https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/mechagnome-love-thread-🥰/427542
To balance out the mechagnome hate. Most of the hate for this race comes from people who wanted something else.
This is under the assumption there needed to be a gnome allied race. We could have gotten the Sethrak as a Worgen Allied Race or the Ankoan/Jinyu as a Night Elf Allied Race. Could have gotten the Mok’Nathal using the Kul Tiran rigging. A lot of possibilities.
Of course there needed to be a gnome allied and there is also another reason why this couldn’t have worked. Gnomes were paired with Highmountain tauren so what this means is that if goblins were paired with the worgen AR then gnomes would need to get paired with something else that parallels them in some way and they would have needed to be paired with undead. Based on the way things were set up, that wouldn’t have happened.