Dragon you're really too invested into this.

Jumping is not a major issue. In spite of the genre, this is just a game. Quit moping over a feature other people want that has virtually no impact on actual gameplay.

Honestly, I don't care either way. I do hate invisible walls or tiny cliffs preventing my character from moving latterally over something they could easily climb or jump on. So yes, in this way jumping would be smart to impliment.

Are people going to hop around like bunnies and be annoying. Yep. But it's not as if that's not done already with emote spamming. If you're that easily broken up about something as simple as how someone else's character model moves, perhaps MMOs are not for you. There are plenty of other games that allow you to party with your friends online nowadays to have fun, and the fantasy genera is starting to pick up on the bug to. Why not play one of those instead? That way you can control your interaction with people if you feel as if you absolutely CANNOT tolerate immature behavior.

As far as implementing a feature that removes the jump animation from the game. It seems to be a rather useless feature, one that could potentially harm your gameplay if you're not seeing your fellow players jump at a needed time.

As far as finding a mechanical use for it. What about it being capable of evading low attacks? Flying enemies can evade low-to-ground attacks by virtue of dropping. Why not have some monster or player actions evaded in the same manner? This would be a good mechanic perhaps for some arena based battles at least, though, the lag issue would first have to be addressed.

A jump feature is nothing to be in arms about. Yoshi-p seems to want to make jumps look well enough to be in the game and is trying to establish a good aesthetics for it as well, and there is room for actually making it useful in an MMO environmental (bypassing poorly designed trip-ups).

Some of you people are taking this way too seriously.