What Other Allied Races Might We See?

Blizzard apparently has more Allied Races planned in the future. We don't know if this will have to wait for another expansion or if it's something that could be added in a patch. But setting those questions aside, let's think about what we could get.

First off, let's lay down the ground rules: The announced Allied Races are all variants on existing races. While four out of five of them are variants of a race in the same faction, two of them (the elves) are flipped, with Nightborne (similar to the Night Elves) going to the Horde and Void Elves (sharing High Elf heritage with the Blood Elves) going to the Alliance.

The allied races also have their own racial features, which means that mechanically, they're actually brand-new races. It's the aesthetics that are only somewhat altered.

For speculation's sake, I'm also going to say that we're unlikely to see any new subrace variants of races that already got an allied race. So that means, for now, no variants on Draenei, Blood Elves, Night Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, or Tauren.

So that leaves Orcs, Humans, Gnomes, Worgen, Undead, Goblins, and Pandaren.

Orcs are probably the easiest. Even if you want to strike Warlords from the record, you could have the Mag'har of Outland join. Hell, there was a Mag'har Warchief (who was terrible,) so there's no reason we couldn't have playable Mag'har in the Horde (maybe being forced to reckon with Garrosh's legacy.)

Humans might be tough, but one thing I'm noticing is that a lot of the Kul Tirasian humans have somewhat different models - different builds and weights. Given that humans are the only real-life race playable in WoW, this is an area to tread very carefully. Don't give human "subraces" (and that's already pretty problematic) racial abilities based on stereotypes (I'm looking at you, Elder Scrolls.)

Undead I could see having wild variation. Forsaken characters are former humans, but their leader has always been a former High Elf. Now, I'm not saying we need more elves now (because damn, we're going to have four now) but one could also imagine adding more skeletal forsaken or some kind of more humanoid-looking abomination (Frankenstein's monster people.) Actually, that latter idea could be really interesting, given that normal Forsaken have a specific life they remember, whereas Abominations would probably consider themselves to be new entities entirely. Also, ghosts and banshees and such (though banshees are, again, more elves.)

Hobgoblins could make sense as a quasi-variant on goblins, except that they'd probably need a whole new skeletal structure. Granted, the Zandalari Trolls don't seem to have the Darkspear hunch, so maybe that's not a deal breaker.

Storywise, Pandaria Pandaren could be separate from Wandering Isle Pandaren, but there's not much to establish them as looking any different.

With Worgen you could imagine Night Elf Worgen with slightly different features. Alternatively, you could go a lot farther and introduce Firbolgs as a variant, given their bestial nature and connection to one of the Wild Gods.

Gnomes are tricky. Unless you want to go full mechagnome, the only other obvious variant is leper gnome, which doesn't sound right (though they'd make natural allies of the Forsaken, creating another cross-faction allied race.)

The other major thing to keep in mind is that we don't have to have seen them in-game. Void Elves have not been a thing until now, but we're getting them.