1st and the biggest. For me what defines my character before anything else is a class. I can be flexible about races, gender and any other back story issues, but I'm a mage player. I don't like playing a warrior period, don't care for sneaky types either. Yes I tried it all, I'm a looooong time RPG player and I know what I like. In DA:O you have 5 choices for warrior, 5 for rogue... And 1... yep, whole 1 choice for a mage. Which makes it pretty much a one origin game for me.
2nd I don't like what they did with elves. Yep I know they wanted to be original, and did what all cool kids do this days - made a dying enslaved and generally leveled with dirt race of scrawny, pointy eared humans. Do I need to list the amount of books, movies and now games that do that? Actually I can't remember any elf appearance in the last 5 yeas that is not in this context (and don't mention any LOTR side products, it's still a copy of Tolkiens ideas and not a new thing).
Now I'm not a fan of Tolkien elves, I'd rather see a less Cristian influenced, darker version, but I'd like them truly to feel like another species, I don't want them to look human, act human and I'd prefer if they couldn't produce an offspring with humans to. I woun't be saying anything about dwarfs for now, at last an effort was made there it seams.
Anything else I can deal with, and what I can't deal with will be fixable when toolset comes out