At the tail end of an exciting expansion cycle, World of Warcraft: Legion saved one last big surprise for the community. In 2018’s Patch 7.3.5, Blizzard announced that it would be introducing new playable racial variants into the game — “allied races,” they were called. While initially these did feel like reskins of existing races, eventually this path would pave the way for some truly unique options.
Since then, Blizzard has added new allied races, new class-race combos, or both with each successive expansion. In 2025, we have an impressive 11 allied races in the game from which to choose, and that’s on top of the existing main races. So perhaps it’s a good time to pause and evaluate how well or how poorly these have contributed to World of Warcraft.
Let’s start by looking at how the races came to the game. As I said, the initial wave of four races — Void Elves and Lightforged Draenei for the Alliance, Nightborne and Highmountain Tauren for the Horde — came right at the end of the Legion cycle. They were different from normal races in that you had to meet certain requirements to unlock them, which took a bit of work back in 2018.
All four of these races were, essentially, reskinned versions of races we already had, albeit with some extra details or a fun twist. They also came with their own little story beat and specific racials that helped to set them apart.
Battle for Azeroth quickly expanded upon the allied races roster by adding four new options: The beefy Kul Tiran humans, the wicked Zandalari Trolls, the punk Dark Iron Dwarves, and the red-skinned Mag’har Orcs. By the end of that expansion cycle, we got two more as well: the fox-like Vulpera for the Horde and the cyborg Mechagnomes for the alliance.
Shadowlands didn’t add any new allied races, but it did open up Death Knights for all of them. A ton of additional allied race/class combos unlocked with Dragonflight, and then The War Within recently added the Earthen Dwarves for both Allied and Horde accounts.
So we can see that Blizzard didn’t make allied races a one-time event but rather has continued to pursue this direction over the last five expansions. That feels significant to me, especially when we consider how many older expansion features that the studio dropped the second it moved into a new cycle.
I’m sure there’s a practical reason for that, probably because it does give a shot of publicity and pull in new and returning players. However, I do question how effective allied races are solely as a recruiting tool for the game. I’ve been under the impression that after the first batch, these races weren’t that earth-shattering. People seemed to generally like their addition, but the buzz wasn’t and continues not to be that great any time a new allied race arrives. I think I saw discussion for about a day, maybe two when the Earthen unlocked, and then the community seemed to shrug and go about doing what it was already doing anyway.
Perhaps allied races aren’t about putting World of Warcraft back in the spotlight so much as being part of an effort to build up the game and make its offerings as robust as possible. After all, one of the big draws of the EverQuest games was always its expansive racial roster, as few MMOs offer more than a half-dozen or so options in this department. Now WoW can boast that it has more than most MMOs out there.
I am of the opinion that whatever reason Blizzard had for adding these, it’s been a net positive for the game and its community. Players love to have a lot of options when it comes to fashioning an avatar that excites them, represents them, or allows for a certain roleplay fantasy experience. More races in this regard are better than fewer.
It also feeds into the alt culture, which is now being robustly supported by warbands. We always need another reason to roll up a new character, and what better excuse than a cool race or two?
And for those of us who have been around for 20-plus years, it can be refreshing to create an allied race when we’ve done our old favorite selections to death a long, long time ago. I have a Dark Iron Dwarf Shaman and a Mechagnome Hunter on my roster (I know, original!), and I adore their theming and different feel.
So what do you think about allied races? Are they a pointless waste of resources, a cheap publicity stunt, a useful addition, an exciting avenue, or something else entirely? Do you run an allied race as one of your main characters? Sound off in the comments!
War never changes, but World of Warcraft does, with almost two decades of history and a huge footprint in the MMORPG industry. Join Eliot Lefebvre and Justin Olivetti for new installments of WoW Factor as they examine the enormous MMO, how it interacts with the larger world of online gaming, and what’s new in the worlds of Azeroth and Draenor.
