It’s not and here is why: Druids.
The Alliance has all classes but shaman° covered between humans and purple humans. The Horde on the other hand have no choice but to diversify their choices to play druid, which is easily the most popular class in the game, that alone makes the Horde more varied by a large margin.
I’m not saying blood elves are anything but a plague, but the human/purple human plague is much worse.
°Which hardly matters as it’s one of the least popular classes to begin with.
Coraline flashbacks intensify.
The point is there was a lot more hype for Vulpera than Mechagnomes. Sure, you had the odd, rare sighting of a Mechagnome love thread, but it was nothing compared to the attention Vulpera got, which is the original poster’s entire point.
I can make the case that vulpera aren’t that much more popular than mechagnomes with some evidence.
They have a large lobbying group who I am aware has a quota to post x amount of vulpera threads on the forums each day. I could get together a bunch of people and lobby for grells as an allied race and if enough people did it people would think they are a race in demand.
The census shows vulpera as being played by 6% of the playerbase whereas mechanomes its about .85% which really isn’t that far off in popularity. The second thing is that if you check. They have remained there for months now even after the removal of allied race restrictions. The fact of the matter is that they aren’t even the most popular allied race. Now given the void elves are even more popular then vulpera we should be seeing the forums constantly flooded with void elf threads, but we aren’t. This is an indicator the amount of vulpera discussion doesn’t reflect its true popularity.
Next time you see one of these Vulpera threads take a look at the post count of the person posting it. These threads are usually created by people with low post counts on several occasions some of them have even been caught astroturphing or just blantantly spamming threads.
If you take a look at the user count in each of the vulpera threads, they have a large ratio of the same people bumping them but this is common in megathreads. However if you compare the unique user count to the Mechagnome love thread and Mechagnome allied race discussion thread you will notice they have roughly the same percentage of average users when you scale the threads up.
I’ve seen A LOT of hostility directed at mechagnomes usually by people who wanted something else like Sethrak. I’ve seen a lot of people spreading nasty ideas about this race. With a few rare exceptions I haven’t seen any mechagnome fans be really nasty to fans of other races. One could argue that a lot of this support for other races is really just gnome hate.
my M+ tank this week was one.
I like gnomes of gnomes can be DH or pally or all class I would play a gnome DH
Yeah having to unlock them and then pay money to change a character to it or level up a new character to replace a main is going to have some people not bothering with them.
Just out of curiosity, where are you getting the data that Vulpera account for 6% of players while Mechagnomes account for 0.85%? All the census sites & addons I could find are outdated. Even so, that’s a huge difference; it means there are 7 Vulpera for every 1 Mechagnome. Case in point right there…
Actually I did a double check and it was actually 3%.
~https://imgur.com/im0SEKZ
This was the site and vulpera was at 3 percent before the data was wiped and it had been in that position for months without changing. The reality is that they just have a fanbase that is very vocal and loud and keep in mind that a huge chunk of the people you see here are many of the same folks spamming vulpera threads on alts.
Even so, that’s a huge difference; it means there are 7 Vulpera for every 1 Mechagnome. Case in point right there…
This brings me to the second point. Popularity isn’t a determining factor in what becomes playable. In June of the prepatch of BFA, there was a leak saying Vulpera and Mechagnomes would be playable 8.3. I can back this claim up with proof too. A common notion is that Vulpera became playable because of popularity, but they really didn’t. If blizzard added races based on popularity we wouldn’t have mechagnomes, dwarves, pandas, goblins or most allied races either.
~http://warcraftrealms.com/census.php
This is the link to the present site. Just remove the tilde.
EDIT: Hang on. let me get a working link for the first.
EDIT2: Link working now.
Mechagnomes=Gnomes 2.0 so wrong when tech stuff and machines are not much liked in WoW
Fairy/Forest/Wood Gnomes.
Gnomes with wooden limbs and leafy hairs that are friends with the Tidesages of Kul’tiras.
With aesthetics similar to the Night Fae of Ardenweald.
Mechagon* optional refuge for Night Elves and Worgen.
+1 Druid to the Alliance
Because in the opinion of Blizzard and horde players, the alliance does not deserve something desirable.
Just embarrassing, like everything the alliance had in BfA.
And because it makes it much easier to point out reasons why the alliance is a faction without charisma, without glamor and worthy of ridicule.
A race like Vrykuls, jinyus, arakkoas, sabers or even sethraks (if sethraks could have been written as meaningful to the alliance as vulperas were to the Horde) are too good for the alliance.
It is not worth just writing something in which any of these races could join the alliance and thereby bring prestige and new flavor to the faction that has been stagnating with something relevant since we saw the entry of the worgen, which was the last good exclusive addition to the alliance.
Have Mercy. 
Like what? A third version of blood elves? Is that your definition of cool?
Still makes Vulpera 6x more common - at those low numbers, that’s a big spread.
I agree, though, that Vulpera seem more common on teh forums, because so many of make splashy attention threads. I honestly rarely notice any Vulpera when I play.
Having said all that, and noting that I have no interest in any of the ARs, teh visuals for teh Mechagnomes (Why aren’t they called TinkerTots?) are pretty meh. Vulpera are overly cute, but don’t look as half-assed designed.
I will say I would play one of those hooligan bunnies from Panda, just because.
Look under a Taurens hoof
Correction. 3%. I edited that shortly ago.
~https://imgur.com/a/7xgMtTM
This was the data for them prior to the data being cleaned from the site. It remained like this for months without changing. Plus I can also argue that popularity doesn’t really determine what becomes playable. If it did matter, we wouldn’t have pandas, goblins, dwarves and most allied races. Most of the “hype” you see on the forums anyway is because their lobbying groups has a quota for posting x threads each day and a lot of the people posting vulpera threads are the same people on different characters or just making many over time.
I have 2 mechagnomes.
Count me on the same opinion somewhat. I just don’t think the alliance deserves more than what has happened to the horde and yet we will still hear that the alliance has been poorly written-- take what’s currently the Forsaken as my example.
Their perks are meh, no gear looks good on them, they look like they are wearing a diaper, no reason to choose them over regular gnomes.
Well, that’s all we’re going to have.
So we have to learn to conform.
After all, if we want better things, “the horde is waiting for us”.
Have Mercy.
I followed the vulpera sitiuation since it was leaked and speculated in legion.
The arguement for vulpera was they had animations unsual for an npc race and a wide plethora of customization, this is what fueled the vulpera speculation movement.
So the desire for vulpera didnt start when ppl first met them, it was heavily speculated before and the data was suggesting they would be playable.
As for playable mecha gnomes think of it like this, its not that the devs intentionally made a race that is undesirable, it was just the players reaction to the race.
Devs have a vision for the game too and their own imagination, these might not always be appealing to the playerbase but we enjoyed its benefits before.
Like the dreanei came out of nowhere etc, and people ended up liking them.
This method will be hit and miss and they arent making a race to be unappealing, that’s up perception of the fanbase when they are released.