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This commentary relates to World of Warcraft. If you haven’t played WoW, or at least some other MMORPG, it won’t make much sense to you.

1. Gnome names are just flat-out cooler than elf names. You can find an Ellanaria or Lalina Summermoon in any cheesy fantasy game you like. Or cheesy fantasy novel. Or hippie commune. Names like Klockmort Spannerspan and Nittlebur Sparkfizzle have personality.
2. The looped conversational flavor text you get from gnome NPCs is better, especially flavor text from the generic NPCs. Elvish Cenarion lookouts stand around making pretentious statements like “Behold, how the land still heals itself, despite the plague. There is yet hope for our work to continue,” or “I sense something wrong in this forest…” Really Sherlock? Anyone with an I.Q. above that of asphalt can see plagued wolf bats spawning continuously to replenish the population, and that the land hasn’t changed in appearance since launch. Perhaps what’s wrong is the way the plagued wolf bats are devouring travelers not twenty yards away. Gnomish technicians’ flavor text, by contrast, is short, informative, and to the point: “I’m on fire!”
3. Major elf NPCs are rude. Arch Druid Staghelm will tell you to stop wasting his time, even as he asks—nay, commands—you to cross a continent and collect some dirt samples for him. Like you aren’t already busy saving his tree-town. Again. High Tinker Mekkatorque shares deep personal emotions with you as he asks a favor.
4. Elves don’t make other races welcome. Humans allowed night elves a whole section of Stormwind to themselves. Other races are not accepted in Darnassus. Oh, you can find a dwarf or two in there, but can you find a mage trainer? A warlock trainer? A paladin trainer? If the elves don’t practice your class, they’d rather not sully themselves with your race’s teachers, thank you very much. You can just travel to the other side of the world before returning to save them from Moonkin predations. And be quick about it!
5. Gnomes won’t block your line of sight. In tight quarters, seeing well enough to fight effectively can be a challenge. Elves think nothing of standing right in the doorway, obscuring the targets you want to hit, and then complaining about your target selection. To quote a guildmate forced to stand behind a wall of elves as a boss fight began, “All I see is a bunch of night elf asses.”
6. When elves block your line of sight, they find it hard to believe you’d rather see something other than their butts. After all, their players chose elves so they could look at an elf butt for hours on end; why wouldn’t you?
7. Elves tend to attract self-absorbed players. Elves are long, lean, and athletic. If it’s more important to look competent than to be competent, you can bet the player has an elf. Gnomes look silly, no matter what combination of physical features you choose, and some are very silly, indeed. No player can choose a gnome without a firm grip on the fact that WoW is, after all, only a game.
8. Night elf hunters are the most common race-class combination in the game. ‘Nuff said. Their numbers were even higher at launch, when hunters were the easiest solo choice, and before fine-tuning of various class abilities made them more useful to other players. They remain particularly popular with gold farmers, who can set their pet to kill mobs while the farmers aren’t even at the keyboard.
9. When gnomes’ bad ideas go wrong, gnomes suffer. Refer to the irradiated city of Gnomeregan. When elves’ bad ideas go wrong, evil is unleashed on the entire world. Refer to Illidan’s decision to open portals for a demonic invasion because magic would be so tedious to practice otherwise.
10. Gnomes clean up after themselves. Gnomes got right to work trying to fix the Gnomeregan radiation problem when they caused it. Elves decided to take a thousand-year vacation while the rest of the sentient races fought elf-unleashed evil without them, returning only after things settled down again. And they have the gall to announce their local problems as some new earth-shaking emergency.