So this thought crossed my mind and I’ve been lacking quite some sleep because of it.
Not only has the male Horde roster been made out of only hunchbacks in the early days, for the largest extend they don’t seem to have moustaches.
Orcs: Can only grow a neckbeard
Trolls: Also can only grow a neckbeard, but only in the art apparently
Tauren: Neckbeards
Undead: No beard option at all, but could also just remove their entire jaw
Goblins: Only chops
Now Blood Elves Are the only race of the official roster who could have a moustache, with the only option still being combined with a circle beard.
Now the only actual race who has a single moustache option would be the Nightborne, who are an allied race so I’m not sure if it counts. And neither will I count the Pandaren because they are also allied with the Alliance.
Now if we check the Alliance:
Humans: Can have big moustaches
Dwarves: Yep
Gnomes: Also yes
Night Elves: Have them
Draenei: Also yes
Worgen: Only neckbeards for their Worg form, but moustaches for their human form
Even all of the Allied races can grow moustaches.
So like… why is the Horde mostly made out of races that can’t, or don’t wanna seem to grow moustaches? Is there a bias against them? Is there somewhere a big moustache purge in the lore?
I need help.
My therapist doesn’t have the answers.
2004’s WoW had every race in the Horde be a traditionally monstruous fantasy race and it was much easier to make them seem more alien with potato graphics by just having them have no facial hair (outside of moustache-less beards) or eyebrows, except for the female models, which they actually did give eyebrows to.
It’s easier to make ‘monster race’ models look menacing if you just delete all the eyebrows and facial hairs outside of chin and jawline beards. Notice how they gave a pair of eyebrows to Thrall the moment they turned him neutral in Cataclysm.
I decided to get art of an orc of mine a month or so back, and it wasn’t until quite late in the commissioning process that I realised that orcs didn’t have eyebrows. This has resulted in the conscious decision to break the lore.
It’s really an insult to people’s imaginations, working on an assumption that we cannot comprehend a nonhuman in nonhuman terms. Thus a thousands year-old elf behaves like a human teenager.
