thats not what a red herring is.
>they were mooks in the monster manual to be killed
and what do you think that is?
DnD was siginificantly less "serious" than other fantasy settings of its time, but gary gygax took his alignment systen seriously.
Yes, they were meatn to be evil.
Wether or not they were meant to be evil to be walking speedbumps (not XP, thats not how old games used to work) is irrelevant to the question.
And for your argument of WOTC "evolving" the concept. Well then see it as two competing arguments.
WOTCs argument reduces orcs to another form of Human, which the setting has plenty of. My argument elevates them to a better storytelling tool.
Also my argument comes from a place of someone who likes telling stories within the genre, WOTCs move comes out of fear of beeing labled Evil by the California crowd.
