In my opinion the fact that there is a standard fantasy -a genre that exists for the sole reason of thinking outside of the box- is very sad and from the glimpses of the dark elves in the trailer and the aldmeri dominion elf (could be altmer because she uses magic and would match the other two guys being the leading races of their factions but doesn't have yellow eyes or skin) they are edging towards a more standard, human-with-pointy-ears elf.

The elves in the bits of game-play we've seen also look less rugged/alien and, although I would usually write this off to it being pre-alpha models, this mixed with the portrayal of the elves in the cinematic worries me greatly that we will be getting generic Tolkien elves for this game which for me really takes away from the uniqueness of the world. Not to mention that the dunmer have purple skin in the cinematic and the art for the nameless mage- something very reminiscent of night elves from Warcraft, a very "pretty" race (although it was possible to make a blue dunmer in oblivion, a game known for it's terrible/extreme character creation) instead of their creepy grey skin.

What I want to know is what people's opinions are on this, would you prefer more human like elves like we've seen so far or the more creepy, unique looking mer we have seen before, and why?
Not only this but I am also aware that in some of the concept art for the characters like Mannimarco they are far more elder scrollsy and so I also ask: why do you think that is? Are they just showing off pretty elves for marketing in the cinematic and will ditch it in game or are the concept art team just more loyal to the original look (whether or not you think they are right to be so)?

1. do a forum search, this is one of many topics that's been very done,
2. double posting threads is Spam, and annoys a lot of people.

Not sure how I managed to double post,sorry about that, although I definitely didn't mean to and couldn't find any topics from before that answered my questions.

Unfortunately the lengthy reply I had written went with the deleted double post, so I'll summarize this time:

in past tes games, elves, orca, and the beast races have all had quite ugly models, even in skyrim. I know a lot of people had trouble playing nonhuman characters for that reason - without mods, why would you play an ugly, poorly modelled character over the naturally better-looking humans, nords in particular.

Thus, I'd rather suffer a slight loss in uniqueness if it means I can play a khajiit or elf without looking hideous. Still, you can have an alienesque character that still looks beautiful or attractive, so here's to hoping that zenimax has better artists and modellers than Bethesda did.

That could be the case if the concept art is a good representation of in-game.