Oh, for the love of....
This is the kind of trash I suppose we can expect from Slate. Hobgoblin holocaust? Let's see, they tend to be evil, they're militant, and they have a murderous hatred for elves. For starters, they're more likely to be dishing it out. And loving goblins? Yeah, my campaign just doesn't have enough goblin sex in it I suppose.
So some of it goes back to Tolkien, especially if you're into the mindless hordes of evil. (Tolkien himself wrestled with this, the question of whether orcs had souls and could be redeemed was one of the unresolved issues in his legendarium that led to the Silmarillion being unpublished in his lifetime.) Myself, I don't like the horde model, it's kind of limiting and uncreative. I like the evil races to have deeper motivations, basically they're out there in the more marginal regions, and turn to raiding to survive. But they're not misunderstood; rather than engaging in trade and diplomacy, they'd rather take what they want by force. There's also the underlying racial superiority views which make them more difficult to deal with. So they are making a conscious decision to be evil and take the easy way out. I do make exceptions at times, especially for smaller stuff like goblins and kobolds, but the big guys like orcs, hobgoblins, bugbears, and gnolls are going to be violent enough that usually force is the best response.
