Reading through the latest D&D book, I found that there are three new sub-races for Elves (adding to a previously existing three,) a new one for Dwarves, and two variants on a race that had been only NPCs, the Gith.
D&D works very differently from WoW, and given the discretion that each group or dungeon master has over the material they produce, it's really never much of a burden to add stuff to the game.
Allied Races have seen a massive explosion of playable race options. They're designed to be easy to add, which is why we'll be seeing some coming within patches beyond the "end of the expansion" or "beginning of the expansion" patches.
There are a total of eight officially announced Allied Races to be in-game at some point in Battle for Azeroth. We have four of these already implemented.
Classes require constant tuning and balancing, and there's also a player expectation that the classes will get re-worked each expansion to some degree or another. If you look at the spells my Warlock casts now compared to what they did in Burning Crusade, I think the only rotational spell that I still have from that era is Shadowbolt (and that's now Demonology-only!)
Races are much easier to fire-and-forget in terms of design. Sure, you sometimes have racial abilities that need updates (anyone remember Perception? That was an odd thing for Humans to have,) and we did have the big model update in Warlords of Draenor (Goblins and Worgen are due for one, and while it's announced, there's no timetable for it.) Still, the only obligation that the developers have for these guys is to occasionally throw an Allied Race NPC in there. Frankly, I think it just gives quest designers and writers new options, but without a huge obligation.
So is there any downside to adding more allied races?
The only one I can think of is for those of us who are completionists. I've leveled up by Lightforged Draenei and Void Elf characters all the way to 110, and thus have the heritage armor for these races unlocked (which thankfully is account-wide and usable at level 20 if I ever decide to make a different character of those races,) but even as the huge altoholic I am (see the name of the blog,) even I'm starting to find the Cataclysm-through...Cataclysm level climb a bit tedious, as I've done it so many times. (My Nightborne Hunter is in Dragonblight, and I think I'm going to wait until 8.0 so that Survival becomes more enjoyable before I continue with her.)
Without new classes, of course, if you're an altoholic, you're probably leveling up classes you already have.
There was a time, of course, when there were actually more playable classes than races (only in Vanilla, and that was when Paladins and Shamans were faction-specific,) but except with the Pandaren, we've tended to get races in pairs roughly every other expansion while we've gotten classes one at a time on those other expansions (Pandaren and Monks came at the same time, of course, but then we didn't get anything new in Warlords except updated models.)
But now that we're getting eight new races, that balance is entirely out of whack, and it really pushes even the hardcore altoholics to have to make some tough choices about which races to play.
I'll say this: there's a good chance that my Kul Tiran Druid could supplant my 12-year-old Night Elf Druid as main druid amongst my characters (I've got Night Elves covered with my Demon Hunter, which is a class I enjoy more.)
Still, if you're sentimental like me, it's going to be pretty hard to take on these new races and play them fully. If I were to wipe all memory of my existing characters, and were to choose new races for each of them, I very well might make my Human Paladin a Lightforged Draenei (though given that I've always conceived of him as being nuanced and enlightened, it might make more sense for him to be a standard Draenei.) I have a Lightforged Draenei whom I enjoy playing, but the idea of just carrying that character forward as my main in BFA and beyond fills me with a kind of nauseous sense of betrayal.
So does that consign all of these allied race characters to being alts?
Certainly I realize that other players probably have very different attitudes toward their RPG characters, but I have to imagine that for a lot of us, there's a strong impulse to stick with the character they created way back in the day.
But to be clear: that's fine. I'm ok with there being plenty of playable character options that I don't really partake in. I'm always happier to see diversity amongst the options in the game. Even in I'm going to stick with my dusty old goofball of a human paladin, I (and he, RP-wise,) would be super-excited to see all these different people showing up and transforming the landscape of the world in different ways.
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