Ugh. You’d like to think there was a good reason but that feels true.
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Even so it’s not a popularity contest. Every AR doesn’t have to be the second coming of the blood elves for how many people play them.
Every race has fanbases, large or small. Just play only the ones that appeal to you. WoW’s got enough variety to have something for everyone. 
You don’t have to personally like everything that comes out.
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That’s not the argument.
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I will say, as a Horde player, I feel cheated by the fact we’re forced to endure Vulpera when literally any other choice, up to and including Basic Campfire would have made more sense. I mean they could have given us the fairies from Ardenweald and it would have made more sense and been a better fit for Horde.
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I haven’t played the Horde BFA campaign, so I can’t comment
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Honestly though, how do you even notice a few more rats running around Orgrimmar?
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I do but with cross-faction gameplay on the way I don’t really care as much about the obvious Horde favoritism anymore.
As for the short races thing, Horde obviously has the better ones due to Blizzard’s Horde favoritism. Goblins and vulperas are great. I’ve tried liking gnomes since Vanilla (my first character was a gnome) but the male ones are ugly. I mained a female dwarf resto shaman in Cataclysm but I think female dwarves lost all of their funny face options in the WoD model update so they’re ruined in my opinion
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Why the Mechagnome hate? If I was Alliance they would be my main!!
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And yet, you’re not. Why?
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Nightborne are still better!
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Having the more sentient-seasoned Mechagnome race would’ve been better in my opinion.
But ultimately, as for —
The answer is no, I don’t.
We got cool asf Dark Iron Dwarves, and not to mention we’ve got races that have a foothold / empowerment to BOTH of the two fundamental forces in the cosmos - Lightforged Draenie, and the Void Elves — So in terms of powerscales offered with the Allied Races - that alone takes a giant sloppy number 2 on the Horde. 
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I forget ARs exist most of the time.
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Cheated by the ars… hmmm. I may have misread the title.
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It wasn’t a fact though that they would be ill received, and if the reception to them was negative when it was finally confirmed it would already be to late in development to scratch what they were doing.
This is just what happens with creative freedom, you get some wins and you get some losses.
And it sounds like you like naga, but that is projecting onto the devs, again that hinders creative freedom, you can’t both praise it and hate it when it doesn’t go your way, just understand it.
This was not a predictable outcome and they have a story to share and ideas to express.
Obligatory post pointing out that Alliance players had asked for playable Mechagnomes since Wrath.
And that Alliance players kept asking for stronger racials.
Blizzard delivered on both counts, Mechagnomes have what’s probably the best overall package of racials in the game.
My heart is broken.
The extreme backlash of the Mechagnomes were the reason they started to give the Void Elves the Blood Elf skin tones, ever since the people found out about them through the updated brewfest event datamining.
It was an insult to the Alliance-players. We got exactly what we always asked for (Mag’har Orcs, Zandalari Trolls, Vulpera) and the Alliance can’t have what they want? What kind of sick joke is this?
The current human-races need to collect together and make room for a new Alliance-exclusive race. Arakkoa or Sehtrak.
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Everything about the AR situation has issues for Alliance except for Dark Irons, and it’s exhausting.
Nightborne vs Void Elves
Nightborne were heavily requested by both factions, but the idea of “night elf highborne aesthetics” was originally requested by the Alliance, and ramped up after mages were added. Instead of giving that culture/city/lore to the Alliance, who asked for it, they put them on Horde for some reason.
This would have been fine if the trade off was fair, but the Horde wound up getting the race with heavy narrative focus in Legion. Void Elves had absolutely no foreshadowing or introduction prior to them appearing in the game.
The Alliance requested High Elves.
The Horde requested San’layn.
Either would have been the “fair” exchange with San’layn being an actual request swap and there were easily signs of that made it to retail (…Dar’khan + Ghostlands + Velf Haircuts minus tentacles), but we got neither, when neither still would have been fine if they had the same attention and love as Nightborne did through the expansion.
At least we can look like both now? Telogrus still sucks in comparison to Suramar, but now we’re behind in customization compared to Nightborne. Don’t even mention copy/pasted skin/hair colours, it was a band-aid fix to the above and shouldn’t have been needed in the first place.
Then we’ve got Lightforged vs Highmountain.
Both are similar levels of “why was this not baked into the parent race” but we’ve got the narrative issue again. Highmountain had pretty solid focus in Legion for a while there, and came with a small, but still expansion relevant city.
Lightforged got a space ship and a patch, and were not the requested Eredar or Broken for that race.
They’re close, but the Horde still walked out with the better deal here in terms of overall gains. Might be biased on this one though since I grew up around Blackfoot culture.
Going into BFA:
Mag’har vs Dark Irons
Dark Iron wins. I’ll fully and wholly admit that. Highly requested, tons of lore. Great aesthetic that sets it apart from the parent.
Mag’har could have been built into the parent race, but they were also one of the biggest requests the Horde had through the years. They should have been released alongside something like Eredar or another “same race but different themes” race and it would have been fine.
Zandalari vs KT
“KT have custom models!”
How often do you see them? What the actual hell is wrong with the women? We asked for Vry’kul and got chunky disney princess faced failures. When the main complaint about the Alliance was “too many humans” - they literally went and gave us more humans with one of the most unappealing designs to the masses. The Alliance has been begging for non-humanoid races - or at least Vrykul if we got one - and nothing was acknowledged.
Zandalari - especially the women - don’t use fully custom models, but their rigs are fantastic, their zones and lore have aesthetic diversity within itself, mayan dinosaur mancers is a much cooler concept than “sailor human man”, and they were also one of the most, if not the most, requested races through the years for the Horde. I was there in MoP asking for them myself after throne.
At least the drust are cool? Just sucks I’ll never be outside a druid form on my KT druid because of how atrocious that “custom” model is.
This one may be fixable if they fix the female model on KT’s, give Vrykulish assets for a “subrace” on them both - potentially with a body option if those features become available someday - and potentially allow the regular human “race” to use the KT assets for Shamans/Druids. Not the best fix, but at least lets us use the best parts of the assets without the drawbacks.
Vulpera vs Mechagnomes
Anybody who thinks one of the most popular furry races vs diaper baby gnome that isn’t even fully mechanical is trolling.
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I feel like Arrakoa and something like Mok’nathal - something integral to the Horde, but kind of melding into the “Horde” aesthetic much like how humans meld into… more humans - may actually be a solution going forwards, especially if we get a patch themed to Draenor someday.
There’s a few other pairings I’ve brought up in various places that can help even things out while still giving general popularish Horde requests, but there’s sadly not much left in the lore that’s “major” to give to the Alliance without making up new stuff. But that worked out fine for the Horde with Vulpera, so who knows.
If we’re not getting playable Naga (which, imo, considering void elves are Alliance, and there’s a focus on “renewal”, they could go Alliance), mermaids now exist in the lore and are connected to Kul’tiras, for example. That’s pretty popular in it’s own right as a fantasy trope.
They served their purpose. They’re new races derived from old ones created or made relevant again for story reasons and to pad out a roster, and the races the Alliance got are all about equal in effort to their Horde counterparts. Every race has its charms. Void elves cover a theme that the other elven races haven’t tapped into, Lightforged add gilded glamor to the original draenei, mechagnomes are quirky and cover the theme of transhumanism that their Gnomeregan kin don’t, etc. Anyone who felt cheated by the Alliance’s roster was probably on the sethrak bandwagon and/or unironically thought races like furbolgs and naga were on the table.
Also, in terms of power, then if anything, it was the Horde that got the short end of the stick from a narrative standpoint. The Alliance got the void elves, who have powerful Void magic, and Lightforged, Dark Irons, and mechagnomes, who all provide them with advanced technology. All the Horde has to compete with is the nightborne and Mag’har, whose magic and tech are similar to what the blood elves and goblins already provide. Highmountain tauren and vulpera gave them eagle riders and trade networks, I guess.
I don’t have much sympathy for the anti-mechagnome crowd because they both were caustic to mechagnome supporters and chose to fight a war that they lost before it even began. The race was heavily groomed for their addition to the game: foreshadowed as early as expansion launch by one questline in Tiragarde Sound, datamined as having their own models separate from gnomes, their own zone that was half of the focus of 8.2, a rep grind that both factions can do, a mega-dungeon, and an origin story comic. All that, and their dissenters still wouldn’t take the L.
That’s unironically what some people want to believe. After our previous four allied races, the mere idea of the Alliance’s fifth allied race being a subrace of gnomes who look like cyborg gymnasts, especially after people were hyped up for Alliance sethrak vs. Horde vulpera, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Cue crying that Blizzard hates the Alliance and was deliberately sabotaging them with these races (when it’s really more the devs putting their ideas before the playerbase’s wants and/or selective apathy for both factions; see playable nightborne being released and kept in such a sorry state compared to void elves and vulpera being added in 8.3 only due to fan demand with a half-hearted recruitment storyline), and outright blaming mechagnomes for the Alliance not getting sethrak (despite the latter not even ticking off most of the boxes listed in the above paragraph). Mechagnome hate does things to your brain, man.
As much as the community craps on the current writers’ efforts, I think I can say with confidence that if you put the people on here, Reddit, or MMO-Champion in charge of the writing, the result would make Shadowlands look like the finest literature of the last century. Hope you like humans, elves, draenei, undead, vulpera, and occasionally trolls being the only races with any focus on them going forward.
Because we’re the Alliance, not the Blue Horde. Our first races were humans, short humanoids, shorter humanoids, and elves, while all the monstrous races were on the Horde. Then the Alliance got attractive caprine aliens and lycans, and the former is now one of its most-played races. Clearly, the devs are hesitant to give the Alliance anything more “out there” because they see that we’re content with the conventionally attractive races. Hell, our most requested race is another copy of the Horde’s most popular race, with vrykul, kyrian, and sylvar probably somewhere in the top 20.
The first are reskinned tauren with the same animations as the originals, fewer classes, and some new voices, racials, and druid forms. Nothing spectacular compared to the other two, and their customization options weren’t even anything to write home about until the allied race pass in 9.1. I doubt they’re any more popular than the OG race.
Not based on a core race like all the other allied races, not a realistic expectation. Had no presence in BfA, or at least I’m pretty sure they didn’t because it’s been so long since I played the Mag’har recruitment. Any situation where an Alliance leader gets the sudden idea to recruit this race from Outland or Draenor would just feel forced compared to the Horde reaching out to the Mag’har.
Interacted with the Horde for about 8 times longer than the Alliance, during which the former defeated the Faithless and restored Sethraliss, while the Alliance did one major kindness for the Devoted and had only negative interactions with the Faithless. No Alliance rep grind in Vol’dun that could be linked to either group. The race itself breaks multiple rules that other races follow and was clearly not designed with player gear in mind. Don’t know why I have to keep explaining this like a parent telling their kid why they can’t visit Grandma anymore.
In the same boat as the aforementioned Highmountain tauren: a quick reskin of an existing race introduced in Legion that became playable later.
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Again: The Mechagnomes were the reason why the Alliance got the Blood Elf skin colorization for the Void Elves. The backlash was extremely negative and they thought that the insane racials alone will compensate and justify the existence, so they added for 8.2.5 (if I remember correctly) those new skins out of the blue.
The Mechagnomes are a good race but in comparison to Vulpera? No, not even by a mile. I have seen people spitting on the Mechagnomes, harassing and mocking them online. People feel not only offended but hurt by the Horde-bias. And you can also make the same case as for the Void Elves: Why aren’t the real Mechagnomes playable from WotLK?
And if you remember correctly: The Mechagnome racial mount wasn’t even properly adjusted for their own race. You can find news for this on wowhead. The Mechagnomes were an after-thought which got produced because it was just too convenient to use some part of the 8.2’s parts for a race.
The Highmountain Tauren should have gone to the Alliance in Legion with the Lightforged being a customization options for the Draenei.
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