Truthfully, I think this article misses a lot of important details, like looking at why things are the way they are. Change for the sake of change is a bad thing usually, and there is little reason to try and "fix" what isn't broken when it appeals to a massive group of people and does so for a lot of reason. Don't misunderstand this as me saying that we shouldn't see anything new in Fantasy, but rather that I don't think Dwarves, Elves, and other things should be "left behind" simply for the sake of change. I will explain in a typical giga-rant format:
1: Perhaps the least important aspect of the issue, but one central to us as gamers is that of something called "Game Balance". One of the reasons why we see a Tolkien-like version of elves, dwarves, hobbits, and similar things throughout fantasy is that they are all on a very human-like level, and all have differant advantages and disadvantage. In the scope of an adventure game it's hard pressed to say one race is outright better than another, as they all have strengths and weaknesses. What's more, it's easy for a video game designer, author, or PnP RPG writer to develop challenges for such characters. The "standard" way of viewing these kinds of things from "Dungeons and Dragons" has endured so long, and inspired so much, is because it works, and works REALLY well. Most of the variations on the theme come from a D&D "subrace" logic where you wind up trading certain abillities for others to create more specialized characters and so on. Leading to like 20 differant subraces of elves which have slightly differant stat variations which depending on the game can involve anything from level penelties, strong class level limits, new powers, or trading one general racial abillity for another to represent a differant enviroment, or supplement a specific character class. It *DOES* get silly, and as far back as "Second Edition AD&D" (AD&D2) they released books with an optional modular system with buying racial abillities off of points and such rather than creating a subrace for everything, though subraces were more popular and you never saw that outside of specific supplements (Player's Option series if I remember).
The thing is that if one was to use more mythological versions of these races, it would be difficult to balance. Giving dwarves the abillities of the "Red" and "Black" dwarves of mythology, or elves a lot of the powers ascribed to the inspiring stories of the Sidhe and such would result in an absolute game balance nightmare if you made them playable. In general such characters are featured as antagonists in the stories they are from, rather than protaganists because they represent an epic challenge to be overcome, or a supporting element, not the focus of the tale.
2: Association is important. Let's be honest, people have been saying "let's toss out the traditional fantasy stuff" for decades. It's not a new or radical idea. The issue of course being "what do we replace it with?". The thing is that what you replace it with has to appeal to the everyman within the marketplace. People can associate with the elves, dwarves, hobbits, and similar things because the characters as presented in a traditional mould are very relatable.
Attempts to develop alternatives have generally lead to pretentious efforts by wanna be Tolkien scholors who releas fantasy novels that are half Glossary, and where there is an alternative word for everything that looks like someone smacked their head into a keyboard half a dozen times. Not to mention the fetish factor inherant in some of this, since it seems to me that a lot of people who create this stuff out of wholecloth invariably have some issues. One series I read (the name eludes me) had a flower on the cover, that turned out to be (when you read it) an alien sex organ, that the author was trying to sell as the ultimate experience. I kid you not.
Of course some attempts have been better than others. This article very much reminds me of the "No Elves" advertising for "Talislantia" which was around for decades. The game was a fantasy world where the selling point was specifically a lack of traditional fantasy races and most of the trappings. It was born of exactly these kinds of attitudes, and truthfully as far as small press games have gone it did fairly well, dying a number of times, only to be resurrected, and then die again. I have no idea what is left the the liscence nowadays. It was really awesome, on a lot of levels, and demonstrates EXACTLY what your talking about, but due to so few people being able to associate with it and a lot of the characters and concepts, it pretty much died out. It has had decent amounts of exposure and advertising within gaming circles as well (ads in things like Dragon Magazine).
It's also important to note that traditional fantasy has an international following. People all through the world know elves, dwarves, knights, dragons, etc... It's one of the big things that demonstrates the influance of global culture. You see it influancing the creative works of places in Asia like Korea and Japan, because like it or not, it inspires a lot of creativity.
You can produce a general sword and sorcery work with a few unique spins of gimmicks and find a global audience if your good. Produce something totally obtuse, and you might get a fan following, but since it's not liable to appeal to nearly everyone, it's just not going to take.
In making such arguments people tend to look very much at the US market and culture, and fail to realize what we think is quaint at times has influanced the rest of the world. Japan for example probably produces more western-style sword and sorcery in their comics, video games, anime, and similar things than they do stuff based on their own culture and history. They absolutly eat it up. Korea isn't quite the same, but it can come close.
Just because your bored with something does not mean the rest of society is, as new fans are coming in every day. Sure there is always going to be a jaded group crying for things like "Talislantia" (which I sort of wish took off more, I don't even have the books anymore either sadly... flood damage) but they are liable to remain a tiny minority overall even when it comes to high quality productions.
3. Finally there is the issue of (dum, dum, de, dum) political correctness, and how stupid we in the US are, which influances the media in general since like it or not we are currently the global trendsetters.
Simply put, the mythologies that have been drawn from and modified for a lot of the current "standard" conventions are all ones from hightly advanced, civilized nations. We don't take things like Greek, Celtic, and Norse mythology, Witches, and the like all that seriously. Heck, despite being the dominant religion of the civilized world, we're even willing to seriously bust on Christianity, and by and large our religious community is enlightened enough to take it without major incidents.
The thing is that once you start going outside of these permissible sources, you start irritating people. You have to walk on eggshells when dealing with Hinduism for example because tons of people practice it, and unlike the Christians they don't generally take a position of tolerance in regards of how their beliefs are used. It's generally okay to do stories like "Spawn" with wars between heaven and hell, teenagers killing the Christian god, how Jesus was a malevolent space alien, or games where a sexed up witch shoots down the hosts of heaven for morally ambigious reasons. Most Christians can look at that and say "it's just fantasy" or even see some legitimate points, because while stylized a lot of the same questions raised there are ones that religious folks have wondered themselves, albiet not in quite so irreverant a way. There are books written about such musing. A lot of other countries temper their freedom of speech with "except about the dominant religion".
Start doing irreverant fantasy about Hindus, Muslims (can't even draw pictures of Mohammad!), or whatever else and not only will there be complaints, but dual standards will cause protests to shut the people doing it down right quick. As a result there are a lot of mythologies that could inspire more fantasy, but will never be used. It's highly unlikely that you will ever see a work about how some Arab in The Middle East thinks Allah is responsible for the condition of the people in that part of the world, loads up with a bunch of guns and occult power, and heads off to kill him for the greater good... or at least not in the forseeable future. Make that Christian and that's pretty much a par for the course plotline nowadays. Make it based on norse mythology, greek mythology, or something similar and that's been going on for a long time. For video games we've seen things like "God Of War" and for books we've seen things like Linda Evans' "Sleipnir" (where a commando packs up some guns and heads off to shoot Odin to avenge his buddy... like a 'B' action movie but with norse gods in it's set up).
Then of course you have the whole issue of "Indiginous Peoples" which is to say comparitively primitive peoples who for whatever reason never developed and wound up being conquered. Such mythologies can be used, but only in very specific, politically correct ways. This of course fuels stereotypes, and prevents the exploration of a lot of concepts. If say you were to take Native American or Aboriginal culture and do something other than the "wise and benevolent shaman" or have someone shoot a traditional monster, or some kind of "guilt horror" piece about dead indians killing people to avenge wrongs on cursed burial land or whatever, your going to slot people off.
If say someone was to write a story in the vein of some of the "Witch Hunt" fiction portrays inquisitors as misunderstood good guys since the witches were real, and using dangerous magic to try and kill and enslave everyone, where say the Colonists and settlers ran into real magic using Native Americans, and they were all evil like some of the nastiest rumors, turning the "Indian Wars" into a heroic crusade against occult evil... it would be differant from other things written, but if it came to public attention you'd have people utterly freaking out and screaming about racism and bigotry. I mean despite having The Pope as the bad guy in the Assasin's Creed games and so on, it doesn't count then.
