I was told, once, not quite a month back, by a support person that they ‘checked with the devs’ and the running animation change on the human female was a bug. Which, presumably meant it was going to be ‘fixed’ at some point.
Since then, there’s been efforts to make some sheathed weapons behave better with it (recently the 2-handed staff was altered to behave sheathed as it did with the previous running animation), but nothing to just … put it back to what it was.
I submit bug reports, every day, in game. I’ve submitted support tickets since the one I got back indicating that the devs had mentioned it was a bug (which, is now suspect), and I get back canned responses, or when I do get a human, they tell me to post in the forums.
So I posted in the suggestion forum, wondering why they don’t treat the running animation as hair, body type, skin color, etc, so we can pick which running animation we like (for those of use who loved the animation we had for the first 14 months of the game), and those people who like the new one could keep that.
Nothing.
Posted it as a bug, and posted in others’ bug reports on the same topic, no response there.
So these ‘Living Story’ forums seem to be ‘the place’ where all new things are discussed (and more red posters post), so I’ll try here. Yes, I know we’re not supposed to ‘fish’ for red posts, but I’m out of options here.
Question: Why?
That’s it. If you aren’t going to change it back, it was presumably done on purpose (though, there were not patch notes or developer blogs on the subject), and therefore…why? Why was it done? And no, ‘Immersion Breaking’ isn’t an answer (plus you used that on the Plush Griffon not swimming already, which was, well, yeah).
Just a real honest answer as to what transpired that made the change necessary. And why nothing was said about it. That’s all I’d really like to know at this point. It would at least allow me to make an informed decision as to how to proceed with my relationship with the game and the company.
Now, I’d happily submit it as a support ticket, but I’ll need to know the trick to not get it more or less ignored. Snail mail? Is there someone I could write to? A phone number I could call?
Don’t think it’s too much to ask. Something about the game changed. That’s fine. Why aren’t we allowed to know ‘why’?
P.S. – and of course, I’d still love you to change it back (assuming it wasn’t changed to solve a gross DPS imbalance in PvP, which seems silly). And barring that, please consider making it a character attribute and let us pick. Think of how much money you could make selling make over kits to people who would like their Asuran to skip? 
Thank you.