Of course! Granted, it wouldn’t have as much meaning if Arakkoa were paired with them, but Furbolg are definitely workable.
After all, several tribes live on Kalimdor, so when there is a big kerfuffle next door involving evil plant people that could be fueled by the nightmare within Wailing Caverns that could potentially overtake the Horde and start marching to your home in the forest would likely cause them to go “OH CRUNCHBERRIES!” in a panic and go to assist the Alliance who would also help in the area. Night Elves would also have a vested interest since the Botani would buy up their property in a hostile takeover and would make for terrible landlords.
So definitely workable. However, with Arakkoa, there is the storyline potential of working with Saberon, putting aside differences with their history with each other, to escape AU Draenor to MU Azeroth. Then you have things like how Saberon have to work with the AU Mag’har Orcs (like the Laughing Skull Clan hunting them for their hearts) and the Arakkoa would have to work with the Lightforged Draenei that would work as parallel storylines. Obviously, several groups would have to learn the true meaning of Winter Veil to make it work, but there is pretty big storyline potential with it.
I’m sure something could also be written for a good faction of Botani to be playable as well, while still having an evil group for us to beat up. I’ve seen some people on the forums mention an interest in playable Botani, so it’s only fair I mention that as a possibility as well. I mean, if Mogu of all races can perform a face turn with the Rajani, I’m sure something could be done with Botani. And if I had to consider playable Botani, I’d put them on Alliance. Seems more fitting and they can be part of the Night Elf storylines in general.
It also could be that the Alliance gets something else in a completely unrelated event while the Horde get Saberon while dealing with the Botani threat. Not sure what would be best here, since there are plenty of races you could put here when it isn’t directly tied to AU Draenor, but I do think having Arakkoa fits well because of the theme and possibly to reintroduce the Lightbound coming to Azeroth as a threat for an expansion.
And I suppose Neutral Saberon could be a thing as well. However, while I’m not against neutral races, I feel like it’s something that should be used sparingly since it kinda dilutes faction identity when several races can be both. Neutral is great for several races in my own personal opinion (Etherals, Sethrak, Tuskarr come to mind), but I don’t know if this would fit Saberon. I mean, I wouldn’t be angry with it at all if this is how we’d get playable Saberon of course. I just lean towards the potential of getting Arakkoa alongside them more is all.
Definitely several ways you could go about this with new playable races involved. I don’t know realistically what would be done, but there are still some awesome things you can do with it.
I don’t see an overtaking of Stormwind if Botani got to Eastern Kingdoms via that portal, going with our Arakkoa idea.
I imagine the Botani, here and the ones in the Barrens, would run off to gathering their bearings and start doing stuff to regain power before becoming a threat again. This likely would be an area that is a bit far from Stormwind, like how Wailing Caverns would be a big distance away from Orgrimmar.
The issue is that I don’t know where they would go to. And with something like Wailing Caverns, that nightmare power thingie makes Botani a HUGE threat to Orgrimmar, but I don’t think there is anything similar on Eastern Kingdoms near Stormwind (if anyone knows of such a thing, please let me know,)
I imagine it would be a sudden issue and discovery by the Alliance, similar to how the Horde would discover it, and cause a massive panic Call-to-Arms thing to stop it. However, I don’t know where the best place for it to be.
Thus why I’m wondering it this could be a pre-expansion event that has the Horde and Alliance fending off Botani in the Barrens and each getting a playable race out of it. It would save on dev resources with one area focused.
This would be one of the biggest things that would make this whole thing memorable.
Botani attacking and taking people to become plant food or become plant zombies and mustering power from the Wailing Caverns to evolve into something nightmarish would be a…well, huge nightmare for the Horde and even the Alliance if things go south for the Horde there.
It would also be a nightmare for Saberon, who may settle in the Barrens somewhere and be having the same problems that the Horde is having with losing members to the Botani. Throw in a revamped Wailing Caverns dungeon, complete with whatever horrific stuff the nightmare Botani are doing, and it really can work well with the horror theme.
It would be! If you’re interested, you can see the type fun playable Furbolg would be in the Furbolg megathread:
They would make for an awesome playable race. 
So much potential, so many things to discuss! 
—6 days until Blizzcon starts (Nov. 3rd)!—
–Playable Saberon would be grrrrrrrreat! 
