Except it didn’t previously. It was intentionally changed to make it worse for the customer. Spite.
I wouldn't assume spite. I would assume testing to see what causes the most racial completionist FOMO presales. Is it better to give people a one month grace period where they better preorder the expansion and hurry through their 3 racial lives before they lose their racial completionist? Or is it better to immediately take away racial completionist so people pre-order to get it back as quickly as possible? One of these two options should be the most effective and that is the one I assume they will do most of the time.
For me, I just treat racial completionist as a temporary buff. You get it, then a short while later they drop another race. Then you wait 7 or 8 months for the race to be released in the DDO store. Then you spend 3 months getting the 3 past lives. Then a month or 2 later the next race drops and you lose racial completionist.
I am fine with this system since the good part about races is racial AP. I'd much rather they continuously drop new races, as they have been, than have them stop and make it easier to keep racial completionist. That said, the best solution would probably be what they are doing with archetypes. Have new racial variants (like wood elf) that can be used in place of regular elf for racial completionist. However, unlike wood elf, all new racial variants should give the full 3 racial past lives (since I want to see enough racial AP to completely fill racial trees). Racial variants that work just like archetypes (meaning they give unique past lives but are not necessary for completionist) is the ideal solution.
