Let me change my character..

[Fohje]

Valid point. But how hard would it be to just switch the equipment, you know? Like, if you're Galka and go Elvaan, then Galka gear would become Elvaan gear upon changing race.

[Fermande]

It's probably likely there isn't tech available to make such a transition. Changing a character model can have pretty far reaching consequences if you didn't design your game around having that as an option from the start. There also isn't a system for microtransactions set up for FFXI, so they'd have to set that up too.

While it's a good idea, and I'd love to have the option myself, it would be a big project and the dev team has shrunk to a skeleton crew. I don't think we'll see big features like this any time soon, unfortunately.