Elzens, Roegadyns and Hyurs needs buff.

[XLauncher]

Personally, I like being rare. Being a femroe is basically like having a claim check for all the commendations in a duty as long as you're not completely awful. Plus, I'm flippin' gorgeous, y'all don't know what you're talking about.

Speaking more seriously, I think SE didn't put as much effort into making the races feel as different as they could have. Appearance is just one piece of what can make a race in an MMO, and they didn't even branch out too much on that: everyone in FFXIV pretty close to human, especially in contrast to races like Sylvari in GW2 or all the stuff WoW has. More importantly than general aesthetics though, I would have loved to see a greater variety in animations between the races. This was something we had even back in FFXI. In combat, the animations were different between the races (can't remember if they varied between genders too) and suited their physical builds. The Elvaan had this "I have better things to be doing than this garbage" grace to their animations while the tarus had animations that were nimble (that backflip during Asuran Fists remains the funniest thing in that game). Contrast to FFXIV where all the races are pretty much the same as far as combat goes. I guess I understand; the graphics of the game probably demand a lot more time from the art department and they were trying to salvage a sinking ship so they didn't have time for that kind of detail. It's still disappointing though.

[Donjo]

Speaking more seriously, I think SE didn't put as much effort into making the races feel as different as they could have. Appearance is just one piece of what can make a race in an MMO, and they didn't even branch out too much on that: everyone in FFXIV pretty close to human, especially in contrast to races like Sylvari in GW2 or all the stuff WoW has. More importantly than general aesthetics though, I would have loved to see a greater variety in animations between the races. This was something we had even back in FFXI. In combat, the animations were different between the races...

I agree, and the races of GW2 are an excellent example to bring up I think. The most apt comparison I heard regarding those was "choosing human is akin to going to a buffet and only eating bread". I also think I read once that FFXIV 1.0 had different animation sets for every race for every class and that's one thing legacy players miss.

Regarding the populations of the races, this site seems to be doing pretty well with itself. 4 million+ characters scanned and counting!: http://xivsoul.com/

I don't know if there's a more complete(and recent) census than this one, but it serves the purpose here pretty well. Here's the breakdown of race rankings(irrespective of clan, it seems):

Hyur: 33.4%
Miqo'te:32.2%
Lalafell: 16.2%
Elezen: 11.3%
Roegadyn: 6.9%

So, yeah, Lalas and Miqo'tes combine together to be almost 50%(48.4), so your assumption there is pretty on the mark... but it's Hyurs that appear to be winning! I just wish that this particular site had clan and gender breakdowns for each individual race.

EDIT: I'm a female Miqo'te, obviously, and originally picked one because of CAT!, the lore, and the silliness around my original starting class of Pugilist leading to "I'm a Miqo'te attacking with my claws!". I might have chosen Lancer for the similar silliness of pretending that Jump is actually Pounce, but I poked stuff in beta so I decided to change it up. I chose female because I don't care whether or not it's an option, male Miqo'tes being playable violates the lore. I've stayed with it this whole time because I really like the fact that their running animation is just a casual jog. No frills, no unnecessary grace, just getting from A to B.

[Anapingofness]

snip

o.O I don't recall having male miquote as a playable race being against the lore in XIV.
I know that Keepers of the Moon are a matriarchal society but even there I don't recall them saying that male miquote are somehow forbidden.