When I played FFXI I played a tank. It was fun and I might do it again, but not at first. During beta I played around with the Archer class and it was pretty cool, but I'm not sure if I want to take it all the way. To mix it up I might start with a magic based class.

As for race, I was thinking Miqo'te but in beta pretty much every other character I saw was a male Miqo'te. So I might go with a Hume (or whatever dumb name it has in this game).