I think that any character who helps flesh out the game world is a good thing.
Sometimes this can be accomplished by making a human fighter, or some other tried and true concept as far as the mechanical categories, and simply making a memorable, 3-dimensional character.
Other times, filling a hole in the game world by making an interesting/unique combination of race/class/deity can help flesh out the world. It's a good thing to have PC representation of all the deities, and finding less played deities is a perfectly valid way to come up with a new character. This doesn't mean that wanting to play a brownie palemaster of Corath simply because it hasn't been done before is justifiable, but filling in unplayed but likely to exist niches is healthy and important for the game world.
That doesn't need to involve denigration of those who choose the first path, in fact, I personally think that creating memorable interesting characters from a common template is a more challenging roleplaying task. I think that sometimes more experienced players get addicted to playing more unique or outlandish concepts (which is often a lot of fun), and that some balance between the two needs to be maintained.
