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As true as this is, one can only do so much while maintaining any form of consistency throughout all of the systems in a game. If you allow players to just define their strengths and weaknesses at will, the majority will just min/max their way to greatness. It isn't very exciting when all of the PC trolls of the world are suddenly leaps and bounds more intelligent than the NPC trolls because a high intelligence for a troll makes for a tanky mage. People will metagame any system they can, and this has to be taken into account when designing how racial characteristics are ascribed. Certainly some degree of variation from the behavior of NPC's of the same race is to be expected, and desired of course, but this should be handled through roleplay moreso than through code support, as it quite simply makes balancing issues almost impossible to deal with, as evinced by your comment about the various useless races on the realm you frequent.
~Cyre
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