1. No worries about the humor thing; doesn't always translate on the internet. That said, it's usually a safe assumption that I'm making a joke, unless I'm not.
You misunderstand. I know you are joking; I'm not.
2. Survivor threads are supposed to be fun; it's certainly not worth getting salty about. Seriously, Birthright won the campaign thread. BIRTHRIGHT???!!
But that's actually awesome. That's the sort of thing I would expect to see happen on someplace like EnWorld. Birthright is not an obvious choice, but it's a lavish, lovely setting that I think deserved a lot more attention than it got. It's the sort of choice that I'd expect people actually very familiar with the game to make.
Orc isn't. It's a very different sort of choice. It's the sort of choice I'd expect people who aren't familiar with the game to make.
3. FWIW, I don't really care too much about who wins, but I do think that orcs are the iconic D&D cannon fodder. When I started playing, back in pre-history, way before WoW, orcs were the default monster choice. At least in my area. Blame it on Tolkien fallout or what have you. But yeah, fireball, orcs, D&D.
I suppose I don't care either, since it doesn't impact me which wins, but Birthright winning to me makes sense. Orcs don't.
Consider the major 'uglies' families:
The Gnolls - Gnolls, Flinds
Lizardfolk - Lizardmen, Lizardman King
Ogres - Ogres, Trolls, Ice Trolls, Scrags, various half-ogres (orogs, neo-orogs, ogrillons, two-headed trolls, etc.)
Orcs - Orcs, scro, various half-orcs (half-orcs, orogs, neo-orogs, ogrillons, etc.)
Goblin-kind - Goblins, Hobgoblins, Norkers, Koalinth, Bugbears, Thouls, Nilbogs, Bakemono, Amitoks, Barghests, various half-goblins (half-goblins, varags, etc.)
Just from the sheer diversity, it's easy to see, goblins got much more love. Moreover, less obvious that they got that love much earlier on than orcs. Trolls don't fit well as fodder, but they similarly diversified fairly early. Most of the orc extensions date to 1989 or later, nearly a decade after the goblins diversified. Nobody was paying much attention to orcs until fairly late in the TSR era, and in fact if you look at the diversity that was introduced especially post 1989 it's very obvious that the scro, the neo-orog, and so forth are being imported into D&D from Warhammer.
I can think of two solid pieces of evidence for 'Orcs = D&D'
1) Their pantheon was included in Unearthed Arcana, the only ugly that got that treatment.
2) They were one of Venger's go to fodder on the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon.
#2 is somewhat mitigated by the fact Lizardmen and Bullywugs played an equal or nearly equal role in the cartoon.