-People are already figure 8-ing, turning combat into jousting contests instead of melee, so *no*, speed does not need to be increased. This isn't counterstrike. We're not supposed to be able to run around in full plate armor as fast as half-naked basketball players. I wear all plate except for 2 slots, and I run as fast as a naked person, and that's just ridiculous already. It needs to be slowed down if anything, though I'm fine with it as it is. Instead of speeding it up, they need to lower the weight at which you start slowing down, so that only people who are naked, or wearing cloth/leather are fast. Right now people in full plate armor chasing down naked people successfully is just silly. Naked and cloth wearing people need to be out-running everyone, leather wearers close behind them, and people in full armor shouldn't be running anywhere near their speed. Since people like to jump on the term "realism", I'll use the term "believable" or maybe "successful suspension of belief" or "internal consistency". The current max speed is acceptable, just not the people in full or near full plate armor running at max speed.
-The ping issue is still here. I can practically tell what continent someone is not just by fighting them. It's so obvious when the Euro's log on, as opposed to fighting other NA people, in fights that are 100-150 ping plus their 100-150 ping till they show up, and it's suddenly a completely different fight. When you can tell what time it is by what the combat is like, ping is still *definitely* an issue. Read that last sentence again.
-They need to pay more attention to the intentional de-syncing breaking animations that's already starting to show up, not try to turn this into some twitch-shooter. I am already seeing blows land before the animations even complete, like in MO1, and it's always the same people, and that's not Australia lag, it's people working on cheats. You can tell the difference.
-Speed does not equal skill; it's more accurate to say speed *instead of* skill, twitch instead of tactics. Again, this isn't counterstrike, and MO2 needs to not exceed the speed of it's ability to keep desyncing, whether intentional or not, under control. It turns out that I like the combat sped up a bit, but it is a bit too much, and needs to be scaled back; fast daggers make sense; 2 handed swords shouldn't be able to be swung about like flyswatters though.
Again, the max speed of things isn't far off, and definitely doesn't need to be increased, but the heavy stuff (heavy weapons swing speed, runspeed with armor) needs be scaled back.