Panashea

I played in Krugmar during Drunk's time for a while, the main issue is legit just toxicity. The reason I left permanently was because Madoc's player kept trying to harass me on the discord lol

I have always believed publicised and ENFORCED culture achieves a lot in terms of player interest. Orcs have a massive history - much more complicated than other races and nations which presently flourish - yet nearly none seems to be recorded or actively utilised, at the very least from an outsiders perspective. 
 

I feel as though the orcs are still very haunted by past perceptions, and likely continues to attract certain members of that old player profile, of the formerly found extreme toxicity and near neo-[insert specific Nationalistic German viewpoint from 1940] roleplay which undeniably turned A LOT of players (myself included) away from the orcish communities as more modern views and toxicity enforcement began to spread across the server. How do you fix this? Honestly uncertain, but I would argue there is a distinctive importance in marketing orcs in this newer “rebranded” version.

Perhaps a slight tangent rather than actual advise, yet as mentioned near the start; the cultural “insignificance” of both shamanism as aswell as the orcs overall, from an outsiders perspective, does not entice anyone to actively RP in the Rexdom. Perhaps it is there - but even the lowest of noobs needs to understand it is there, rather than have to work to discover it themselves.  

I feel as though the orcs are still very haunted by past perceptions, and likely continues to attract certain members of that old player profile, of the formerly found extreme toxicity and near neo-[insert specific Nationalistic German viewpoint from 1940] roleplay which undeniably turned A LOT of players (myself included) away from the orcish communities as more modern views and toxicity enforcement began to spread across the server. How do you fix this? Honestly uncertain, but I would argue there is a distinctive importance in marketing orcs in this newer “rebranded” version.

We've been a toxic/racist free community for the last 2+ years, slavery was abolished then as well as Wud being rebanned since the beginning of Almaris. That era of racist orcs was nearly 6 years ago and I'm very keenly aware of how outsiders refuse to see past that era even though things have drastically changed and none of those players have been around for years.  A brief check of the orcish forums would show how that rebranding has occurred and how different the community is in addition to current culture and playerbase.

Orcs had multiple eventlines during Almaris that involved the larger scale of the world, and since my Rexdom in Almaris (a noteworthy time of reform),  I've probably written around 500ish pages specifically talking about Shamanism, how to play an orc, and all of their cultural facets in guide and prose form.  The same kind of effort can be seen in a lot of orcs who often run events daily, utilize that culture, or have taken up positions in government long term. Even when its broadly advertised people would rather patronize then do the bare minimum of just asking players or checking the forums. 

Shamanism is arguably the largest and most active deity magic on the server, and its relationship with other lore pieces has put it in a more important role within the last few years, the difficulty with it and orcs, and why you see it as insignificant is because of that half-decade long grudge.  We DO do regular events, post on the forums frequently, encourage people to make orcs, but it's required sitting every person down with this viewpoint on racist/toxic orcs isn't true, and even when we do that falsehood is spread regardless.  It's wild to me people who weren't even on the server at the time have better memories of those bad experiences rather then anything recent like the abolishing of slavery, proliferation/revival of Shamanism and so on. How can we show noobs when 50 people come out of the woodwork to lie about the experience?  

TLDR: Orcs already rebranded 2 years ago, and have been active on the world scene/Shamanism since, the issue has been having to battle against false conceptions and people's general apathy about the community. I'll attach my lore hub just to show a brief chunk of what's changed, but if you talk to any of the active orc players you'll be bombarded by their own unique experiences.