The Alliance allied races each match up pretty neatly with one of the “core” races:
Kul Tirans <-> humans
Void elves <-> night elves
Dark Iron dwarves <-> Ironforge dwarves
Lightforged draenei <-> Exodar draenei
Mechagnomes <-> gnomes
The Horde ones mostly do as well, but one core race is left out: the undead. None of the allied races come even close. At the Argent Tournament, for reference, the undead are the ONLY core race that doesn’t have an allied/later race that competes for them (for instance, Zandalari trolls fight for the Darkspear and void elves compete for Darnassus).
There was a lot of speculation about San’layn being added, but that appears to not have come to fruition for whatever reason. I know a lot of people are weary about adding more allied races, but it seems like a pretty glaring hole in the Horde, and it makes the undead seem isolated. So should they add the San’layn or an alternative allied race to give the Forsaken some real allies? And if so, what could a potential Alliance counterpart be?
Yeah I’ve been thinking about that as well. Recently devs have confirmed that more Allied Races could definitely be added in the future so it’s all possible. San’layn would be the obvious option, but others could fill that Forsaken slot as well ; maybe Undead Kaldorei now that the Horde has a whole battalion of them, or maybe another Undead race from the ranks of the Scourge, considering that those are leaderless and have supposedly regained their “sanity” (Zombies ? Geists ? Skeletons ?)
A potential Alliance counterpart could be Druids of the Claw, or maybe Feral Worgen from the Bloodfang Pack, who could be given a specific model for the occasion ; after all the Worgen do lack an AR of their own as well, and recently there’s been stuff happening in the region (and we’ve been given news about the fate of Gilneas in 9.2.5)
The other option I’ve heard thrown around would be the Vrykul for the Alliance with the Kvaldir on the Horde. I’m not sure how feasible it is (Vrykul are freaking enormous) but it is an interesting idea.
Val’kyr are also incredibly powerful beings, so likely not PC material. Darkfallen are likely out given they gave the skin and eyes to every elf, so they became customization like the Wildhammer did.
Most undead are poor matches for a PC, As they wouldn’t work with armor at all. If I were to pick? Memes aside, they could do a lot with Light-based undead, for people who want to look more intact than the Forsaken’s more zombie motif permits.
Alliance side? The Curse of the Worgen afflicted a lot of Kaldorei back in the day, even non druids. You could play on that. I know Elven-based Worgen has been a request forever now.
I feel like they’re probably done with ARs for the foreseeable future.
I always thought (and hoped) they’d add Darkfallen to the Horde in some iteration as an AR before they introduced the Darkfallen skin but now I have a feeling they’ll be doing more ‘skin’ like options since it’s a lot easier to implement than creating a fully fledged race. I’d love to see Kaldorei Worgen and Dragonmaw Orc to name a couple.
The little bit of datamining I have looked at for DF shows that they are expanding the female/male choice module into ‘body type’ modules and while they stated this is for inclusivity, it also opens up the potential possibility to have different statures for races as well. Average/skinny Kul Tiran, Straight backed Undead, etc.
Seeing as how the character customization options were met with a lot of generally positive feedback, I feel like that will be their main focus over ARs for any near future content. I hope they spread the customization love to Dark Iron, Mag’har, Zandalari and Kul Tiran soon too.
What options are there? They can do proper darkfallen with a bunch of customization ranging from san’layn, dark ranger and even banshee. Maybe they can recruit the drust while the alliance recruits the sethrak.
It might be more important to show that the forsaken can get along and recruit a new ally instead of just an undead one.
I have no idea who they could recruit maybe satyr, nerubian, nathrezim or maybe those new decay using gnolls.
San’layn are, or were, the obvious one. There’s a clear line drawn between them and the greater masses of darkfallen now and they’re one of the few undead races that would segue easily into the playable roster owing to their humanoid models, established iconography, history with the Horde’s races, obvious heritage armor, etc. They even magicked Lana’thel back from the grave and dangled the plot thread that she, like Sylvanas, is missing a piece of her soul. The hooks are all there if the writers care to do anything with them.
… but the san’layn are as blood elf-adjacent as they are undead, if not more so, and they were already used to tell the story of an allied race failing to integrate into the Horde. Never say never but I have a bad feeling they missed their destiny.
I’m actually so down for that. Love the Kvaldir, and it would finally give some much needed “tribal” flavor to the Alliance. Size is really not that big of a deal anymore, I mean lorewise Tauren are much taller than their ingame model
Is this what the story was about ? The way I see the BfA Dreven narrative, it rather told the story of a race that’s having a really, really hard time finding their place in the world after loosing their structure/society as well as their reason for living basically. If we’re looking at it like this, what’s happening to the San’layn is definitely not unlike what most Horde races experienced at some point. The Lich King is gone, the Scourge is doomed to slowly disappear, and everyone on Azeroth hates their guts. What do they do now ?
Even if the San’layn weren’t to be added as an Allied Race, I’d love to see them join the Horde lorewise
Banshee are one of my favorite races tbh. Maybe they would be quite problematic when it comes to transmog though
I have a hard time naming some. Nerubian and Kvaldir seem like good choices that others have mentioned.
I think the ship has sailed with Sanlayn and Darkfallen, since the customization was given away Oprah style to the multiple Alliance Races, and one Horde race.
Banshees could be neat. It would be a cool racial if they could swap bodies for cosmetic purposes. Like, maybe they have an Order Hall where they have crypts filled with bodies, and they can swap bodies on a 24 hr CD. And you could collect bodies to swap into - similar to how Hunters collect pets. The crypt could function like a Hunter Pet Stable, where you store the bodies you collect in your crypt to change into. As well as having their Banshee/(Manhee?) form, if they choose.
As a fan of all troll races, I always wanted to find unique options to add some of the missing ones to the Horde. Basing the troll races on the undead and worgen I thought of two fun ways.
Undead = Drakkari undead ice trolls. Maybe the forsaken do a quest to return to the throne of thunder and obtain the rotting corpse of Ice King Malakk and that’s how they join the Horde as undead ice trolls.
Worgen = Cursed Loa Forest trolls. Where the forest trolls take on the upper portion of their body as one of their loas. Similar to the bosses in Zul Aman
Thinking about it, now that Ragnaros has been defeated and that the Dark Iron have officially joined the faction, the Druids of the Flame could be another option for the Alliance
Now if we get outside of the Undead-Worgen spectrum, of course there are plenty of races that could work as ARs : Taunka, Leper Gnomes, Gilgoblins for the Horde, Frostborn Dwarves, Broken, stone-skinned Titanforged for the Alliance… Also, I hope devs eventually realize that many common AR requests could actually be satisfied by merely adding customization options : Highborne Kaldorei, Quel’dorei, Forest Trolls, Grimtotem, San’layn, Fel Orcs… See how well-received the Dark Ranger customs were
Now, if I’m being honest, some will have to be full-fledged races. Like, Ogres must become playable at some point. I’m also a big fan of Hozen, and I always thought it would be pretty amazing to get to play as an Elemental race (be it a regular Elemental or one of the many known Elementals-related races, stuff like Treants, Mistlurkers, now Djaradins…)
