i think we should just stick to turpy's idea of world of dudecraft. we're all exactly the same race, class, no character customisation, or talents.
that would make an excellent game.

seriously, how about you actually sit and think for a second or two when you're rolling your character, then maybe you wont whine like a biatch about wanting to change 2 hours in to the game. i mean, that IS why blizzard give us that big manual, and excellent community site stocked with game information, and in game descriptions of races and classes. they even n00bed up lvling from 20-60, i mean, what else do you want? the moon on a stick?

@jrb
You are missing the point. Many of the racials arent the same as when we picked them originally. We picked them for a reason, and then blizz decided to change them. Im not one of those asking for a way to change, but I certainly understand the frustration of having something liked that changed after you made a decision and cant change it.

@wyrd
yeah, i got that point. I've been playing on and off since open beta, but i'm not sure what these changes are. http://www.wowwiki.com/Racial_Traits lists 2.3 changes, but i can't see any changes listed here that would warrant me to really want to change the race of my character that i've levelled since its inception. Maybe it's a priest thing racial trait, but the gnome picture hardly suggests that.

First off, from my perspective that "What happened to the War in Warcraft" seems as silly and unimportant as race changes seem to you.

Secondly, my main is a human warrior I've been playing since release. I didn't have the option to roll draenei when I made him, and since then, as you might expect he's got better gear than the draenei warrior I've since rolled. It's not realistic to expect my guild to just let me start bringing a dude in greens and quest blues to Hyjal and BT.

For you, it's race. For many, it's faction. For others, it's class. My main is an Alliance mage, and there was a time, where I had extreme grass-is-greener syndrome with Horde warlocks. I picked a class that changed a lot from vanilla WoW to the Burning Crusade, and, honestly, how could I have known in December 2004 that Horde would become the de facto faction for PvPers?

I thought of what it would take to make my new main an Orc Warlock, and it just wasn’t a reasonable thing to accomplish.

On the one hand, leveling is really easy and fun. When a character is your main, gearing up isn’t that difficult. Content that was a time sink the first time through is trivial with well geared team mates. All the patches have made gearing up and leveling easier.

On the *other* hand, I’m exalted with the Argent Dawn. It would make me feel empty inside to go to my reputation tab and see that I was neutral with them. It would also be boring and tedious to try and change that. I made it to Rank 10 pre-BC. I have every non-MC engineering schematic. Do I really want to go through THAT part of the game again? Not really. What are the chances I can turn in Nefarion’s head again? Pretty close to 0. My main is more than a level and gear to me.

By the way, it is people, like me, the ones that see an absolutely insurmountable barrier to switching characters that are the whiniest. Anything that makes our current character choice problematic creates a lot of cognitive dissonance.

There are four things that define a character at the log in page: your looks, your race, your class, and your name. Changing your name is just a vanity choice from Blizzard’s perspective. But, changing your face, your race or your class completely takes away the “character” element from your “character”. It would start being a slot on your login page with transient properties. I sympathize with you, but I don’t think this should be allowed.

Getting exalted with a faction isn’t like unlocking a Smash Brother’s character.

"A better discussion would be: What happened to the "War" in World of Warcraft?"

That's a terrible question. Since when have you stopped using your combat abilities? What class are you now? Diplomat?

I'm not at all concerned with my racial abilities. I simply have come to loathe the human emotes and appearance.

I'll use WotLK as my 'unofficial' race change. The Draenei will get to 80 first and I'll tank on him, the human will be retired to serve as my PvP toon/enchanter. But if I could just switch the human's race to draenei now, I wouldn't have to abandon a character I rolled three years ago before there was the option to play draenei.

Wow, a pretty solid idea.