What Stopped You From Playing An Orc?

[NotEvilAtAll 9944]

These sorts of threads never accomplish anything.

 

Different races/communities on LoTC appeal to different Roleplay niches. The #1 reason people don’t play orcs is that Orcish Roleplay isn’t there preferred style (also that most of their OOC friends aren’t orcs). That is natural and changing a bunch of things to get more general appeal (losing the Orc RP specialization in the process) is stupid and will see you outcompeted by larger races that do that generalist approach better.

[Jentos 6883]

1 hour ago, NotEvilAtAll said:

These sorts of threads never accomplish anything.

cope, doomer 

[Neviah 977]

Blah, their culture, trying to get a skin, plus uh I just don’t exactly like playing races I don’t understand the lore of. 

 

Sure I could always go read up on it, but I just have no interest in it - elves and humans and other creatures have just always been more “my thing.” Orcs are fun, maybe I’ll play one someday - but that’ll only been when I’m open to learning everything fully, which I’m not open to currently. New culture scares me lol.

[Ibn Khaldun 7729]

Vehemently opposed to playing alts, so I just don't endeavor to make one to try an Orc. Also, a notable few players who seem to have a fetish for behaving out of sorts that makes it to where I don't find myself wanting to be associated with said players.

[Pancho 2527]

None of the homies play orcs regularly, thus I do not.

[Islamadon 4429]

Orks at their best are Shrek RPers who don't take themselves too seriously- they do funny stuff for the hivemind. I've played roughly 9-10 years now and the only Ork I found memorable was Travista because he would go town to town on his donkey and just RP with people he encountered. Wowj currently embodies this and it's powerful.

I think trying to make the Orks hyper serious was a flaw of recent leaderships because it is a massively steep learning curve for newer players to learn BLAH, Orkish culture AND all the dozens of dumb spirits which sound like gibberish. Orks should simplify themselves IMO and develop an aesthetic that isn't "grr evil ork spirit BRAPPAH yub da grizh" and just be a society of roaming low INT characters.

Another thing that ruined Orks for me was the constant cycle of pvpers moving into Krugmar, winning rexdom, abandoning it, and then repeating. At the same time, this map the rper Orks took their conflict so seriously that it caused them to invite foreign fighters to fight their wars instead of just being an Orkish horde. It would've been so powerful had the Elysium war just been a 1v1.

TL;DR Orks, IMO, will never be taken truly seriously and attempts to make them lore-oriented comes across as try-harding. 

[wowj 2825]

 

[tasty_cheesecake 915]

you.

 

no but fr orcs since 4.5 have been a shadow of what they were before that point, after phaedrus orcs have been completely dogshit.

[TheCapybara 1803]

 

I had a dark elf who I had in Krugmar for a bit.

 

Found out the magics, language and other things were just gatekept. In the sense of you can only do anything that is an orc thing if you play an orc. You could say well dwarves keep runesmithing to themselves. Well it makes sense. It's to their gods. But with the spiritual stuff it is more of a dark elf and orc thingy. Shouldn't exclude others but.

 

It's very limiting. As well the entire idea of an orc is boring. Yay! Time to klomp my days to an early grave! Also. The way you have to become an honorary to speak blah without getting klompthed to death is a factor which could make players not totally on board with orc stuff overall. Cause the thing with elves and dwarves is that you can speak those languages and don't have to become an honorary and get klomped to death.

 

Td;lr - If you want to do the fun stuff surrounding orcs and you don't play one. You cannot. And the ways you can play an orc is extremely limited considering the culture for orcs. 

 

Also @Panashea  is amazing and actually made it really interesting for my time in Krugmar.

 

[Crevel 4727]

I have an Orc that I created to diversify my roleplay with the initial intention to become a Shaman, which I don't play anymore when I began putting more focus into other personas with more responsibilities. In the end, I only actively played it for a few weeks. People in this thread are making out Orcish culture and lore to be some extraordinarily complicated thing, but in truth it really isn't. As with any racial lore, it takes a little bit of effort to learn and wrap your head around. 

 

If you do some reading about Blah, keep a forum post to the side while you roleplay, you will quickly learn the basics and even the advanced parts of Blah. If you make a mistake or can't figure what to do, the other people you roleplay with tend to be pretty lenient. After all, you're new and you can't be expected to know everything at the snap of a finger. To an outsider, of course it'll look intimidating because it's not something that you're familiar with. Elven communities use the Elven language, how heavy the usage varies heavily depending on the community you're in, and it's something that people will eagerly learn so that they can understand better. Weirdly, there are Elven players on this thread pointing out not being able to understand Blah when there would have been a point in time where they didn't understand Elven. Effort is all it takes. Personally, I think Elven is much harder to learn but everyone is different.

 

I'm not a good skinner, but by using third-party websites and advice from Krugmar's community, I was able to mishmash a skin together that was actually good. The community is generally very receptive and welcoming. There were roleplay opportunities being passively advertised and offered to any who were interested, and I was able to learn more about the lore (especially about the spirits, which are much simpler than people think) just by engaging with other Orcs in roleplay. For outsiders, yeah... it can be troublesome to engage in some activities. Orcs are generally played as being quite tribal and homogeneous. Despite the scepticality, there are still opportunities for 'foreigners'. The honourary system is something that opens up much more opportunities intended for Orcs to people who don't play Orc personas. Orcs are not exclusive in this and there are multiple communities that try to stay culturally homogenous and will often mark their outsiders in some way, the Halflings (improper Halflings) and Haelun'or (impure High Elves) are the first to come to mind. 

 

I will agree that Orcs do fit a certain niche and it would be difficult to escape that niche. However, I do not think that it is entirely by fault of the community itself. Orcs in most fantasy settings are villains because of their very conflictual and bloodthirsty nature, and it is an idea carried over and brought to LotC as well since its inception. In the very racial lore for Orcs (Core Race Lore - Orcs - Racial Lore - The Lord Of The Craft), it is heavily emphasised that from birth they engage in a warrior lifestyle which is encouraged by their curse of Bloodlust with an uncontrollable urge to kill. New, even older, players will read the racial lore and use it to mold their persona. Of course, this is going to encourage villainous archetypes because it is in their very racial lore to be what we considered villainous. Naturally, people who want to engage in Conflict RP are going to see playing an Orc as the ideal option because of that racial lore.

 

I will also agree with Rukio, the Orc community has historically been filled with toxic players. It's very well-known of their toxic past, but there are still some toxic players involved. I remember one of the first Orc VCs I joined around the time of the Elysium War someone straight up dropped the n word. It's unfortunate, but I think every community has some level of toxicity established within it, but the extent and manner just vary from community to community.

 

[Laeonathan 3970]

11 hours ago, rukio said:

Past experiences with prior playerbases of Krugmar. Once in a blue moon you might get a decent group but after what I was subjected to in 2012 and then later in 2018 or so when I was hacked and ddos'd by orcs I don't really enjoy being around the culture or communities it can foster/harbored in the past. I like some of the current people OOC but I will probably never make another orc or actively want to be in Krugmar. 

Everytime I joined the VC It was filled with screechers who couldn't talk like normal people.

 

Hence I gave up on it in 2019

[UnBaed 8954]

Blah is the worst, never liked it

 

that, and just about any orc is see is goofy low iq strongman, or spiritualist strongman who smokes DA KUSHHH xD (because it’s like weed) 

 

wasn’t good that a lot of their culture was surrounded on slavery and raiding other groups back then, or killing outsiders if they didn’t bring any good offerings (which is why I never consider going there for rp because of how much they used to do that to people) 

 

also, when I first joined the server I had a weirdo keep trying to enslave my elf as his orc and I wasn’t about that 

[AnimeWolf0080 1493]

Blah, it's hard for my dyslexic brain to read already. It gets harder when you toss in accent text. You also don't see to many female orcs around and I've heard horror stories at to why.... so it's just an overall pass on my end for the foreseeable future.

[Burnsider 4542]

I had an orc for a while. I really really tried getting into it. Here are my reasons why it didn't work out:

 

1. Blah is difficult to read and type, which slows down RP and, at times, turns RP into a chore as I try to get it right. I have similar, but lesser, issues with Elvish, but I can at least talk without using it. What makes it possible to play an elf, but not an orc is that the player culture is such that any orc not using blah is mocked IC and OOC for it.

 

2. The orc's blessing (honor) is played up for laughs. Well, at least, when it's even roleplayed. Most orcs that I see do not act like they have been given the blessing of honor by Aeriel, nor do they act like the lone hold-out against darkness that was Krug. They act much more like the Canonist twisting of Krug that assassinated Horen by stabbing him in his sleep. Things I have heard being the honorable way in orc circles during my tenure here:

• Eating people
• Taking slaves
• Speaking only blah
• Wearing loincloths

Frankly, I think the idea of the orcs in LOTC is fascinating, and fairly unique. An race, blessed by the spirits, trying their best to be honorable in all things and yet constantly failing because their bloodrage causes them to do unspeakable things that would cause any truly honorable being to spend a lifetime trying to fix. A Rex, standing on his throne, trying to keep the honor of his people, but knowing that it is his responsibility, for good or ill, to keep finding new enemies for his people, else their bloodrage not be regularly sated and they be forced to do dishonorable actions to sate it. But, I never see that RP'd.

 

3. The community has, at least in the past, harbored some pretty horrible people. Perma-banned people were regular participants in their discord. The N-word was thrown around. I don't block many people on discord, but I had a hard time following conversations in their discord chat because much of the conversation was hidden from me due to blocks.

[lemonke 1873]

The blah is kinda problematic for me to emote or in general being forced to have a crooked speech due to the tusks. I'm dyslexic and I already struggle as It is but overal; orcs can bring quite the cool aesthetic! @Panashea and @Cloakedsphere are a good example of a good orc.