Board Thread:Online Discussion/@comment-180.95.18.10-20130528000937/@comment-5247041-20130624120448

It should be obvious why the Altmer in ESO look like humans with pointy ears (i.e. "Tolkien elves"). Zenimax don't want to take risks with the appearance of Altmer because it could alienate potential players. Afterall, the two main Altmer being advertised, Queen Ayrenn and the Altmer sorceress (from the Cinematic trailer), look absolutely nothing like Altmer.

This has nothing to do with technology improving, since ESO's character models have a lower polygon count than Skyrim (this is an MMO afterall). And this definetly isn't Bethesda's vision for how the Altmer should look, because Skyrim already showed us how the Altmer were intended to look (e.g. distinctive brows, sharp cheekbones, long chins, yellow skin, almond shaped eyes, etc). Finally, from a lore point of view, there's no reason the Altmer should look different from how they do in Skyrim because the Altmer have always been identical in appearance to their ancestors, the Aldmer.

With that being said, I don't mind Zenimax allowing players to create less lore-friendly Altmer so long as it's still possible to create an Altmer similar in appearance to Skyrim's Altmer. Although I'm not sure why anyone would want a human-looking Altmer, since this is the Elder Scrolls, and there are already plenty of other fantasy games with uninspired, generic looking Tolkien elves.