What are your thoughts?
A)
Is the whole allied race thing un-necessary and things would have been much easier with just adding them as customisations instead?
B) Or are you quite pleased to have had the allied races and now look forward to customisations?
My thoughts? We were always going to get customisations, but allied races (or sub-race) as a race feature offered something unique and compelling which would never have happened if cusotmisations came first. I was willing to bet that if we got allied races we would still get more original race customisations down the line, but the reverse would not be true.
Imo, the Aallied race packgaing has been a huge success, and been compelling game feature for BFA, I would not have bought BFA if it were not for nightborne or void elves becoming playable - i had no interest in another faction war.
The question then becomes:
1. what should have been done as an allied race and what should have been done as a customisation?
2. There are so many racial options and variations, and frankly some actually require more than being just a skin to an existing race
I feel a lot of lore and personalisation would have been lost on some of the groups if they were just customisations
Future of the Groups:
Going forward, I think somethings should be customisations and some should be Allied races. what criteria should determine which is up for grabs really depends on the lore and what is trying to be achieved. People found Kul'tirans, Nightborne, Zandalari and Vulpera effective enough alterations of Night elves, Trolls and Goblins to qualify as allied races, but didn't find Void elves/Mag'har/Highmountain/Lightforged to be suitable ones, and could fit as customisations.
Personally I think void elves needed to be its own race to be effective, but maybe it is redesigned that way, faction switching the blood elf model helps that. However Highmountain could definitely have been a customisation, same with Lightforged. Eredar on the other hand could be an allied race, same with Broken.
Class Extensions:
I think the allied race concept can be extended to classes in the form of Class Identities or Class Skins, which is essentially a class that is given a different identity/appearance. And like Allied races/customisations can come in 2 forms:
New Class: Like a Locus Walker can appear in the class slot, but is essentially a redressed mage with the spell names, visuals and animations changed to fit. This can be extended to brand new class. Design a new class, give it 3 identity of skins: Tinker, Locus Walker and Dragon Lancer
Similarly it can customise existing classes: E.g Moon Priestesses and Rangers can be customisation for Night elf/nightborne and Elven priests/hunters. This is now just a customisation for a class available to members of s elected race to bring the lore flavour.
This tool has a 3rd application: Making lore appropriate class/combos to fill in missing playstyles without changing the class. E.g. every race can have the Demon hunter playstyle if the Demon hunter is re-skinned as a blademaster. Elves can have the shaman playstyle if re-skinned as a Star Augur or Elemental Augur, whiel the human/forsaken version could be known as Entropists etc.
It is creative. an dit doesn't exclude brand new class playstyles being given but certainly allows lore appropriate cand attractive versions of existing classes that match the lore.
Redressing a class is certainly easier to do than a full allied race, it's just a matter of new visuals and names.