It feels very much like an incomplete bit of communication between the game server and the client, not fully transitioning to the next phase in the animation or updating a change in character functionality. Another example of this is the breakout bug that also has been around since launch, where the effects of any kind of debilitating control effect against your character, which can only be broken out of, are not updating visuals correctly. When this paticular bug occurs, your character looks like they are just standing there doing nothing, when your character is actually being controlled and should be in some kind of visual stun animation. The very thing happens quite often in the Midnight Masquerade Halloween event right now, where one of Klarion's attacks is supposed to be stunning you, but the stun visual is not being communicated fully (at all, in this case). Your character will simply sit there, but if you've experience with the bug you will realize it immediately and button mash breakout to go on about your business. Couple these odd delay oriented problems, along with the very much broken and far from accurate timings of the game's counter mechanics and vulnerability windows, and the whole combat system comes off as mostly amateurish and nowhere near as responsive as it's intended to be. Also seems like it would be very difficult for SOE to replicate given their proximity to the game servers, making testing latency issues and hitches that occur for players on home networks, especially the vast majority of console players that utilize the console's wifi connection over wired (sadly, still no wireless N option for console gaming). Home network, 10-20mbps connection hiccups over wireless G connections are commonplace and they do result in some pretty undesireable effects in DCUO's gameplay systems, ranging from many UI errors/skips, slow or non-rendering issues (which can lead to some very specific exploits), and other incomplete communication events that have been causing issues with Linkdeath, zoning in general (especially in operations), and marketplace purchase issues.
This started when Origin Crisis was the bee's knees. We'll be approaching the 2nd anniversary here in a few months, I'd appreicate my gift. Maybe a basket of rolls for our tables in our base. Maybe a hair roller style... I don't know, but you get the point.
Sadly based on past experience I doubt there will be any sort of fixing of any current issues. Pretty safe bet that they will just keep adding new broken content to the mix and more issues. Rather than pumping out new glitchy broken dlcs, it would be real nice if they could see to fixing some of these long standing well known issues. But if the past has taught us anything, I won't hold my breathe
Best way to fix it, it always work for me, just press start and close and everything will be back to normal. I agree, it's about time they fix it...