Doesn’t work for all, but it does work for a lot.
- Highmountain tauren should just be rolled into tauren as a whole.
- Lightforged draenei should be rolled into draenei.
- Dark iron dwarves should be rolled into regular dwarves.
- Mag’har orcs should be rolled into regular orcs.
- Zandalari and Kul’tirans could feasibly be rolled into trolls and humans respectively with options for body type.
- Mechagnomes should be rolled into gnomes.
Void elves, Nightborne, and Vulpera can stay as-is.
This is how I’d personally rework it (and how it should have been implemented from the start):
- Merge most allied races into their default race as additional customization options, as per outline above.
- Classify the remaining “allied races” (vulpera, nightborne, void elves) as just basic playable races. They don’t need to be “allied” races anymore.
- Create an option to choose from a set of racial abilities at character creation (would necessitate creating some new options for other playable races so that everyone has options to pick from). OR just get rid of some racials until it’s equalized. Either/or here.
- Follow this up with updates on a regular patch schedule to character customization, implementing other options (e.g. grimtotem tauren options, eredar, new hairstyles, whatever). Basically the point is to bake updates to character customization into the regular patch cycle so as to steadily expand customization over time.