Besides the elves all the other races seem to have tribal and shamanistic traditions. How would you justify playing a mage that isn’t an elf in such environment?
I am aware the Undead and Zandalari have mages within their ranks, however they are not really tribal in my opinion (maybe I’m wrong).
I can’t speak for other mages, but most of my horde mages are young, or have some form of reasoning to why they are a mage.
Kubluku, my troll mage, isn’t a mage, he has an enchanted ring that grants him magic powers that he doesn’t know how to control, and must roll against a table of random effects every time he casts a spell, ton of fun! He’d naturally have the ring confiscated or something, but he err… swallowed it, and it hasn’t quite come back into his posession.
Korenia here is the Daughter of my Warrior, she has been trained in magic because she’s named after my warriors sister, (Who’s still alive, but missing. Presumed dead, has been for a while.) So Korakk, out of worry for the first life he brought into being, insisted that she learn spellcraft. Korakk being a general, has seen great potential in wizards fighting alongside warriors, he can keep her close, without her risking getting wounded.
Not very orcish of him, but maybe all the fellow horde races he keeps as company have made him soft. 
Kareva, my pandaren mage, is a party magician, But I’m guessing you wouldn’t count Pandaren as unfitting mages in your mages of the Horde. She conjures fireworks and dragons made of fire as spells.
Vodkah, my goblin mage, is a, ahem, a… Well, A lady of the night. XD I don’t ERP myself, (I don’t judge either, it’s just not for me.) so all her proclivities are whenever I’m not playing her. She learned magic because quite simply, sometimes, if you’re without any clothing, you still need some form of protection! She also enjoys setting stuff on fire, go figure. If anyone gets too rough though, her sister / bartender, Whisky (I’m real imaginative) is a warrior with a big fiery hammer. She’ll sort them out!
Zincha, my Zandalari troll, is quite old, and a learned scholar, a mage fits quite well into the Zandalari, being their ancient culture and thirst for power. She has abused time magic to sustain her life force, and typically uses fire (I hadn’t realised, I have a lot of fire mages, Korenia and Kubluku are the only non fire so far.) as a means of combat.
She however, does not approve of the faction war. In any of it’s carnations.
Zevrahel is Nightborne, so I mean, if he weren’t a mage, that’d probably be odd. XD (Yes, another fire mage, jeez…)
Hailana is a Blood elf, Frost mage this time, yay, not fire!
I think, and hope, that’s everyone, that’s plenty of Horde mages. I even have a bunch of alliance ones! (Some are Fire… Damn…)
I would go with “For the Horde!”
Even though, as you say mages may not be “popular” among the tribal and shamanistic people of the Horde, they must appreciate the usefulness of their abilities, right?
Portals! Conjuring refreshments! Slow fall can save someone’s life. Using fire or frost magic to either start massive fires, or to put them out…
And probably other abilities that don’t come to mind right now.
So, kind of like with other classes that might be unpopular, I’d ‘justify’ it with “for… the greater good” 
It’s fairly simple, isn’t it?
Magi and arcane magic aren’t mutually exclusive with tribal and shamanistic traditions. Some, like the Zandalari and presumably the other troll tribes, have their own takes on magi - Arcanitals. The story behind orc mages is that the first ones were taught by undead and, presumably, blood elves. These orcish mages then trained other mages.
Garrosh used mages within the kor’kron quite frequently. He propably wanted to replace the warlocks. Other than that we don’t know much about their standing within orcish society.
Or, you know, the Ogre magi 
Not impossible, the Gorian Empire (or what remained of it and absorbed in the main universe) had potent ogre mages, and they could have function as teachers
Beside, since Azeroth is a Titan, everything even common grass have some magical affinity on the planet (in the old, now retconned lore, after the Well exploded, it covered the planet with magic “dust and radiation” opened up the way to non-Highborne to be mages) so basically you borned with affinity, the rest is just teacher of some self-teaching (or stollen books, scrolls, artifacts, ancestors, aliens, anything relly)
That is actually the most likely explantion for the AU orcs. Grom forced the ogre to teach the iron horde their magic when subjugated them.
The dark horde had orc magi before the main horde btw.
They don’t really fit, but they’re slowly integrating themselves.
They are welcome nonetheless. We need more arcane power to set things right and defeat whatever big baddie we have to in each expansion. Especially now that Jaina ToProudToBeMore lifted embargo on Horde mages in Dalaran.
I expected this to turn into a joke.
They don’t really fit, but the meatheaded warriors are good at forcing them in!
If the Ogres can learn to become powerful mages, I’m sure Orcs can.
Ooof… mic dropped
Well it hasn’t prevented nelfs join to the literally anti-nelf faction back in vanilla, and now they even have their own has-been-tabbo-for-centuries-casters. Can’t wait for nelfs warloks.
I am the god of hellfire, and I bring you FIRE!
I’ve found being predisposed to incendiary pursuits is rather helpful when dealing with the Botani and the likes.
As someone might’ve mentioned, the forsaken trained the first orc mages so there’s that. The undead share their arcane history with the still living humans after all.
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.