While I can appreciate the efforts to make something as mundane as walking more realistic, the new walking animation leaves much to be desired.  

1) The animation is clearly designed to only be used from a stationary stance.  If you try to go from jogging to walking, the animation immediately halts the character, and then speeds back up to a walking pace.  This breaks the natural flow of the movement.

2) While the animation now has a sense of momentum, it no longer allows walking to be a tool when making minute changes to the characters position (ie. I want to move my character forward an inch for a screenshot).

3) The character does not immediately return to the default idle animation, and instead stands like a statue for a couple of seconds after the animation is finished.  Not the biggest deal, but it definitely looks odd and unnatural.

The previous walking animation had none of these issues, and felt much more controllable.  

Also, while I personally don’t have any issues with how the actual walk cycle itself is animated, (It matches the demeanor of my character), I imagine that some players may be let down by its lack of elegance, particularly on female characters.  As far as I can tell, the animation is universal to all characters, regardless of gender or body type.  In an ideal world, the styling of idle/walking animations would be left to the decision of the player in the character creator, since small mannerisms in the animations play a big part in how we perceive the personality of our characters.  But alas.

it does not need work, it needs to go

1] When auto-walking, we used to be able to press the forward key to jog then release it to slow back down to a walk. Now the forward key during auto-walking has no function. This is a downgrade.

2] The new animation is very, very slow for really tall characters.

3] When you STOP walking and you come to a stop, the 'Interact' command doesn't work for 10 seconds. Then you can talk to NPC's again. I found you can clip this animation by taking another 'running' step, then 'Interact'ing with NPC's without the invisible 10 second cooldown. Fixed as of 9/21/2022. TYVM!

4] CoquusAnti is absolutely correct about the the Walk cycle always starting from a dead stop. This is imersion breaking. Please make it so the character can slow to a walk as well as speed up to a walk.

Thanks for working on the animations. I believe a good walk cycle is a very important RPG element.

+1

This.
All characters now stroll around like clumsy, depressed drunks and switching between walking and running is extremely weird. Super slow walking speed as well. Character keeps walking after releasing the key and then the character is frozen in this weird pose for a few seconds. Awful really.

Old character walk animation was stern and elegant and worked fine.
Bring back the old animation or let us at least choose between old and new.

Yeah! I miss the old walking animation! My character moves so...sad. Then as they come to a stop, they look like robots lol. The old walk was much more graceful... As a roleplayer, I would love to see the old walking animation returned. I had no issues with it before.

Walking was horribly implemented, sadly. The function itself needs to be changed.  It should not be an auto-walk, it should be a toggled movement mode just like every other game out there.

Bring back the old animations!  Pre April 2022!

Bring back the old music, too.  Pre April 2022.