Skill Animations Are Extremely Fast

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Yes, but there will always be that rift between people who like that sort of game and people who like WoW and similar games.

There's basically no way Ashes can cater to both sides because they're literally diametrically opposed viewpoints on gaming. At this point they might as well 'take everything that someone like you dislikes, and lean into it if it can still result in what others consider good gameplay'.

I believe they could make a good game with this basis, free movement, low reaction, GCD based, rotation type combat. There's no way WoW would have lasted this long if it was not considered good by a critical mass of people.

Anyways if you 'came in late' and were not aware, it used to be like what you describe and then was explicitly changed to be how it is now after much feedback. I doubt they're going back.

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The thing is, are those things universally considered innovations or improvements?

My data collection (on this forum) indicates no. It's around 50-50 with a slight edge toward what they made now. So, basically, they took the feedback, they considered what the slight majority wanted, probably 'what their Devs liked and think will be good', and very intentionally and explicitly made that change.

The fact that you or I or similar people think 'this isn't the future' means nothing to the other half of MMO gamers who hate our 'idea of the future'.

I'm not saying we will get a GCD, but probably the 'philosophical concept behind combat' would be in the same area as a GCD-based game.

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Maybe so, but as long as there are enough people who like the old ways, as long as there is a market for this type of combat (and there is, just read the feedback thread), it will work.

And honestly, is Ashes competing for the attention and loyalty of the same groups? I'd wager that there are three groups, and the only game really appealing to 'Group 2' right now is WoW. Ashes would be taking the baton from there, not from things like GW2 ('Group 1', I guess), combat wise, no matter how similar they end up looking.

But I guess my analysis of GW2 is probably lacking, so I defer to yours.

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This is technically, again a thing that 'people had discussions about', then 'people were mostly split on', then 'Intrepid decided to go one of the two ways'.

Obviously I am not 'telling you what to do', but I definitely suggest that you don't put a lot of hope into this game, because it's also true that in this case, Intrepid had the option to go the other way, got a specific set of feedback, and then chose not to do that because a subset of the community was meaningfully against it.

If we assume that by now they have their core combat loop decided (mainly because if we don't assume that we'll be expecting a very far out release) none of what you're mentioning is very likely to happen, even if we get skill canceling, it most likely would be implemented in the other way and not actually force the trades.