i would say in china, the fascination was more about the hype, most people probably never played any of the blizzard games that went to see the movie
Also WoW is/was absolutely huge in China and their business model there is different (you pay per hour to play at net cafes rather than buying the game and your own subscription) so there's a good chance that many of the people seeing the movie have at least played some WoW.
Edit: Fixed broken grammar.
That's like 99% of all movies.
My criticism of the movie has to do with the pacing, acting, and the scope of the movie, but the premise is not too bad. You have Orcs who need to colonize a new world in order to survive (what other choice do they have?), and you have humans who understandably don't want Orcs to start moving in. There are good guys and bad guys on both sides.
SPOILER: This isn't what happens in the movie, btw. The bad guy is still around.
At least there are some good guys among the bad and a bad guy among the good; so it adds some drama.
Tell me what action/fantasy/sci-fi movie is not good guy vs. bad guy ? More specifically, bad guys have an evil plan to do something destructive, and good guys somehow ruins it. Star War, X men, all the superheros ones, 007, and I can keep name more (at least that is the theme of the individual movies, if not the theme of the whole sequence).
The critique Warcraft received most is about the lack of character development; lack of a clear lead actor/actress. In some sense, it is not necessarily a bad thing because it breaks the old "one dude with protagonist aura that never dies" Holywood pattern.
For those that haven't seen it, it's pretty much only worth seeing in theaters, in 3D.
There are lots of scifi movies where the story only barely, rather than primarily, deals with the idea of good guys versus bad guys, if it puts them together directly at all. Moon, The Martian, Gravity are recent ones. Interstellar, in its way.
Less true of fantasy which pulls its stories from the idea of grand epics with noble warriors fighting monsters and villains.
Action movies without an idea of good guy and bad guy is a challenge. Maybe I'll think of one while I lie in bed tonight but off the top of my head there aren't any occurring to me.
Ice Station Zebra http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063121/