Dungeons And Dragons Online: DDO News: A Bit on Combat

The elusive and wily devilmouse has been lured from his dark, dank corner of Turbine and a few answers have been pried loose! Well, that sounds a lot more involved than it really is, but he's answered some posts on combat timing:

If you swing a large weapon (staff/2h'r), you're likely to have a fairly large area that the weapon travels through during its swing (swinging it around over your head, big windups, etc). Glancing blows refer to attacks that are fired as the weapon passes through this area against nearby foes. Glancing blows have their damage greatly reduced to compensate for the fact that they're basically doing AE attacks with each swing.

The above can be found here. So, 1H weapons have a faster animation than 2H, and may perform faster as a result. Spellcasting times appear to be pretty uniform, but no exact figure. The glancing blow information is pretty interesting as well. There is also a second post with a little more about the animations.