Istaria uses the race/class/level paradigm common to many role-playing games, as well as similar mechanics as other massively multiplayer online games. Playable races include[color=#FF0000] Dragons in addition to the more conventional biped Human, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, and Half-giant races. Other races are less familiar, but typical of fantasy games: Dryads, Satyrs, Fiends, Saris (a cat-like anthropomorphic humanoid), and Sslik (an asexual non-anthropomorphic reptilian humanoid) [/quote]
As some others have said, I would much prefer a well-thought out Caucasian character than some guy was tinted black and not given any depth. (Basically those characters who are copy+paste with a different colour).
I think the flaw here isn't just in character design alone since more fleshed out locations that represent a historically considered culture and help to tie racial/cultural diversity to a location creating visual continuity for a game. This continuity connects players to racial diversity just as much if not more then the central character's race. But level designers need understand/consider cultural diversity just as much as game writers.
Level design is important to gameplay but when exploring the esthetics it has to go beyond what looks cool. Places feel cooler when there is a identifiable historical accuracies that connect the player to the fiction.
In the game Skate, the city was interesting because it looked like Vancouver, San Francisco and Barcelona "San Vanelona". But the characters are a juxtaposition from the cultures that exists in those distinct places, since it was just a bunch of popular skaters. RockStar has probably explored the most north American diversity of anyone but its arguable that they've used too much cliche which can be a slippery slope as well. Like so many elements of good game design, add racial diversity to the game if it matters to the visual or gameplay diversity of the game but make sure the reasoning isn't too shallow and has aspects of continuity across the game as a whole.
