Gender locked race?

[Corue]

Blue Mage's inclusion as a limited job was far more of a negative and risky choice than a gender locked race will ever be.

Absolute toss. Comparing a job that's radically different to the current flow of gameplay to the gender of a race is nonsense.

BLU is BLU because people wanted a direct translation of it from XI. a job that: had to learn skills from monsters rather than from quests or leveling, could heal itself, could tank and could inflict effects like Doom. Something that would have completely broken the flow of gameplay and wouldn't fit within the "holy trinity" formula of an MMO. While questionable, a limited job was one of the ways they could have implemented it how people wanted without infringing on its identify of being a powerful spellcaster that learned abilities from monsters.

I fail to see how this is riskier than implementing a race but not only shafting about half the people who are interested in but giving them something completely unrelated to the race they wanted. There is not a single good reason as to why male Viera should be unplayable.
"But lore!" This isn't the Ivalice from the Ivalice Alliance series. This its own world with its own timeline that differs from the other one. Even the Viera look different. Why would implementing males in an unrelated world suddenly break the lore of a different series?
If we wanted to be lore friendly you wouldn't be able to do any quests that involve Viera because they refuse to speak to you for being an outsider.