As long as we have "humanoid" opponents to fight such as veterans, toughs (aka thugs), evokers, or whatever, there is absolutely no reason IMO to not have drow and orcs as examples of special creatures instead of just "this is a drow guard*" who is absolutely no different from the human guard, orc guard, or whever.
Humanoids (of any species) can have helpless children, etc. who get fireballed just like orcs used to.
It is a pointless change IMO and a better shift would be to enforce alignments and consequences for PCs acting like murder-hobos regardless of the creature. What about young owlbears? Baby beholders? Young remorhaz? or whatever?
What about goblins or trolls or whatever you surrender? What do your PCs do with them? Slaughter them? Let them go? Turn them over to some military force for imprisonment?
Humans, tieflings, dragonborn, dwarves, etc. are all PC races and can be enemy humanoid types, so moving goblins, et al. to fey, gnolls to fiends, etc. so they can escape the "these are people so go ahead and kill them all without remorse" issue is garbage.
If there is a problem, focus on the true problem, and stop trying to gloss it over with other things.
Anyway, that is my rant about it--sorry if it isn't quite coherent.