This is just speculation on my part, but I think they might have seen the tinker threads and concepts pushed here and elsewhere for the past few years
That and the Allied races use existing skeletons, so they get to use gnomes. Vulpera are goblins. The concept for an Allied race starts at, which skeleton will we use for this race
On a separate note, anyone remember this post?
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...a_allied_race/
Wasn't a denial of course. Felt more like, yeah but chill out for awhile, lol