Did you ever actually play XI? Race has a minimal impact at best. Nobody cared if a taru was a tank or a galka was a mage. Obviously certain race/job combos worked better together, but not enough to ever actually matter.
Actually, I did, and still do, kthnks. Whether or not the effects were enough to matter, people acted like it did. And I call BS on the claim that no one cared. I have witnessed many times people being made fun of/excluded for their race/job combination. I never did, because I understood how minimal those differences really were, but claiming that it wasn't a problem in the community is an outright falsehood.