I’ve never chosen which races I play based on racial abilities, but rather aesthetics. While that certainly flies in the face of my other “power gamer” tendencies, it’s something I’m fairly adamant about. Throughout my role-playing career (both on table-top games and in MMOs), I’ve played some variety of elf whenever possible. However, I’m also an “alt-aholic”, which means sooner or later I’ll be forced to roll something other than an elf simply because some classes aren’t available to elves.
For example, I have a Human Mage, Human Warlock and Human …