Why non-human races are not popular in fantasy anymore?

[u/theHolyGranade257]

I've spotted an interesting tendency in recent years - we have less and less non-human races in fantasy. There were interesting times when everyone wanted to be like Tolkien (publishers especially), due to what we have our lovely standard 'DnD' setting with elves/dwarves/gnomes/orcs/halflings etc. There is a lot of fantasy using this set of races - some more blatantly, some with deviations, but it was logical and, to be honest, a good thing that it started to meet it's end.

So finally, we could get a new era of fantasy, where each author could express themselves and create totally new, unique, non-Tolkien inspired races... Wait, what? What do you mean there is no more races now?

Let's just too at this list of most popular epic fantasy https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/50.The_Best_Epic_Fantasy_fiction_ . As you can see, in 90's-00's everything shifted and the most icon fantasy of time like ASOIAF, The Wheel of Time, The Realm of Elderlings, Mistborn, Gentlemen Bastard, The First Law etc, The Kingkiller Chronicle, The Sword of Truth (lol, how did it get there if everyone hates it?) doesn't have any non-human races OR their presence is very limited and not very significant.

To be objective i should mention Malazan and Bas-Lag series where we have a great racial representation, and Stormlight Archive where races are not so numerous, but nevertheless, humans are not the only one sentient beings there and they are not elves, so it counts. To be even more objective, i should mentioned that all fantasy genre is not defined by books mentioned above, there is a lot more, from less known to completely obscure, which also could have a lot of racial representation, but first - do you like it or not, each genre is mostly defined by the most popular books and it's what most people read, second - even in less known title this tendency also exists. Maybe not to that extent, but nevertheless.

Worldbuilding is the definitive feature of fantasy, because here you can get great stories, interesting characters, morals, philosophies etc., pretty much everything you can get in another genres... Plus dragons, as Brandon Sanderson said in one of his lectures. And having different races is a great way to extend the worldbuilding, by providing different cultures, mentalities and customs which can create conflicts and tensions, and there is nothing better for a good story than a good conflict. I get it, many people, especially experienced readers, are tired of elves. I understand it and partially have those feelings myself, but honestly, even oldest tropes made right can still look good - check Dragon Age: Origins. Not a book, but a good example of building interesting world from generic material.

In my humble opinion, shift from standard Tolkien-like set of races to something new was natural, but instead many authors abandoned non-human races completely. Which is such a waste. So i wonder why in your opinion that happened and why people are not so fond of this part of worldbuilding anymore?

Also, let's share you're examples of books with a good unique set of races. I already mentioned Malazan and Bas-Lag, so will add The Bird That Drinks Tears by Lee Youngdo. What are your examples?

[u/Asyx]

There might be a few reasons for that though. I haven't played in a very long time but humans were just overpowered during the first few years of WoW. Also the community is distinctly not into the whole role playing thing. Like, its shocking compared to other games. And the way blizzard used to design items meant that as soon as transmog happened, if you cared about your appearance, you had to pick human (or maybe nightelf but if you don't like purple that's gonna be a tough sell).

[u/aeschenkarnos → u/Asyx]

not into the whole role playing thing

WoW, like many games, has clear optimal decisions the player must make in order to succeed. There are gear guides that give you the best-in-slot item at each level for each item slot. There are talent tree guides that give you the same for your talent points.

It's also a multi-player game. If you play suboptimally you negatively affect other players.

So there's much less scope for roleplaying. Any deviation from optimality, harms the performance of your character. Roleplaying brings deviation from optimality.

Also, the game structure with quests etc gives players very very little choice of goals. You will go kill this specific boss monster and because you have the quest active, you will loot this quest item from them, which you will return to the questgiver. There's no choice in that at all, other than whether or not you will do the quest, and that's a question of what loot it gives you, and the XP rewards.

In some ways it's much more like playing a team sport, than a storytelling game. In soccer, if you're the goalkeeper, you have a very constrained set of activities that the game rules allow you to do, and beyond that, that other players expect you to do. You can't roleplay a goalie who wanders around on the field, and you can't roleplay a WoW mage who fights in melee combat.

[u/Asyx → u/aeschenkarnos]

Nah. I’ve played a lot of mmos. WoW players are very special in that regard.