Agreed with Wintersong because you're impression is incorrect.

Frogboy-

Hang in there and wait and see how it works out before making judgments.

It's worth noting that Civilization only has ONE race. Humans. Same for Age of Empires. 

Sins of a Solar Empire has 3 races.  Starcraft has 3 races.  

• Elemental is a bit different in that you will have the Kingdoms of Men (various factions) and the Empires of the Fallen (various factions of non-men).
• A game can have up to 32 players in it (human and/or AI).
• The non-men factions (The Fallen) themselves come in a few different forms which we're holding back a bit on the details.
• Elemental will have 12 unique factions. Each will have its own spell book. Its own technology tree. Unique equipment, unique buildings, etc. 

Big Elves

Small Elves

Fat elves

Thin Elves

Foul Smelling Elves

Tipsy Elves

Topsy Elves

Turvey Chicken Elves

Investor Elves

O+ Elves

O- Elves

Those Cool Purple Elves

Not Elves

Egg Laying Elves

Ice Elves

Nice Elves

Slice of Life Elves

Food Microbiologist Elves

Human Elves

Family Friendly Elves

Rated R+ Elves

Slightly Red But Most Agree Orange Elves

Wood Elves

Wooden Acting Elves

Sing Star Elves

Sun Burnt Elves

Elf Elves

Sporty Elves

Posh Elves

Baby Elves

Scary Elves

Ginger Elves

Spice Elves

Dune Elves

Dune Buggy Elves

Presidents of the United States Elves

Peaches Elves

Sneaky Garden Gnomes

Preaching Elves

Sinner Elves

Confessing Elves

Eldar Elves

Older Elves

Wrinkled Elves

Ironed Elves

Surfer Elves

Surfer Zombie Elves

Surfer Zombie Ninja Elves

Surfer Zombie Ninja Pirate Elves

Mythbusting Elves

I'm Tired of Elves

And sexy elves and hot elves and delectable elves...

Regardless, i am sure they can come up with enough variation among 12 different factions to keep it intresting.

I think those are sub-categories of the "Rated R+ Elves"

"Those Cool Purple Elves"

I have never heard of Avariel, but they are rare due to dragons hunting them and I don't look up often.

Personally I'm happy to not have the usual line-up. Dwarves. Elves. Orcs. Goblins. Begone with them!

Undead? Always good for a laugh. I like some undead. Skeletons are fantastic, Zombies are ok. Vampires have been abused too much in movies and novels; the undead are supposed to be unthinking killers, not worried if the blue shirt goes with the eye shadow they are wearing. There will be death magic so maybe there will be some undead type units to be made but if any of my creations say "Master, this shirt you gave me was purchased in K-Mart! I'm a vampire not a zombie!" I'll be using some fire magic to burn its Calvin Klein heart back into the cool fashion abyss it came from.

Undead should be something you want on your side, not something you would want to be.

The undead don't really want to take over the world. They just think humans are delicous, and they know nothing of farming or preservation. If you humans would just stop being so damn delicous undead invasions would stop being an issue.

@MikeCook

Wow, that's exactly 50 types of elves! Here's you spoiled god dang brat.

Uh... now... at the risk of being murdered... I actually do like TruBlood, which is a good vampire romance. "Let me in" is also a really good vampire romance movie on the account of being super fucking creepy. They really play up the "you're having a relationship with a horrific killing machine ravenous for blood" deal. The actors are actually young teenagers too... yeah, it's creepy. It's worth watching, but only if you like your movies served up with a shit load of weird like I do.

Well, point is, don't knock on a subgenre just because of one super shitty movie in it. "Let me in" is just about as far from Twilight as a movie can be and still be in the same category.

I'm the only person who probably thinks this way, but I'm excited that there's only going to be two different main races. I noticed this phenomenon as the Warcraft series just started adding more and more races beyond just Orcs and Humans. The more complicated the setting became, the more I really stopped caring about the setting in general. Warcraft I had a really simple premise and a really strong dark theme and flavor to it. Warcraft as a setting has been getting progressively worse as they've expanded it. Warcraft II was pretty strong, Warcraft III was meh, and WoW is just a clusterf*ck. The Draenei or whatever to me just proves to me they've really jumped the shark. Oh, and wolf people.

Starcraft so far isn't plagued by these problems and so far is a very compelling setting with so far an interesting story. The whole "Xel'naga returns" scares me just a little, because I have this sense they're poised to pull off a... a "Demonica ex Machina" like they did with Warcraft III.

Regardless, I think when it comes to building settings a little bit of the KISS principle goes a long way, especially in fantasy. Six detailed and varied human factions versus six detailed and varied Fallen factions? I couldn't ask for much more.

I'm pretty sure Bram Stoker did the first widely-read romantic vampire. Dracula was both a bodice ripper and a horror story. Anne Rice just took that ball and ran with it by having vampire 'families' and 'societies.'

That stuff aside, has anyone caught a solid hint from dev-land that the canon game will have undead of any sort at all? The percentage question really depends entirely on the metaphysics (the myths/stories that the devs choose or write) for undead in Elemental. It could be anything from 0-100 percent sentients, if they're even in the game at all.

Don't forget 'Christmas Elves'!

If undead are in, I'd vote for military units consisting only of the mindless ones, and the sentient undead being restricted to champions.  In fact, it would be cool if there were spells that could be used to corrupt a living champion into an undead one, with associated costs, bonuses, and weaknesses.