I mean, Elves are almost always the most boring fantasy race.
Not the Elves' fault. Writers tend to make people of *insert traditional fantasy races here* have the same traits/personalities. Is super lazy world building.
To be perfectly fair, there's a reason for that. Writers want to rely on tropes because tropes are easily recognizable by the general populace. You can say "dwarf," for instance, and know that you probably don't have to explain the ins and outs, as most people will automatically think, "short, stocky, hairy people with a proficiency for smithing and mining."
Attempting to utilize one of these classic fantasy races while changing the details will inevitably result in incurring "
Our ____ Are Different" which in some people's eyes is even worse because it looks like you're
pretending to be original when you're still relying on old ideas.
In short, it's impossible to be truly original, and you can't please everyone, so it's not surprising that a lot of writers utilize tropes to make whatever world they're building easier for people to understand and get into.
Sorry if I'm contributing to thread derailing. I'm just a budding writer (feeling self-conscious about his own use of tropes) wanting to put in his two cents.