I actually revamped the Cleric race selection part of the wiki recently to better answer this exact question. It now covers not only the stats and abilities of each race, but also what their respective religions offer in terms of gear. Also I made the stat table sortable and added an extra column to give a (very) rough sense of each race's overall stats (it values Strength/Stamina/Charisma at half the value of Wisdom).
Check out
http://wiki.project1999.com/Cleric#P...the_Right_Race if you're interested, but my takeaway after doing it was that all of the following are decent choices (and all the rest aren't). Basically you have the top Wis race, then the next three all tie for second-place and are viable in their own way, and finally you have Halflings which are unique because of Sneak and the XP bonus:
- High Elves: Highest starting wisdom (but bad other stats), good symbol, and a nice Tunare-only raid item
- Dark Elf: Tied for second highest Wisdom AND they get Hide, plus they get a good symbol, but of course Dark Elves have faction issues
- Dwarf: Also tied for second place on starting Wisdom, but Dwarves have the best overall stats (IMHO); their clickie is fun but useless
- Erudite: Also tied for second best Wis, and if you pick the right god you get access to some interesting items, but even so Erudites are kind of the dark horse option
- Halfling: Hide AND Sneak AND 5% XP bonus, but bad starting Wisdom and no good diety gear