Racial passives are the complete wrong way to go about this.

spekdah

Don't agree with you OP sorry. Makes it a little bland, much like a classless character system you would end up with a majority running the same passives, various templates would emerge leaving most passives unused. This happens already with skills.

What ESO has in some what like DnD player races. Each has a flavour, with some stat bias. Sure some choices offer a synergy with specific classes but it's negligible mostly.

Much like that game and others, min-maxers will choose a race they don't like the look of simply for stats :-) It's a long tested design choices and I personally like it.

Be more interesting if they offered sub races, or an alternative setup for existing races where it gave better/different bonuses but with bigger drawbacks. So you might excel at something over the base race, but may have to use certain gear or a skill to make up for the bigger disadvantage given as well. Don't see it happening though.

SilentFox22

I don't mind racial passives at all for flavor. But I strongly feel that if it's not going to be done right, just don't do it at all.

Also just want to say that one of the things that made single player elder scrolls games so appealing to me was the lack of classes. In an mmo, this could potentially still work since meta builds tend to create counter meta builds which creates counter meta counter builds, etc. Seems like it would consistently balance itself out as a naturally evolving system with its own life. I would actually love to see that in ESO. Unfortunately, it's prob not even possible from a technical stance so moot point.