Gender locked race?

[Penthea]

Wasn't the concept art for Viera shown simply as a "we considered this, but instead we went with au'ra" rather than a "this is viera, it is coming, hold us accountable to it"?

If that's the case then that was an incredibly stupid move by SE because by doing this they set themselves up to have a huge amount of players disappointed in them. If they were already sure that they weren't going to have viera, then they should have said nothing about them.