Five Races

[Cooperal]

Also remember, that fate in Mor Dohna predates 3.0 and the Au Ra. Trust me, discrepancies like that will most likely avoid retconning because it's a small, pre-expansion, over sight.

And you could rationalize it this way. It says the Gigas have contempt for the FIVE Races. Maybe they've seen how the Au Ra are unjustly discriminated against for no good reason and empathise with them.

With that said, the thing I really don't understand is the manner of Yugiri's introduction. By the time she was in development they likely already had plans that another playable race was in the pipeline.

She is a part of the main storyline. Future players will be passing through it from now until the end of the MMOs lifespan. Yugiri claims that she was wearing her hood because it would be difficult for someone of her race to keep a low profile. Though this will only seem fitting to people who played this part pre-HW, while the rest will be seeing a lot of Au Ra very far in advance. Even though I know that external events can be considered non-linear to the story (such as job-quests assuming your pre-WoL recognition, or the DRG quests if left for way later), that is a VERY long time to pretend that you knew very little about the Au Ra.

They couldn't have not known that it would a popular race. On top of being "the new one", the males are like the Elezens edgy cousins, while the females are splitting with the kawaii aspect of fem miq'ote. Beast-girl or monster-girl. It's practically deciding between Coke and Pepsi.

[jomoru]

Gaelcatnip talks about 5 races as well and its a 3.0 thing. Clearly Lalafell aren't people.

as for why they introed Yugiri like that, well they clearly didn't have the model finished and wanted to build some hype. its not perfect but I vastly prefered it to say the WoW method