Allied Races versus New Races

Before Battle for Azeroth, neither faction every got more than one new race in an expansion. The five races added to the game have alternated with new classes, usually, except in the case of the Pandaren, who were introduced alongside the Monk "out of turn," with no new races introduced in Warlords (though the new models for old races were very welcome.)

In BFA, we'll be getting six new races - three per side. But not only is there established lore for five of the six, they're also closely related to existing races.

The logistics of this make a ton of sense: with existing skeletons, it's relatively easy for Blizzard to create new skins and perhaps new postures (in the case of the Zandalari.) It's both easy for Blizzard to do several of these in a single expansion and it's sort of required. If we were only to get, for example, the Highmountain Tauren and the Dark Iron Dwarves, these would feel very underwhelming as an expansion feature.

Allied races are quickies, essentially, and while they have unique racial abilities and will have new voice acting, the fact is that they're only sort of new.

But given the complexity of adding subraces as a new system in its entirety, it's a worthy headline feature for a new expansion, especially as it opens the door to new allied races like Mag'har Orcs or Broken Draenei (not sure if they want to add two Draenei variants in a row.)

That being said, I would not expect all future playable races to all be "allied races." If, for example, we return to Outland or (far less likely) Alternate Draenor, adding Arrakoa and Ogres would make perfect sense. But these would be totally new models, and thus would probably come without any other Allied races.

As patch content, though, I have to wonder if Allied Races are going to be something that can show up in the middle of an expansion, rather than at the beginning of one. We'll be getting these six with 8.0 (presumably - though you never know what things might change,) but when 8.2 comes around, who knows what we might see?

One thing if interest is that they clearly aren't tying these allied races specifically to the current story - I don't think the Nightborne or the Highmountain Tauren are going to be front-and-center on Zandalar. I actually see this as really good news, as a lot of people we've encountered and then left behind may still be added into the game.

If I'm wrong about the distinction between allied races and fully-fledged new races, this could open the door for Ethereals, Naga, Arrakoa, Ogres, and all sorts of playable races that I had kind of given up hope on as it looked like we had surpassed any clear opportunity to add them to the game.