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There's an inherent misrepresentation in the name and theme of this thread... The lifeblood of D&D has always been 'the group (and especially the DM) trumps the rulebook'. No matter what comes out of 5e, you will never be "forced back into playing boring races". The "worst" that will happen is that your prefered races won't make the core. You can play whatever you want anyway.

In my opinion, the racial inclusion issue is really more about setting the core flavor, a relatively common base from which each group can expand their own world from.  Nothing's stopping you from changing even that, but it's always easier to add more than to take away.

This means including the races that are generally agreed upon, if not neccesarily favored (humans, dwarves, elves, etc.), while not-including, or marking as more rare, those races which are not agreed upon (dragonborn, tieflings, etc.). I know many people want these "more interesting" races to be core, but there are practical reasons for them not to be.


(And for those who are having trouble understanding why fans of older editions are having a hard time accepting these new inclusions, here are some numbers,
# of years humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings have been standard races: 38 (Original 1st edition D&D)
# of years half-orcs, half-elves, and gnomes have been standard races: 34 (1st edition AD&D)
# of years dragonborn, eladrin, and tieflings have been standard races: 4 (4th edition)
Before 4e, tieflings were the only one of those races that even got moderate exposure, and they were decidedly -not- considered normal. Dragonborn didn't even exist until 3.5 splatbooks, and eladrin only appeared in a relatively obscure 2e splatbook.  I won't even get into the continuity issues some people have with the decendents of dragons and demons being commonplace.)

If the Campaign setting for this edition were Mystara I would recommend going with the Cataclysmic event involving the Destruction of the Nucleus of the Spheres (I call it THE GREAT QUAKE) -its destruction will cause terrible subsidence of numerous lands in the region once refered to as the Known World as the Vast caverns beneath the earth collapse in. Southern Glantri, South Western Ehtengar, Western Alfhiem, and Most of Darokin and all of the Broken Lands and beneath all that the Subterranean realms of the Shadow Elves - leaving huge regions of land as an 800 feet deep hole - with really deep spots where rivers and lakes now drain into and once subterranean volcanoes and rivers of lava now flow and errupt openly.  There will be regions that are virtual mazes of safe land through which adventurers must travel to go from one side of the Ruination to the Other. Worse still Magic Failed world wide as a consequence meaning the only way back is for someone to adventure in some collossal campaign to become the God or Goddess of Magic (there is already one but she cause all the chaos and is very evil -giving the baddies access to Magic from their goddess of magic -Synn the Night Dragon!).

Why? Because once all the caverns fall in there will be regions of land that are cut off from the rest of the world - where humans and humanoids must converge to survive (spawning Half Orcs etc.) Where Plagues will be unleashed forcing female gnomes to seek mates amongst Halflings and Dwarves because all the male gnomes died (creating Half Dwarves and Half Gnomes). 

Basically they would all be new 'character races' in a setting that had other dozens of other race/class options -Sidhe, Kobolds, Orcs, Trolls, Ogres, Aquatic Elves, Shadow Elves, Sky Gnomes, Nagpa, Araena,  Tabi, Pegataurs, Wood Drakes, Brownies, Pixies, Gremlins, Pooka, Lupins (dog people), Raskata (cat people)...

Edition 5 has an opportunity to simply be the D&D rulebook for home play and home developed campaigns while WOTC manages its own campaign worlds as online/tournament settings. If anything all the D&D character races that were ever available need to be included along with the classes available (or just core classes like fighter/cleric/magicuser/thief) and a boat load of templates for diversifiying the characters into something else.

Consider The Samurai - Japanese Swordsman of Gret prowess and diverse intellectual skills.  In the Original Indoeuropean the Word Sa-mu-rei refers to one who mimics sounds of 'satisfaction' while engaging in fighting to mess with the heads of an opponent. So right there the 5000BC origin Samurei is a guy whose method of combat involves mimicry skills during fighting - and not with swords - the reference to scratch, cut, and scrape implies a savage 'melee fighter' for close up combat.

So Daggers or Clubs, Mimicry skill, and Dexterity 16+ allowing every base class to take a Samurei Character template - you would restrict it to non lawfuls because that kind of sexual innuendo duing combat would get you kicked out of what ever primitive society you belonged to.