Differentiation should be about far more than just stats - different wear locations (eg for centaur, mermaid, dragon, etc), bonuses for typical racial weapons (eg bows for elves, axes for dwarves, klaives for werewolves, etc), different size requirements for equipment, natural racial powers and permanent affects (eg racial spells or skills (or modifiers to such), infravision, flight, shapechanging between specific forms, etc), resistances and vulnerabilities (eg vampires burned by sunlight, faeries taking longer to heal from damage caused by iron, werewolves finding it harder to control shapechanging during a full moon, dryads taking extra damage from fire but less damage from water, etc), special modifiers within certain environments (eg wood elves gaining stealth modifiers and improved speed while in forests), racial languages, cosmetic adjustments (eg modified speech, ranges of eye/hair colour, etc), modifiers to natural capabilities (eg holding your breath under water, jumping long distances, etc), restrictions on class choices (or skill/spell choices for classless muds), standing with other races (automated for use by mob AI), etc, etc, etc...
There are many, many ways to make a race unique.
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