Funny you say that, because according to latest census[*], there are about as many mechagnomes as pandaren on the ally side, while the latter have been around much longer.
tbh isn’t that just showing the abysmal pick rate of pandaren on Alliance than the popularity of Mechagnomes…
It’s hard to believe that someone actually love you guys but I’m all in for having more Mechagnomes in the game.
Gotta love the internal communication at Blizz though when not only a month ago the lead dev shot down the idea of blue eyes for belfs and now here we are a few weeks later.
Horde Pandaren aren’t much better either. Neither are Highmountain Tauren, Goblins or Mag’har Orcs, or Kul Tirans. Dark Iron dwarves, Nightborne and Zandalari are slightly more numerous than mechagnomes, but they’ve also been around longer.
The point is, Mechagnomes are not as unpopular as people paint them. They are more popular than a number of other allied races. Mechas are pretty darn popular in the gnome fandom, who were the target of the allied race anyway.
AKA crap they found the blue eyed blood elves in the datamine, quick give void elves normal skin tones before Alliance explode with rage. just say its NPC options till we can mock up some screenshots!
You should head over to the mechagnome appreciation thread, you’ll see plenty of love there: Mechagnome Appreciation and Celebration Thread ⚙
I think if we can take anything away from this is that they are panicking about Shadowlands and perhaps current player numbers.
This was always going to be the ace up the sleeve - I hope that this has the desired effect - whatever Blizz thinks that may be.
Its purpose is to shift Horde-players back to the Alliance.
Disagree on the theft part, agree on the Nightborne update 
That would be gold on RP-Servers though. 
Blood Elf 1: “ARGH!”
Blood Elf 2: “Lolriel, what’s wrong?! Your eyes… they are changing! From… green to… blue?” 
Blood Elf 1: “I… I can’t… I… I feel a sudden, unfounded rage building up… I feel my political views change… what is… ARGH… DEATH TO THE HORDE!” 
Blood Elf 2: 
Shadowlands is shaping up to be decent, most of the content creators on alpha seem positive anyway.
They need to plan ahead with the patch release cycle but they may be able to turn the mess of BFA around like they did with WoD to Legion
I’m not convinced it will though.
It will certainly make more people roll Void Elf in the Alliance and every Void Elf will want to look as Belf as they can - but I don’t see any of the Horde veteran Belves switching back in huge numbers.
And It doesn’t really change the Racial debate.
But let’s hope at least we can go into Shadowlands with a big shake-up either way, will keep things interesting and I think we all deserve that currently!
So, who’s more high elf? Blood elf with blue eyes, or void elf with blue eyes and pink skin?
This just came in: The Blue-eye flue rapdly spreading in Silvermoon
Cute.
It wont do anything of the sort when Blood Elves are given the true High Elf aesthetic also. Their numbers will be inflated by people who already were playing Alliance.
While funny, the eyes don’t define your political affinity just your magic use realistically.
So it’s more
Blood Elf 1: Hey been the sunwell recently i got a cracking tan (looks at the black blood elf) and look my eyes turned blue again from all that arcaney goodness.
Blood Elf 2: Hell ye and my ears shrunk! and look we got a new hairdresser like my new beard?
Somewhere Alleria is whispering to the High Elves in The Hinterlands,
Alleria: Psst wanna try some Void, i got the good stuff here.
Not for the core-raiders but for solo players it will make a difference.
We will see about that. Some months ago I also predicted that the Alliance will get their Helves sooner or later and look where we are today.
But you can look at Tinkspring’s referred link some posts above ours, the Horde has an absolutely unhealthy amount of Belf-players.
It will definitely be interesting to see.
They’re still Void Elves even with those skin colors and y’all be reminded of that every time Entropic Embrace procs.
I am curious about the hair colors though. Will they hand over the more natural colors as well or will Void Elves have to make due with what they already have.
They are velves, yes - but in the end, the Alliance got some sort of their helf-fantasy back which is fair enough after all these years.
We will find it out soon enough I think. But even when they don’t get blond hair options, they will get them over the years because the people will never stop complaining.
I think giving us blonde and brown crosses a line, stick to the pale tones maybe add some new ones but don’t make us to natural. Were still void elves and corrupted by the void even if some of us are less corrupted than others now.