Because the orc stereotype does indeed fit onto the stereotypes for many of the peoples who were victims of colonization. But didn't World of Warcraft teach us that replacing "inherent evil" with "cultural evil" is actually worse? Instead of talking about an absurd, fantastical notion -- an evil god warped their souls -- we just say orcs are uncivilized, warlike and ruled by their passions because of their inferior culture.
I find the whole idea of "inferior cultures" strange. Are the amazonian natives inferior cultures because they form hunting parties and have less convoluted administration than some other cultures? Again, universalist morality fails.
Indeed. Colonized peoples had resources that the colonial powers wanted and so they made reasons why it was okay to extract these resources. The inferiority of 'primitive' cultures was the ideology that legitimized the land grabs.
But, again, the noble savage is the other side of this same coin -- see the romantic photos of indian "braves" and "squaws" being used to sell products -- and it sure looks like the Lorendrow are getting set up to make that same, great mistake. We're finally getting these offensive images off of products and WotC comes late to the party with new sub species that *does* resemble real human groups.
