Alright, so I've been playing Skyrim for about 55+ hours now (30+ on my Breton jack of all trades destruction Mage, and 25+ on my Imperial stealth Rouge) and I have been noticing that racial bonuses don't have much of an effect without attributes as in Oblivion. At first I liked this for the sole fact that I could choose any character and make them perfect in any particular 'class'. (Have you ever seen an Orc be good at Stealth styled play?) I figured this was to make the game more fun with role-playing, so you could make an effective Wood Elf Mage or a High Elf Warrior and play them without worrying about your character having a severe crutch in their attributes. You can easily make up not having +5 in a stat at the start in this game, but now I found myself only looking at Powers, Looks, and Stones I will use as the only choice in characters, which I feel made the game lose some of the touch about having different races in the game.

Not sure if I am the only one seeing this, or if anyone else has a similar opinion. Races might have been better if there were racial background quests or even settlements/ or city communities were primarily one race (besides Nords, even though I know it is Skyrim, I see the possibility of a group of Argonians or Redguards having a specific settlement in the province); however, it could just be me.

Sorry if this comes off a more of a rant, even though I was hoping not to write that way. So, yeah, just let me know what you think!

Nobody?

In my opinion, not as much. Choosing a race whose bonus aligns with your play style is a nice start in the right direction, but you can eventually get even an Orc to be as powerful a mage as a High Elf.

Yeah, given the new nature of leveling, and it's ease at low levels, racial level bonuses are worthless. Now when you're talking special ones like resistances, well, poison resistance is worthless since all the poisons you face are too weak to do anything, and disease is a non-issue for me.

I play as an Argonian, therefore I get the only real racial bonus, waterbreathing.

I'd call +50 Magicka and freakishly high regeneration once a day, also a nice bonus.

@topic

No, I mainly use them for roleplaying purposes. My stealthy archer is a Bosmer, my mage an Altmer.

Of the hundreds of things to do in the game they could have made some race specific, just to add a little flavour to the role playing. Even one small quest or favour per race would have made all the difference.