With how many people keep trying to compare the entire game to XI are you really that surprised?
This actually wouldn't surprise me at all. Though frankly if they intend to be charging us PER character slot every month, (which no other MMO besides XI did that I know of) then I don't approve of this. We need free character slots and a SET monthly subscription fee (I don't care if the set fee has to be raised a bit to compensate for this, so long as it isn't outrageously high) - with additional races\genders added over time and via expansions.
..Or we need these races\genders added upfront before the billing cycles start. It's not fair at all to expect us to pay through the nose just to have an alternate skin to play as sometimes. (Or worse, delete what we have way-way down the line when they finally DO release them because we can't afford more than a couple of character slots at most.)
I don't mind the idea of maybe deleting what I have now when the billing cycles start, and the slots costing more each - IF that means I have all my options available to me then and there. I also don't mind just waiting this out indefinitely if the slots themselves don't incur additional charges monthly - I'm fine with that. (In fact, they could sell a slot for $10-20 each as a one-time charge to be able to use it, and I'd also be fine with that..) But I DO NOT want to be caught waaaay down the line somewhere and them spring the new races on us without any options available other than to fork over a lot of money (it adds up over time), or sacrifice whatever I've been building up to that point.
I'm a big role-player too, and yea.. $3 per slot every month is insane. That's $21 extra tacked onto your bill every single month if you decide to have all eight character slots. That is not reasonable at all. $1 each is a lot more tolerable, and I'd be more comfortable with that - if not still a bit irate.. But ugh, I don't want to get stuck in an ugly position down the road where I have a couple of characters I've worked hard on and find I can't afford to shell out for another slot when a new race\gender comes out.. Choosing whom to kill off for the new option would be very, very painful.
I'm not really a fan of the idea at all. How do we explain them suddenly popping out of the woodwork suddenly there were none around before? I don't like the thought of the races being robbed of their uniqueness over aesthetics issues one bit.
The lore actually says nothing at all either way about relative population density, you can't just assume it's 50/50.
Thing is, they're already there. They just haven't been implemented yet. NPC's refer to them in various dialogue, they just haven't been added. This whole thread is just a big question of whether they'll only be added to the game as NPC's, or if we'll get to play as them.
Furthermore, we only have access to five zones in the entire game. We do NOT have access to all the areas in the three capitals yet, and one capital we can't even enter yet (Ishgard) - not to mention there are several regions and towns we know exist but - as said - aren't implemented yet. They actually don't have to make the NPC's "pop-up" at all, there's a TON of empty space even in the current cities that are off-limits at the moment that they could add them to.
Plus why wouldn't you want a world that's at least somewhat dynamic in that NPC's come and go from place to place periodically, as opposed to a completely static world where nothing ever changes?
The very fact it doesn't say it though is the point. There's nothing there currently to prevent them from being playable. Besides, it's not something that's generally stated (in any kind of normal context) when the ratio between genders is even.. It's when there is a stark difference in numbers that these types of things popup in the lore. Otherwise it's just not relevant information..