I personally found the "raising" of several racial deities (Moradin, Corellon, Gruumsh, Lolth, Bahamat, Tiamat) to "standard" deities in the 4E cosmology was awesome. I liked the fact that there weren't gods for specific races anymore, but rather that there were just gods... and while certain races might favor one god over others (so dwarves on the whole tended to worship Moradin more than other ones), any being could worship any god.
It always seemed that for those settings where races had their own pantheons, members of the non-human races oftentimes would still worship the "human" deities anyway... and yet it seemed extremely rare for the inverse to occur-- a human worshipping a non-human deity. And that kind of "humanocentric" way of looking at things just struck me as odd and didn't really sit well with me.
So to just wipe those away in 4E... to pare down the pantheon so that there was only one god that you might consider "dwarf-like" and one that was "elf-like", and "orc-like" etc. etc., but all of whom were still popular and worshipped by humans, and the few "human-like" gods were popular and worshipped by the other races too equally, was a bonus step as far as I was concerned. And as a matter of fact... I've begun prepping my potential next campaign and setting it in one of lands in the Nerathi setting (that of the Nentir Vale). And in keeping with this idea of non-specific racial deities being standard deities for everyone, I've actually expanded the 4E cosmology to include several more:
- Garl is the god of humor, trickery, and natural skill, and is a favored deity of the gnomes
- Yondalla is the goddess of family, security and tradition, and is a favored deity of the halflings
- Maglubiyet replaces Bane and is the god of aggression, conquest and instinct, and is a favored deity of the goblinoids
Thus with now 13 good deities and 9 evil ones... pretty much every one of the primary races in the setting has a god they favor, but which are not exclusive to that race, every being can and does worship every other one. And I find this much more interesting and compelling for me than having a pantheon of 30 "human" gods, and another 10 "dwarf" gods, and 10 "elf" gods, and 10 "gnome" gods and "halfling" gods and "orc" gods and "drow" gods etc. My new pantheon is much more manageable and interesting to me.