I like your ideas. I think the combat system is the main reason why I give up mmorpgs so often. But a melee combat system that works is something quite difficult to accomplish. I think Jedi Knight games do it well. It's all in 3rd person, except when you're using a gun, and you can trigger nice moves with simple combinations of attack and movement buttons. There is another game called Rune that is all about blade fighting, it's in 3rd person also but I can't remember how good it was. I don't remember if there was ranged weapons in this game either, but you could throw axes and swords at your enemies.

I would like to see something like this done, but I don't know how difficult is to implement or how it would affect game performance. The community reception may not be so good too...