I don't think I'll ever understand why people are so extremely hung up on Vampires.

If you want undead bloodsuckers that's exactly what Wightborn already does, and if you don't like the Wightborn visuals you can just turn them off. If you want flying there are multiple ways to get that. If you want shapeshifting you're SOL since the devs said on the last stream that the engine doesn't properly support it.