If you inspect the texture files for the fur textures themselves, you'll notice that they have a lot more contrast versus when compared in-game:

(I scaled these textures down for this preview; each is actually 2048x2048)

Compare this contrast to the old Werewolf textures. Player-usable textures are on the top row, and NPC-only textures are on the bottom row:

(Once again, I've scaled these textures down for the preview. Each texture is 2048x2048)

I believe it's harder to tell apart the black fur and the ashen fur because of the lighting that is applied in the game world. The warm lighting of the environment may be making both the black fur and ashen fur textures look a similar color, since both are barely saturated in some parts.

By contrast, the old brown fur texture is unreasonably saturated in color.

In this super old screenshot, you can see that the black fur of the old model isn't quite as black as the dire wolves, yet there is significantly more contrast between them and the unmorphed brown fur:


Interestingly, if you compare the old black fur texture and the new black fur texture, you'll notice that the old is slightly hue shifted to blue, while the new is hue shifted to red, just like the ashen texture. So, I would recommend hue shifting the fur of the new black fur texture to a dark blue, so that it appears darker and doesn't look so similar to the ashen texture, which is also hue shifted towards warmer colors.