My favorite Horde race has got to be the Forsaken. Not because I'd want to hang around them, mind you, but because I think they have a fascinating story.
I've always liked monstrous or seemingly monstrous people who struggle to be good. You get that a fair amount in World of Warcraft, whether it's the Orcs reckoning or failing to reckon with their brutal history, the Draenei trying to escape their demonic kin and do right by the universe, or the Worgen trying to reconcile their beastly and human natures.
On top of the crisis of identity that they share with the Worgen, the Forsaken also have to reckon with the fact that they're not even alive anymore - and whether that means that they might not even be the same people they once were.
I've written about the idea of having some Forsaken try to join the Alliance, recognizing their past as the human kingdom of Lordaeron and rejecting the culture that Sylvanas has imposed on them.
Well, it appears that in the preview chapters for Before the Storm, the pre-BFA tie-in novel, there are some hints that such a thing is not so far outside the realm of possibility.
After the discovery of Azerite, Anduin decides that this game-changing resource could make the Alliance/Horde conflict a lot uglier and dangerous (it appears he's right, given the eventual fates of Teldrassil and Undercity.) And so Anduin proposes a summit to try to cool things down between the factions.
He sets up a meeting between the Humans and Forsaken so that family members who have been on opposite sides of that divide can meet one another. It's kind of amazing this hasn't happened before, in less stressful times, but then again, the defeat of the Burning Legion is a pretty good reason to try for peace.
The Desolate Council, which set itself up after Sylvanas went to Orgrimmar to serve as Warchief, notably without Sylvanas' consent or even knowledge, leads the Forsaken efforts to attend the summit, though Sylvanas, Nathanos, and the Dark Rangers come as well.
And things appear to be going well at first. Not everyone is getting along, but as Genn notes later in the story, he sees a Stormwind guard meet his Forsaken sister and while they don't seem happy to see one another, they're both able to simply walk away, which is actually a pretty good sign for peace. And in other cases, there's genuinely benign and happy reconciliation.
Here's the problem, though: Calia Menethil has shown up to attend to the summit, and while it's ambiguous just how much she intended to make a big scene, it seems as if there are some in the Desolate Council who had been in contact with her. Things get confused, but it appears that Calia tells the Forsaken that if they wish to re-join Alliance society, they can return to Stromgarde rather than heading back to Thoradin's Wall.
Sylvanas interprets this as an attempted coup - that Arthas' heir (Calia's his sister) is attempting to usurp Lordaeron from the Banshee Queen and turn the Forsaken against her.
She warns any Forsaken thinking about leaving that they would be traitors, and in the heat of the moment, the Dark Rangers open fire on the crowds. Sylvanas shoots Calia, killing her.
As the summit ends in a bloodbath - though notably the Dark Rangers do not target the Alliance representatives - it looks like peace has totally fallen apart.
However, back in Stormwind, Calia is resurrected, only now she is some kind of holy-infused undead.
And that, bang, is your allied race possibility. As one of the undead, but infused with the holy light rather than necromancy, you have the possibility for a distinct visual change that could make for an Allied race.
There's no announcement, and technically it looks like Calia's the only representative of this new potential allied race, but man would this be something I'd be really excited about. While my Rogue has always been strictly True Neutral, alignment-wise, willing to do any job for anyone willing to pay, he's always regretted not being able to go home to Stormwind (he was a refugee as a kid which is why he was up in Lordaeron during the plague,) and though you'd never see him there (he'd probably be creepily watching his paladin brother from a hill somewhere) you can bet he'd be at the summit, and seriously consider going to Stromgarde, at least until he started seeing people get shot.
An Alliance-aligned Undead allied race would certainly add some wrinkles to the plot, though I can see people objecting to it both on aesthetic grounds and also because it undercuts the main way in which the Forsaken can have any sort of moral grounds to stand on - up until now, the only way the Forsaken could justify their behavior was the way that the living had rejected them. If that avenue is open, it's hard to say plague development is really a reasonable option.
One way I think you could really add some interesting complications to these Alliance undead is that they might really resent the fact that some High Elf came in and took over a human kingdom. To them, Sylvanas was a carpet-bagger, while to the Forsaken (because I think these guys would have some other name, like the Desolate) they revere her for being the one person willing to fight back against the Scourge, and don't care about where she was from in life. That's an element that would actually make the Forsaken look oddly more progressive, at least in that one aspect of their culture.
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