Many good reasons above. Here's a less philosophical one. I'll often play as a Qunari simply for the Vitaar - my DW Rogues and Mages are most often Qunari.
Arishok's Vitaar can add 304 damage to a fire mine (19x16). Cretahl Vitaar can add 384 (24x16). And these damage amounts can be increased by other abilities, equipment and stats.
Why do people find it important to play a human?
If you're playing a fantasy game filled with fantasy races where you get to roleplay someone or something you can never be in real life - a Grey Warden, a mage, the leader of a huge religious military organization, the perceived prophet of a dead goddess, etc - might as well add fictional fantasy race we can never be in real life to it.
Well, except we can be - because it's nothing more than a coat of pain. I get wanting cultures that are unlike commonly known ones (most "exotic" fantasy cultures of course just being lesser known epxy's of IRL ones). I can even wrap my head around the idea of having an avatar that doesn't look human - but when people talk about "non-human" they seem to suggest it's something other than just an aesthetic thing, and this is where I get lost.
And, what would you get out of that? Since you said yourself they are functionally equivalent, why do you care if they are called (wink, wink) "elves", rather than a dispossessed tribe of humans with pointy ears that call themselves Dalish? How does this help you understand the phenomenon of passion for playing "others"?
Personally? A better aesthetic. I don't necessarily like the aesthetic of all the races the same - e.g. in DAI (for reasons I can't understand) the male elves don't have functional shoulders and the Qunari look like their steroids took steroids. And even when we ignore body type, we get into issues like the range and styles of faces that you can have (e.g., for the mostly human elves or dwarves). When we strip away the gloss and just acknowledge that this is all about aesthetic, we have a totally different debate.
That being said, in DA, being non-human does matter because the different races seem to be fundamentally metaphysically different beings. Of course you could still do that with humans - this is what Dark Souls does, after all. But I actually think it's harder to swallow that this particular group of humans used to be immortal ageless gods, whereas this particular group of humans were basically the immune system to some sort of floating sapient plate tectonic.
The wink wink nudge nudge argument works better for sci-fi, or a fantasy work were the metaphysical origin of all "races" is the same and just another form of human creation myth commonly known IRL.
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Let's not forget that these games are written by humans for humans to play. There are always going to be these human elements. There will never be anything that is totally alien.
I said the same more or less forever ago on this thread! Glad to see someone else had the same thought. 
Many good reasons above. Here's a less philosophical one. I'll often play as a Qunari simply for the Vitaar - my DW Rogues and Mages are most often Qunari.
Arishok's Vitaar can add 304 damage to a fire mine (19x16). Cretahl Vitaar can add 384 (24x16). And these damage amounts can be increased by other abilities, equipment and stats.
Hah yeah this is definitely min/maxer thinking! You see this in games with multiple races when they have different starting stats. For example, in World of Warcraft, gnomes start out (or used to?) with two more points in intellect, so many people take them as mages or warlocks because of that. In the end, two points doesn't mean very much, but for the min/maxer, every point counts!
In DAI, humans get one extra skill point, so some people may choose them for that reason alone.
I like pointy ears.
Bioware RPGs are very good at exploring the mechanics of privilege and prejudice. One of the best ways in which they do this is that they use fantasy/sci-fi races, meaning that the player has no prejudices going into the experience. If you, say, made a game about how black people are being mistreated in America, many would reject it, because that narrative doesn't match with their prejudices. Look at how many homophobes criticise Bioware's inclusion of gay characters, even though no bioware rpg ever has forced players into gay romance storylines. But nobody have the same criticisms for, say, the Asari in Mass Effect, because those things do not exist people have no pre-existing notions about them. People can see the mechanics of privilege and prejudice without being clouded by their prejudices which they hold in real life.
One of the reasons I played as non-human characters is that you really get to see the other side of that. Most of us who are playing the game have grown up in affluent countries, generally safe from war, and even the minorities of us have it better than most of the world. We don't know what it is like to be a slave, or to have suffered the genophage, or to live in an circle or an alienage, or to be a surface dwarf, because almost all of us are so far removed from whatever could be considered analogous in our world due to our simple ability to be able to afford the luxury of playing the game.
This is why the lack of origins in Inquisition disappointed me. Because, in Origins, you really got to understand your position in the world, and the unique worldview of your people, along with their place in the world, before you got on to the whole save the world stuff. And when it was time to save the world, you had to interact with different cultures with different political systems, who would all react differently to you depending on your origin. In inquisition, the race question is basically an aesthetic one, because apart from a paragraph of text there isn't anything in the game which contextualises the races and cultures of Thedas before you are thrown into the world. In dealing with the world, we mostly deal with humans, and those non-human societies are mostly either insignificant or ill-defined compared to Origins (see the Dalish in the Exalted Plains and Brecilian Forest, for example). For those of us who have played Origins, we already know about Dalish elves and Surface Dwarves. But for people new to the game, the choice is essentially short and stocky, tall and muscular, skinny or normal. If we are to play as new characters in DA4, then bringing back origins is pretty much on the top of my wishlist.
@fdrty,
DAI being originally designed for a human only protagonist (and possibly one we've seen before if Hawke was ever considered for the role).... add to the fact that DAI is the third game in the series, they probably didn't feel the need for an origin type story at this point. The races should all be mostly familiar by now. Except to new players. And except for the Qunari...which really kind of misses out, since we never had an origin story for them in the past, like with the Dalish, City Elf, Dwarf, or Circle Mage. All of our interactions with the Qunari so far have been as an outsider to the Qun.
I wouldn't mind origin stories back, but with the races and societies they haven't already done.
The problem is that the original DA released like 5 years or so before inquisition. There are many who will be interested in fantasy RPGs who either missed Origins, or don't particularly want to go back and play old games (especially one as dated visually as Origins, or one as poorly regarded as DA2)
I don't think you should dismiss the new players so casually. The new player experience is really hurt by the lack of origins, in my opinion. Imagine that you know nothing of Dragon age and its world. Does Inquisition do a good job of getting you up to speed before huge things start happening? No way. I want the franchise of Da to grow, and the only way that happens is by attracting new players. And that means that DA will have to accomodate those players, not just but reading a summary of what happened before, but in terms of revealing the world and its unique cultures to the player in narrative and gameplay terms, just as Origins did with its origins.
The beginning of Inquisition confused me, and I've played through DAO and DA2 both several times. The in medias res opening doesn't help, either. How much better would the opening have been if you were a dalish/tal vashoth/dwarven cartel member/ circle mage/ noble venturing to the fereldan, encountering some small, culturally relevant area before everything kicked off? I really can't overstate how much origins added to the game by contextualising the world and the player's role in it before the real game begun.
One thing that irked me about inquisition is how much of the content is throwaway quests etc, yet they didn't put in origins because they felt it was a waste if players only played 1 - the problem being that the quest structure, endless collectibles and expansive areas themselves are a far better invitation for players to ignore content.
As for the Qunari, they felt so much like a late addition that I wonder why they were added at all. So many armor sets didn't display on them, and there wasn't even another female qunari in the game til trespasser, and I don't recall seeing another male qunari character besides Bull. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, I'd just like them to make another game with the design philosophies of Origins again.
I play from an elven standpoint invariably (except Hawke where I have no choice) and as a female for several reasons. 1. Elves are the downtrodden of Thedas more than any other race, and the reaction to them reflects this. I also enjoy playing as a woman because the underdog status. Most people do not think women can fight, which is absolutely untrue, but in the times depicted it would be. I also enjoy knocking the smirks off the nobles etc. from my underdog status. There is an intense feeling of satisfaction.
by your logic i think having the human race option is pointless, i'm already human, and i'm playing a fantasy game shouldn't it be something at least a bit 'fantastic'?
i like when your race-difference is related to the story or gets reflected in other actions, like playing a mage. my headcannon for DA:I is elf mage because it changes peoples reactions to you on two different levels (dwarf might too but not as much/i didn't notice it). I would love for DA:I to include more of these differences, like origins and the ability for people to judge you superficially and you to prove them wrong/right or whatever you want. there are a few instances of this, when you can talk about an elf being the herald, or at the palace you start off with lower court approval, i like these differences.
also, if you want to play this game more than once, you need to have different perspectives. I like the DA2 story a lot, but my hawke tends to be one of 2 things. in DA:I you can be one of 8 things (rogue/warrior doesn't make a huge difference in this respect)
sure you can make the decision to play all the races the same, but you can also play them differently and making them individual characters with different opinions and histories and actions.
How much better would the opening have been if you were a dalish/tal vashoth/dwarven cartel member/ circle mage/ noble venturing to the fereldan, encountering some small, culturally relevant area before everything kicked off? I really can't overstate how much origins added to the game by contextualising the world and the player's role in it before the real game begun.
i agree that the origin stories were dearly missed in DA:I, they are one of my favorite parts of origins.
Dwarves...well, they are short and stocky humans with a somewhat interesting cultural background. Elves....somewhat skinny humans with long pointed ears and their own cultural background. Those cultural backgrounds, however, are nothing that a human culture couldn't have.
True, but they didn't.
I enjoy having multiple cultural backgrounds to choose from and replay in games, if dragon age had chosen have a all human world and all the interesting cultural backgrounds were different humans then I'd have still enjoyed all that. It was the story, culture and choice of the dwarven origins in DAO that I loved, not their shortness. And whilst I'd welcome trying out the different human cultural background of thedas too, that doesn't mean I'm cool with never getting to play the other races again, they have different possible origins all over Thedas too (some less than others).
They didn't choose human-only, they made elves and dwarves and qunari into their world, so why shouldn't we want to play their background, their story? That personnal history/race is still present in my experience of the game and my character regardless of how much the npcs acknowledge it.
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