It irks me that the devs say:
it just seemed like a Mi'qote with bunny ears instead of cat ears. It simply wasn't different enough.
when referring to Viera because the Au Ra are literally Mi'qote with horns and tails. Also, while we're on this subject, I didn't find that the Au Ra had broad customization like we had been promised. Every female Au Ra you meet in-game has Face 1 and they all look exactly the same. We can't even choose different horns for different faces, and scale color is locked by lore.

They stated that they wanted to implement something bestial like this: http://imgur.com/0ya8AoD and I, personally, would have much rather have had this as opposed to the cutesy delicate dragon girls who were written off as "demons" last minute because they forgot the expansion was about conflict with dragons.