Panashea

I have tried for two years, and continue efforts, to defeat the stereotype of 2016-2018 era Orcs on this server. As soon as anything about orcs as a community is mentioned the same points are flung into conversation over and over again by various outsiders who rarely if ever interact with orcs. New players can get discord PMed and told awful things about the community because they made their first person an orc or goblin. It's hard to beat that with internal changes while outsiders refuse to see past things that happened over half a decade ago and actively push these stereotypes because of it.

@Panashea @Mannamannaa

I want to preface this with the fact that if you want to have an indepth detailed discussion, you are free to contact me on Discord (@ mcvdk) as I’ll most likely miss further comments on this status, considering I get a thousand pings a day. 

Love you both and the work you do. Keep it up. This is simply my perspective which may or may not aid you in your quest. No harm intended.

Now I would argue you are both focusing on the wrong message of the response above considering nearly most, if not all, of your response was in defense of the section which mentions prior orcish toxicity; I specifically refer to past perceptions and formerly found for the reason that I wholeheartedly believe the orcs HAVE changed over the last few years. Though considering both of your responses this continues to cause issues, which was my train of thought as well, and therefore I want to reiterrate my final point of the section: “but I would argue there is a distinctive importantance in marketing orcs in this newer ‘rebranded’ version.”

New onto the point I was trying to make - I do not doubt the orcs have culture, nor do I doubt shamanism has culture, and I am very aware of the deep ties to older server lore which orcs hold because I used to play an orc due to that. This culture is simply not evident compared to a lot of other cultures in my entirely honest opinion. This is the reason I refer to “insignificance” and not because I hold a grudge with the orcs (I have in fact tried to get involved with orcs over the last few years) yet there is an evident lack of awareness OUTSIDE of the orcish community of the culture significance compared to other cultures. (Best example thereof being the humans - everyone knows of Canonism, at the very least in periphery vision). 
 

I think a large amount of this is due to forum activity and the fact the human or elven communities post more culturally relevant posts than orcs (or at least the perception thereof) which may be something the orcs can work on. Here I do not mean to post a singular culture post and call it a day - but do expansion over multiple posts, stories related to those, ect.

Finally I do not think it is fair to claim anyone is lying about the experience of theirs. Everyone has had an individual experience, some more traumatising than others, and everyone is allowed to hold that experience close to their heart. We both know there has been eras of orcs with less fortunate ideologies and people yet the orcs have largely overcome that - I don’t think the issue is that people lie about the experience they’ve had, clearly enough people have experienced for this to be issue, yet more so that the current orcish community hasn’t truly managed to push through that thought of rebrand to those who used to be orcs but more so has focused on newer orcs, which honestly is fair enough and a decent approach but unless the community actively tries to push the thought of “a new orcish era” to the people who left due to the old, then complaining about people discussing the past becomes somewhat useless. 

The general stigma against orcs isn't going to be 'toxicity' in any form. Elves have the most groomers by far, humans have always had the least desirable and scummy ooc communities. The major OOC dissuasion for orcs is the insincerity of their thematic. For years and year the WAR NATION was absolutely humiliated in every major conflict that they looked at. Krugmar bounced from tile to tile many times after being totally stomped out in a war, only permitted to reestablish themselves because the orcs are a staple race. Similar to how the halflings have only been allowed to scrape by on meager activity by staff mercy. This is despite all of my best efforts throughout my entire time on the server - I spent my entire time fighting with Krugmar in losing wars and trying to conjure up halfling activity. But it's the reality. People see through the bullshit. And this perspective isn't to say that Orcs should steer away from being a hyper-militarized psuedo-kratocracy ethnostate, it's absolutely their niche. However it's not for everybody - particularly the standard LotC player who probably just wants to sit in a city square while in a discord call and OOCly hoard magics on 5 shelved characters. Numbers are great, but not at the cost of selling out the Orc identity. 

Instead, focus on selling these outsiders on an Orcish vision. Fight the baby minded stigma against PVP, make Krugmar's first and foremost mission to finish Krug's work and hunt spooks undead/black magi/Iblees spawn, let the Orcs be a hub of toxic masculinity (because it's fun and fun draws players in), rebrand away from being a WAR NATION until you can actually meaningfully subjugate other nations, strip shamanism of combat power and social prestige so as to disincentivize outsiders who would wish to try and hoard or abuse it, and end the focus on clan identities otherwise you'll always have orc players infighting and building resentment towards each other.

Unban Wud and don't change things to appeal to the repugnant playerbase that this server has to offer.