Quote Originally Posted by Ziyyigo-Tipyigo View Post
XIV was designed to be extremely modular, partly for the sake of porting it to other platforms/input schemes/etc.

I can't claim that this was an intent, or that it will be used this way, but one of the advantages of such modularity is that it would make it that much easier to port XI to the XIV graphics engine/etc.

This is of course my own wild speculation, but I did note this: The 2.0 beta implemented an acorn-headed Lalafell model where 1.0 did not. Trying to make characters that look that much like XI characters (and years after 1.0's launch at that) feels like the result of some sort of proof-of-concept.
I think you're grasping at straws here. The concept when XIV was first announced was to have the XI races for that bit of familiarity, for those who were transitioning into it from XI. Their background, storylines etc are considerably different. Even their race names are different. Aesthetically, they are similar, but that's where it ends.

The models themselves draw from the concepts of the XI races, but they are new models.

You pointed out the "acorn head lalafell" being an indicator, but this is merely them adding new additional hairstyles to expand character customization. Miqo'te got pigtails (which they didn't in 1.0) etc. Each race got stuff that wasn't in 1.0, and not all of it draws from XI concepts.