I sometimes get this with a new player. They want to play a cleric or druid because of the power but refuse to actually play the role of a cleric or druid then, get upset when their powers start to disappear... They eventually learn.
I don't like buying sight unseen. Since none of the major chain bookstores around carry D&D anymore I'm waiting for a fellow gamer to buy so I can look it over.
DMs should run the world as it exists. If a player jumps off a cliff and knows gravity exists, the only job of the DM is roll damage dice and describe what happens, not make an air bag materialize...
Weirdness from the GM/player perspective. Building a credible world around a few related races is much better and more believable than trying to cram "weird" PC races into the mix. You can read more on the subject from the creator of the game.
Raven, what you described is the way I run a world and what my players expect, which is why we found the default rules in 4.0 to be somewhat lame at best.