In arena, racial abilities and priest racial spells matter.

Rerolls are obnoxious. There is no way to quickly catch up in gear/reputation.

The game designers are probably in love with their cute lore-flavored racial ability design. But it's not good for pvp.

Solution 1: Allow race changes. For gold (like talents) or real money (like transfers). Cross horde/alliance guilding and battleground teams are optional (goodbye, lore, or goodbye, guild?)

Solution 2: Allow choice of racials, independent of race/lore. Call them "innate abilities", which after all, can be found in any race (or are you racist?) Choose any 4 (would require even more class rebalancing), choose the complete existing set of some current race (no change in balance, but lore-illogical), or buy them with points. The racial abilities could be modified at any time without any concern for actual inter-race balance.

Solution 3: Eliminate all racials.

The benefits are clear. Classes can be better balanced (especially those that rely on poison, root/snare, and fear), and of course, the game is fair.

The negative is that pvp builds will become even more cookie-cutter.

I do play a gnome mage and dwarf priest, so this isn't all sour grapes.

I say remove then from arenas only, I don't really care what happens in bgs or raiding and it really doesn't make a difference there, however it does make a huge difference in arenas.

Racials either need a significant PVP review or ought to be disabled in the arena. Race changes won't happen, nor will racial selection. I trust that if classes can be balanced, races can as well.

Removal from arena is a nice option I hadn't considered.

After all, in the arena, alliance fight alliance, and horde fight horde. And your gear will be glued to your body. And your summoned water vanishes into the dimension of the missing socks. So the rules are already different.

I do completely understand all the undead/gnome rogues who made their choice for pvp reasons and want to keep on being superior

Pro-tip: WoW is not Real Life.

The designers can make races have distinct qualities without being called 'racist' as one would in Real Life.

It was an (undetectable ?) joke. <- that means I'm being friendly.

The only reason I chose the races I did for my characters is because of their racials. If not they all would have been female human where possible. So, if they remove racials I'd like to have my dwarf priest, dwarf paladin, dwarf rogue, gnome warlock, and gnome warrior all changed into female humans. The other classes are all low enough to reroll for pure aesthetics. Not that I'd kick up a huge stink or be surprised, but I'd be annoyed if this didn't happen.

Honestly I've always been of the belief that in a game where you're expected to keep your character for a long period of time there shouldn't be any choice you ever make that cannot be undone, so I vote for race change. I'd also say form and function should always be seperate, so the "racials" should never have been tied to a race anyway and should instead have been a set of cross-class talents you choose from.

Allow players to be <Friend of Gnomeregan> or <Friend of Ironforge> etc. etc.

Buff racial abilities. WoW is already to numbers/chance based to really try to make everything even. Just make all the racials more important. Make it so every race is viable. Of course there will be preferred races for preferred classes, but every class will develop a unique way to use their racial to their benefit.

Or you could just give up like Blizzard did, and make all racials work just like the current trinket.

Toader your sig sucks turn it off

Balance the racials would be my preferred solution. I have no idea why a second alliance race was given fear ward but no horde races. I think for example Tauren vs Orc vs Undead is pretty balanced. WotF is nice, but then so is 5% health and war stomp and bloodfury and stun resist. All have different flavors with not so much of a difference to be totally out of whack. Trolls need to be fixed. Berserking is a nice idea, but it needs to be buffed or they need to have a secondary ability.

On alliance side it is completely unbalanced. Gnomes and Dwarves are by far the best for pvp, humans and night elves need major buffs. With trolls I could see berserking being buffed to where it would be useful, but nelf and human abilities as they stand are useless for the most part. Perception is nice, but not great. Only fix I could see there is make it a 15 second ability with like a 25 second cooldown.

Of course the racials are seperate from the priest racials, but pretty much WoW has it so the only good priest races are dwarves, undead and the two new races. Human, troll and night elf priest racials need major buffs.

They should be balanced, not removed. You can't tell me you can work hard at class balance and then turn around and consider dwarves/trolls/etc unfixable.

I voted for the racial "buffet", since WoTF, escape artist, stoneform, and perception in one package would be amazing.

I think it would be cool to respec your racials. It's fairly obvious everyone would choose the same racials for pvp (wotf, fear ward, warstomp, stun resistance etc) and the same racials for pve/leveling/questing/rep grinds (Diplomacy! etc)

If anything it would just highlight that the current racials are completely out of whack.

A 15 second perception with a 25 second cooldown? What on earth?

They should be balanced, not removed. It's a little bewildering that they haven't made more of an effort to do so already, but of course if classes can be balanced, races can too.

I've often thought that each class should get racial spells of some kind. Why just priests? Is there a lore rationale or was it just a design feature that didn't get finished?

Certainly it would create more of a balancing nightmare.

Their reasoning was that priests derive their powers from different sources (gods, etc) so they have special abilities. Same goes for paladins and their racial seal. A rogue is stabbing you the same way regardless of whether he's gnome or orc.

Just 3 feet higher, in the latter case.

I also recall seeing a post by Blizzard saying they felt priest racials were not exactly a great thing as they turned out, and that they were resistant to implementing racials for other classes as a result. I might be wrong on that one, though.

I don't think blizzard could effectively balance racials, so they should just be removed. I'm biased though, since two of the most effective racials are anti warlock,

They're certainly unpleasant when you lose to them being used effectively, but none are truly so overpowering and unstoppable as to warrant serious concern. They can imbalance 2v2, but thats already a clusterfuck anyhow, so its like scooping buckets of water out of the Titanic.

Priest racials are somewhat different, as I don't think something as powerful as Fear Ward should only be available to one faction in a raid or PVP environment... but the actual race based racials are pretty tepid.

Well for a rogue, they could have different poisons based on different local herb lore or different style of shanking just like different styles of martial arts.

I would love it if they disabled all racials in arena, even though escape artist is awesome.