As someone working with Animation software for a living, absolutely yes, I need it.
In fact, I even need the "traditional" space around the arrow keys, so that I can easily locate them with my fingers without looking away from the monitor. Keyboards with any unusual layout simply aren't that functional for me.
Keys like WASD are already assigned to other important shortcuts that sometimes need a modifier like ALT (which can be done with my left thumb, without shifting the hand too much), so assigning the current cursor keys shortcuts to them would make my life worse, even if I don't account for muscle memory!
