What would you replace Allied Races with?

I’m not saying I want Allied Races to be replaced. I think they’re a great way to bring more options to World of Warcraft, and I generally enjoy them as a concept. But they’re pretty solidly linked to Battle for Azeroth, and while I think they could be continued in Shadowlands and have even suggested some options, that doesn’t mean they will be. And this has me thinking — if Allied Races were not to be continued in Shadowlands and the ones we have are the ones we’re getting, does that mean we need a replacement?

We got Artifacts in Legion, and while some of their systems have carried over into later expansions, we didn’t replace Artifacts so much as narrowed them down to one with the Heart of Azeroth, which is being phased out entirely going forward into Shadowlands.

So we could very well not replace Allied Races, but instead leave them as an artifact of a previous expansion and move forward into new features and new game systems. But I’d personally like to see them replaced in some fashion, perhaps with a system that allowed you to create members of specific races for either faction as a kind of Allied Mercenary. So, imagine you unlocked the Vrykul on your main, who is Horde. You would then have the option to roll a Vrykul and have it join either faction, the way Pandaren can, and your Vrykul and their choices aren’t considered representative of all their people, just the personal loyalties of that specific character.

So we could have playable Tuskarr or Naga or Vrykul, without the Tuskarr as a people having chosen to join the Horde. Your personal Naga chose to back the Alliance, but plenty of other Naga joined the Horde, and canonically the people as a whole are kind of hostile to both.

That would seem cool to me, and it’s the system I’d use to replace Alllied Races in Shadowlands, so I could play a Kyrian without the Kyrian as a whole backing either faction. What about you? What ideas would you like to see replace Allied Races?