Excellent point OP. This is a good issue to bring up as many of us are concerned about the animations and the general dumbing down of 1.0. My advice is for them to figure out some way to bring those animations back and still have accurate character controls for 2.0.

Although I don't think you're aware of the trade-offs they made. There is no longer any running left, right, or back. There is only running forward with camera panning. Look at World of Warcraft videos and you'll see the same thing. Animation has taken a backseat to controls. I think this could be especially awkward to the gamepad crowd. For mouse/keyboard I don't really see a way around the dumbing down of animation. And on that note it might be weird if some characters looked better animated than others if they were using a gamepad to control them.

There should be some good discussion on this point.