Every time people lament changes to the lore that amount to “not every member of species X is irredeemably evil” and claim the game is removing villains from it, I think how villains of so-caleld evil species fall into two cathegories: a) bland and boring and b)have something else, unrelated to their species going on for them, that makes them interesting.
I think a huge problem with this is trying to frame everything through D&D as well as our perspective. Fuck modern D&D and its desire to control the entire dialogue. Wizards of the Coast aside, there’s also a fantasy component here. I personally dislike requiring all races to act exactly like humans with human motives. From a specific perspective, we view the wanton murder and sacrifice of wood elves by the drow as a terribly evil thing. From the drow perspective, why can’t the opposite be true? I’m not talking about Salvatore’s one-sided writing that makes it clear the whole thing is a massive con. D&D is very biased toward human motive and perspective. Why can’t both be true? Drow are evil to us and we are evil to them? That’s a much more interesting story and completely changes the narrative around someone like Drizzt.
This is a really nuanced take on speculative fiction in general. I also strongly feel that, the way WotC writes things, removing racial alignment is very important. There is no nuance in their universe. Even when we see other races, we always evaluate their action through a human lens rather than being presented a cogent paradigm contrary to ours.