WarCraft and Lord of the Rings

[Joe[x86]]

I mean that I grabbed little bits from everywhere in the series.

[Zakath]

Re: Races
Of course the races are the same. Probably 90% or more of fantasy worlds today directly draw their races from Tolkien's world. He defined the genre. I will point out, though, that nowhere in Tolkien's writing are Orcs described as "green," to the best of my knowledge. I'm aware of some being called black, and Saruman's Uruk Hai were described as "swart" (which implies dark of skin). No greens, though.

With these works being from early 1900's, don't you think the Orcs were just modelled on savage negros? Fierce evil warriors, black or dark of skin, and as far as I can tell, the elves and humans were all white or arian?

It's certainly possible...although as far as I know, Tolkien (who died in 1973) was never known personally as having racial opinions.

The humans were not universally white, though. Those coming from southerly environments (i.e. the deserts of Harad) had darker skin, just as you would expect they would. Moreover, it does not appear that Orcs were really all that far from men in some respects. Saruman was cross-breeding them, and the four Hobbits encounter a "sly southerner" in Bree who one of them (Sam, if I remember right) remarks looked half Orcish.

Orcs were, if you read some of the background history that's been published since JRRT's death, originally twisted by the early dark power from Elves.

@Joe: the stuff about the Wizards comes from Unfinished Tales. You won't find that information in The Lord of the Rings itself. Read The Silmarillion sometime, it'll make a lot of things much clearer regarding the history and makeup of the world.