Something that I continue to worry about is how fluid will the battles be? I want the action to be fluid with the sense that the action carries enough weight and throughput for each blow. My confidence in this game coming through with this is starting to wain but still hopeful that something will be released soon alleviate these concerns.

The way that I imagine the physical fighting to be more action oriented would consist of a mix of being mobile while fighting. Not sitting still while you play wack a mole. The enemy doesn't want to fall for sitting there and uses a better ai that says to use its environment to their advantage. Avoid attacks with nearby columns , jump though a fence or over low bridges to confuse and flank the target from different sides.

Another important aspect to the action to me is the ability and normal combat animations. It's not interesting to see the move displayed exactly the same every time. Even two or three different patterns isn't convincing enough for me. Basic attack and block/bash should differ based on the speed of the initial sprinting charge before the attack, the position and direction of the attack from different angles and how armed and defended the enemy is at the time. A well guarded defense might not show a fierce attack but and enemy caught off guard might show something a bit more vicious and potentially exploitable weakness for the next few seconds.

I'm not sure if its possible to be implemented in the game but I'm very passionate about it. It's not that I really want to have a super sense of real life realism of weapon fighting. But I want a challenge when fighting in melee combat that isn't just a simple stand there and press mouse button left click 1 2 right click 3 3 1 2 and etc.

If this much effort was put into melee fighting I'd hope the magic/ranged fighting had just as much to make it unique from the rest and from any other game. I spend so much time in mmos fighting that I get the most rush from that and the suspenseful story mode story lines. Sorry if I'm all over the place with this, but it would also be cool if we had some destruction type spells that could morph from an on touch spell to touch weapon for x amount of duration it causes x frost/fire/lightning on hit attacks. But the duration be short, not set and forget. Something to mix for hybrids or spellswords.

One last thing... Bring back hand to hand combat, add kicks/grappling lol I loved the kill moves with suplex to ground. Only this time add moves that allowed a few second pin that also stunned you while doing continual damage to target with slight disorientation when they break free allowing for a setup to someone else attacking the target while you have them in your grip.

2-3 attack animations per hand plus a few special attacks will be enough for me. I am hoping the combat is smooth and doesnt feel sluggish like other games.

Where I'm going with that ramble is that i believe a dynamically evolving fight feels more like elder scrolls feel than what any other mmo animation provides. The same patterns of attack shouldn't be accepted. In my opinion.

Well, unfortunately you will see the same attack patterns...that's simply how coding works. Skyrim really wasn't much different, but I do understand what you're saying. Hopefully we will see enough fluid combat and action to keep us all interested