The Races in D&DN kind of suck. Humans are overpowered and everything else is kinda boring and shoehorned into various classes due to things like the racial weapon use (bigger dice of damage via racial weapons). 3.5, 4th ed, Pathfinder and even 3.0 all had more interesting races than the current batch.
Personally I like the +2/+2/-2 format for ability scores that Pathfinder uses. 4th ed used +2/+2 which is also fine but it did make humans suck a bit at least until more splats were released. Humans are also overpowered in Pathfinder and probably 3.5 and they sucked in 2nd ed. I did like the floating ability scores introduced in 4th ed. Putting it togather in my personal game for example using the Elf I use these stats.
+2 Dex, +2 Int or Dex, -2 Con.
Not sure how one could balance out a human if it was 4th ed style race with no negative. +2 to two ability scores of your choice would be crazy good.
Star Wars Saga had a nice mix in Races in terms of ability scores. Some reaces got +4 even in one score instead of +2/+2. Some races were over powered and underpowered due to other abilites.
Encounter powers for races in 4th ed were fine, almost required for Dragonborn and using the old Elf again for example Elven Accuracy was better than say the 3.5 Elf and D&DN as it was a neutral racial ability usable with all classes. I also liked racial feats making certain races better with iconic weapons as oppesed to baking it into the base stats. They tried that in 3.5 but the Dwarf made a better wizard than the Elf.
In summary I like.
+2/+2/-2 For stats, not to worried if negatives are thrown out though- not worth getting upset about. One of the +2 is "floating" as well.
Somewhat class neutral racial abilites. An elven wizard in 2nd ed for example didn't get much from +1 to hit with swords and bows, same deal with D&DN races (ergo pick a human).
Racial powers. Not to worried either way. I would like to see them there for some races, and I would prefer some over the current setup. Some were better than others in 4th ed though.
ANyway what do you want/expect form the races?
Fear is the Mind Killer