far-fetched and landscaping is an exception to the exceptions.

[Aniki22]

I was reminded yesterday that Guldan breathed life into Thrall with the help of fel and they say that this explains why he turned green, okay I thought, no - answered Rend and Maim Blackhand, who with the help of fel magic turned from children into adult orcs and remained gray , but not green.

[Allknighty]

[/quote]

I think you are absolutely right. Orcs from The Lord of the Rings were originally just evil and were almost half-beasts and natural monsters without feelings, but then they got more developed and began to look less like ordinary mobs. And as far as I know, in most universes, orcs are more of a gray skin color, and only a few depict them as green. True, now the green color is closely associated with the orcs, although in my opinion the orcs in Wow should not be green, since the reason for this, in my opinion, is far-fetched and landscaping is an exception to the exceptions.
[/quote]

Yes. I was thinking of my old Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 rule books. Half-orcs and orcs are mostly represented as grey-ish, not green. Maybe military green at best.

For the fel explanations, I think there are some inconsistencies on the part of Blizzard.

[Aniki22]

I'm afraid that Blizzard themselves do not quite understand their lore, some of the things they describe simply do not work as they should and can, if necessary, work differently. I will give just an example - the Vindikar, which we saw in the Legion, for those who forgot or did not know that it was built by the Azeroth draenei. This is a real spaceship that can move very quickly, has strong weapons and good protection. It was not destroyed according to the story, but already in the next Battle for Azeroth expansion, where it would be very useful for the alliance, it is not used and is not mentioned anywhere at all.
Although this weapon alone would have destroyed the horde in the very first days of the conflict, since the horde simply had nothing to respond to such a threat, but since it was unprofitable for them, the Vindicaar simply disappeared.
And I can find more than one or two such examples, there are more of them than many people think, and blizzard only aggravates the situation with their actions.

[Allwynd01]

One thing I know for sure.

When I saw Warcraft Orcs for the first time it immediately reminded me those of Warhammer.
You can clearly see the similar aesthetics in early Metzen drawings.

I think they were trying to get the license for a Warhammer videogame or something...

When you compare Metzen drawings to some of the art you can find in old Orks army book, you see they are almost the same.

I think you are absolutely right. Orcs from The Lord of the Rings were originally just evil and were almost half-beasts and natural monsters without feelings, but then they got more developed and began to look less like ordinary mobs. And as far as I know, in most universes, orcs are more of a gray skin color, and only a few depict them as green. True, now the green color is closely associated with the orcs, although in my opinion the orcs in Wow should not be green, since the reason for this, in my opinion, is far-fetched and landscaping is an exception to the exceptions.

For Warcraft, the history is that the first game (Warcraft 1) was supposed to be a Warhammer Fantasy RTS, but it was turned down but the Warhammer people and the developers decided to release the game anyways, but develop their own franchise - Warcraft. Everything in Warcraft is literally borrowed from Warhammer Fantasy. Warcraft 1 Orcs were green, not because of demons or Fel energy, but because Warhammer Orks were green, nothing more. The retcon later on about the backstory and the expansion of the Warcraft universe happened later.

I don't know about Lord of the Rings orcs, I searched the web for "early Lord of the Rings orcs" and saw image results from the 80s animated movie which shows orcs more like beasts than deformed humanoids. It reminded me of The Wheel of Time's Shadowspawn and how the Shadowspawn may be inspired by the early orcs of Lord of the Rings, provided they were described differently.

So to answer the question, Warcraft orcs are green because Warhammer orcs are green no other reason. Warcraft games are good, but the universe and story is pretty shallow and stupid, honestly. Vanilla WoW will always be one of my most beloved and favorite games, I will probably play it until I'm too old to use the mouse and keyboard, but that doesn't change the fact that how things were derived is pretty lazy and it borders plagiarism. That said, I don't think there is much discussion left here on the topic.

I'm afraid that Blizzard themselves do not quite understand their lore, some of the things they describe simply do not work as they should and can, if necessary, work differently. I will give just an example - the Vindikar, which we saw in the Legion, for those who forgot or did not know that it was built by the Azeroth draenei. This is a real spaceship that can move very quickly, has strong weapons and good protection. It was not destroyed according to the story, but already in the next Battle for Azeroth expansion, where it would be very useful for the alliance, it is not used and is not mentioned anywhere at all.
Although this weapon alone would have destroyed the horde in the very first days of the conflict, since the horde simply had nothing to respond to such a threat, but since it was unprofitable for them, the Vindicaar simply disappeared.
And I can find more than one or two such examples, there are more of them than many people think, and blizzard only aggravates the situation with their actions.

As much as shallow Warcraft's story is, it really ends with WC3 The Frozen Throne, after that it's just not canonic anymore. What you see in further expansions is Blizzard (and later Activision) pulling lore out of their asses and trying to stick around the gameplay mechanics of the expansion. WoW's story was never strong and I pity the people who actually take that crap seriously, WoW has been so popular because the gameplay just felt right and the game is almost flawless - runs butter smooth, there is no lag, no performance drop... And expansions up to WoTLK were for the most part with good gameplay additions. Lore and story were developed around the new gameplay mechanics and additions, rather than they other way around where new gameplay would have to be designed with story and lore in mind. That's why in further expansions, the more WoW progresses, the less sense the story makes and the stupider it becomes to the point with the last few expansions where you start asking yourself whether the developers were on drugs when coming up with that crap and what kind of deplorable addicts are buying into it.

So you should not be taking the lore of Warcraft into account, it was never something that was good or made a lot of sense, mostly it was pulled out of developers' asses to fit already existing game concepts.

Imagine Warcarft 1, 2, 3 and WoW releasing with zero lore and the same gameplay - they will still be great games, maybe less well received by people since there is no story and therefore less iconic, but the games would be just as good. Blizzard had good game developers with the knowhow to make good and fun games, they never had good storytellers or good ideas for a story.

Now that Blizzard no longer exists and all people who worked in Blizzard and made the good games are gone, Activision is left with neither good game developers, nor good storytellers, that's why their games both play like ass and the story is ass.

[Aniki22]

I agree with you in many respects, yes, the topic is closed, and I am closed for myself in many respects, in my warcraft orcs are brown and there are no green ones and never have been)

[Allknighty]

I also agree with you Allwynd01!

[Kindredsoul]

Fell magic

[Wood]

Green Orcs are Orcs who were influenced by demonic magic - the blood of Mannoroth and the passage through the dark portal. And their descendants are green too (that's why Thrall, born already in Azeroth, is green). The world of WoW is awesome! I could talk about orcs all day long. And not just about orcs. WoW is one of the few games where I regularly spend money on different boosters. I do it on this site. Especially when a task proves to be unexpectedly difficult for me.

[Kazgrim]

You're right, originally Blizzard just copied Warhammer orcs. But the lore explanation is fel magic. Blackrock orcs are ashen color due to living inside blackrock mountain.