Historical references are great, but fantsay worldbuilders have the bad habit of basing entire cultures, or aspects of entire cultures on real world counterparts, I hope that's not what you mean? History is good to take from because it is the most realistic story you will get to, but ripping things straight out of it, and putting them somewhere else is bad taste(besides, that is not realistic, and if it isn't, they could just make their own, more fitting idea unless they are lazy...), history is a great reference for ideas to use in fantasy worlds, though.
These are my thoughts too. When world building, looking at real world history can give a helpful point of reference in order to make your world more realistic, because looking at, for example, the political structure of real life civilizations might give you an idea of how to model your fictional ones. But there is a difference between taking inspiration from something and completely ripping it off, the latter is a very bad thing, not only does it constrain creativity, but when it comes to modeling fictional societies in a work of fantasy, it's actually highly unrealistic. A world that is in no way connected to our own having people who look identical to ourselves is already only believable because pretty much all settings do it, and I've grown used to it. Having entire nations that are just a real world nation with its name changed and slapped onto a fantasy world is too much to believe.
Bethesda should keep the amount of obvious historical influences as small as is possible, naturally, there are going to be historical influences present, but if I can look at them and think not of the real world thing they are a counterpart to, but of what they are within the setting of the game, than they have done their job.