What races are underused in the lore and story ?

[Jackstraw]

Honestly a fair point. There has been so little written about stormwind's society and culture it's almost impossible to categorise it beyond the most agressivly vanilla cliche fantasy medieval society that ever existed.

On the other hand Anduin, Jaina, Varian, Khadgar and Shaw have had so much screen time over the years most people would be forgiven for thinking they're overexposed.

The issue, to me, is that we're getting fed a lot of character exposition, but as far as single races go we haven't had anything significant since probably MoP.
One could argue the allied races questlines expand on existing relationship while being introduced, but there's really little room to work with if any at all. The most interesting in terms of overarching implications is the Mag'hars, and they eat a loss too.

Shifting the narrative from macro galactic philosophical concepts and focus on the who's who of single factions would help heaps.

[bloodkin]

every race except orcs, humans and any flavor of elf. We've seen more than enough of these races and I think the game would benefit quite a lot if there were some interesting/strong characters from these races came to the fore and did something useful. Kinda sick and tired of standard races and elf (and their fans, in particular elf fans).

[Soon-TM]

every race except orcs, humans and any flavor of elf. We've seen more than enough of these races and I think the game would benefit quite a lot if there were some interesting/strong characters from these races came to the fore and did something useful. Kinda sick and tired of standard races and elf (and their fans, in particular elf fans).

The only overexposed elf race atm are nelfs. Belfs have featured prominently almost nowhere since BC, ditto for Nightborne after Legion, with velfs it's even worse - even in a heavily Old God-themed expansion such as BfA, they had little, if any, screen time (Zandalari and KTs had far, FAR more presence). In the meantime, nelfs have had half of the Broken Isles, Nazjatar, an entire Warfront featuring their architecture, story and whereabouts. Even in the @#$%ing afterlife we still have to deal with more nelf !@#$, seeing as how there is an entire covenant with nelf-related story and aesthetics. Enough is enough.

[mysticx]

Of course not Stormwind, Dalaran and Kul Tiras are intact and well, Stromgarde has been rebuilt and the Horde threat has been repelled and Gilneas can be rebuilt too.

Dalaran is a travelling "World crisis HQ", with no actual land to its name, so i hesitate to count that, which leaves 3 kingdoms at such distance (And close relations in the Alliance) that i wonder what kind of interesting politics could play between them...

[Daedius]

As the Banshee Queen said, no one matters (races) [just the 'hero' characters].

[Thage]

The dwarves have been pretty badly underutilized since Vanilla, when it seems like Magni did most of the heavy lifting keeping the Alliance together and the adventurers focused on problems at hand while Stormwind was caught up in Prestor's machinations and Darnassus was on the other side of the world dealing with a power struggle between Fandral and Tyrande. It was something neat about early WoW; there aren't many fantasy settings where the dwarves lead the charge and keep things running while the humans are bogged down in politicking. It's usually the other way around.

Since then, the only major plot beats the dwarves have gotten is losing their king, having their government forcibly reorganized at the tip of an allied king's sword, infighting, and Moira's character development kicking in just in time for Magni to wake up and turn into Azeroth's most annoying wake-up alarm speaker. Very little is actually ever seen of the unified clans' armies or of Muradin and Falstad; instead it's all what the dark iron dwarves are up to (and while they're great, and I love them, having the other two totally pushed aside, again when the dwarves of Ironforge were apparently doing all the hard work keeping the Alliance together, feels like a criminal underuse of them within the Alliance).

[Iheartnathanos]

I've been running a 5e warcraft campaign and it has exposed just how little developed Stormwind humans are, despite their over-representation. Maybe 4 kings are mentioned in their entire history, the structure of their government and military is nebulous. Cultural practices, songs? Even their heroes are all stolen from Lordaeron. We have all this for Kul Tiras and Gilneas but Stormwind humans remain painfully generic in the literal sense that they are 'non-specific fantasy human'

[loras]

Honestly a fair point. There has been so little written about stormwind's society and culture it's almost impossible to categorise it beyond the most agressivly vanilla cliche fantasy medieval society that ever existed.

On the other hand Anduin, Jaina, Varian, Khadgar and Shaw have had so much screen time over the years most people would be forgiven for thinking they're overexposed.

Exactly!
/10chars

[Combatbutler]

Honestly a fair point. There has been so little written about stormwind's society and culture it's almost impossible to categorise it beyond the most agressivly vanilla cliche fantasy medieval society that ever existed.

On the other hand Anduin, Jaina, Varian, Khadgar and Shaw have had so much screen time over the years most people would be forgiven for thinking they're overexposed.

They are absolutely overexposed, blizz just doesn't use screentime to actually flesh their universe out, every last race in the warcraft universe has an incredibly bad fleshed out culture, traditions etc. just like the story as a whole they are superficial

[Saltysquidoon]

Dalaran is a travelling "World crisis HQ", with no actual land to its name, so i hesitate to count that, which leaves 3 kingdoms at such distance (And close relations in the Alliance) that i wonder what kind of interesting politics could play between them...

Danath could be cool now stromgarde has been built offscreen since he's a second war murder hobo. You could do some polticial stuff about him trying to pull khazmodan and stormwind into conflicts they don't want over bits of lorderon and alterac now the forsaken have been largely broken.
Or just gobbling up mass tracts of land in the mostly recovered plague lands and disrupting the balnce of power and challenging anduin from being the defacto high king.

Not that any of blizzard's creative teams have been overly interested or could pull off a 'knock on' politics story without turning danath into a moustache twirling villain who has secretly working for the life lords since before the second game and actually orchestrated the jailer's orchestration of the fourth war.

[GR8GODZILLAGOD]

All of them to some extent. WoW only focuses on a handful of characters at a time and even when they are, diving deeper into their race’s culture, stance on situations, politics, etc. isn’t touched on at all.

Teldrassil got burned and the night elves genocided? Focus solely on Tyrande (very poorly Done as well) and not at all on the rest of the elves and their situation. What’s going on with them at the moment? What are the citizens and other political figures doing? Has Elune worship taken a hard hit from them?

Sylvanas abandoned the Forsaken? We going to explore how their society is dealing with that at all? No, just following Sylvanas.

How are to Orcs reacting to the dissolution of the Warchief mantle? It’s been staple in their society for God knows how long.

Then there are the more obvious examples: Pandaren, pretty much all if the allied races, Worgen.

Blizzard doesn’t have the writing capability of focusing on more than a handful of characters at a time.

[Ivarr]

Since Vanilla there's rumours of the goblin capital, The Undermine. I think Blizzard has forgotten they included these references in the game. Yeah sure it could have been lost during the Kajaro eruption, easy way out. But it's a wasted opportunity if it wasn't still there. It could be a faction-neutral hub for an expansion, with tunnels leading all over Azeroth.

[Narwhalosh Whalescream]

Gnomes. Gnomeregan is still irradiated.

[Lupinemancer]

Gnomes.
Worgen.
Tauren.
Pandaren.

[mysticx]

Danath could be cool now stromgarde has been built offscreen since he's a second war murder hobo. You could do some polticial stuff about him trying to pull khazmodan and stormwind into conflicts they don't want over bits of lorderon and alterac now the forsaken have been largely broken.
Or just gobbling up mass tracts of land in the mostly recovered plague lands and disrupting the balnce of power and challenging anduin from being the defacto high king.

Not that any of blizzard's creative teams have been overly interested or could pull off a 'knock on' politics story without turning danath into a moustache twirling villain who has secretly working for the life lords since before the second game and actually orchestrated the jailer's orchestration of the fourth war.

Yeah, that would be interesting, but Blizz lacks the subtlety to pull it off well, and anybody challenging Anduin for the High king position? No way would they do that...

[Orby]

Right now all of them because we are stuck in a boring expansion with these boring ass covenant races... (which I hope to see the back of after Shadowlands)

[Ivarr]

Gnomes. Gnomeregan is still irradiated.

But they got the highest quality content patch of all time and the Mechagnome quest established that the Mechagon is now the new home of both the Gnomes and the Mechagnomes. Mekkatorque set up shop and called all the refugees to this place.

Right now all of them because we are stuck in a boring expansion with these boring ass covenant races... (which I hope to se the back of after Shadowlands)

Yeah, couldn't agree more. They serve fine as an explanation as to why druids and necromancers are the way they are. But after this expansion they deserve to fade all the way back to where they once were.

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight]

After rereading Code of Rule and the history and culture of the Ogres on Draenor, and knowing how much they were part of the Horde during its formation, the First and the Second Wars I find it disappointing that they aren't an official member of the current Horde.

[Soon-TM]

After rereading Code of Rule and the history and culture of the Ogres on Draenor, and knowing how much they were part of the Horde during its formation, the First and the Second Wars I find it disappointing that they aren't an official member of the current Horde.

I still remember that back in (the original) Vanilla, there was a general "consensus", so to speak, in the forums about the new races for the incoming BC being Ogres for Horde and High/Blood Elves for Alliance. When the latter were announced as a Horde race, Ally players completely lost their !@#$, moreso when Draenei were announced much later.

[Devilyaki]

Fox ones and pandas I say, haven’t seen much of anything about them since their introduction