my left leg will resist cold, and my right leg resists heat?

I mean, you just made that up. (There's only one leg slot)[http://i.imgur.com/KOLTnp4.png]. And If I had to guess, they're probably going for something like this:

You're in an area where the floor is lava and has high wind. You equip scorching resist to your feet so you can walk on the terrain and you equip windshear resist on your legs so you can walk past the gust. (Without taking damage? or maybe just at all.) Hands, maybe you need proper resists to attack or cast without massive penalty. Arms, maybe it affects cast speed or attack speed or something more drastic. Head, maybe it affects vision or the way the climate affects your view. Chest, who knows. Maybe resource penalty on everything because of breathing or something, like having toxic air? Just pure guessing here obviously.

I understand the nod to EQ here with regards to resist gear.

Well, I don't. My understanding of the pitch is that it's supposed to be another avenue of character progression.

During one of the earlier streams (pre-Cohh, I believe), they described it as something that you will eventually acclimate to when being in a harsh condition. So I hope that's still on the table, because (I think it was) Brad made it sound like you would drink a potion for a temporary buff to resist the climate, then you would walk around in that environment and develop an acclimation to a point where you wouldn't need that buff to be in the environment anymore.

Now, if we're talking about how this acclimation system is just going to be a series of varying levels of potion strength that you drink for permanent protections that are to be toggled on and off, then yeah, I agree that's pretty bad implementation and bordering the line of pointless tedium unless there's some way to keep it interesting. Personally didn't enjoy the way Joppa described it in the stream, it really did sound like just a bunch of different potions of varying strength levels. They basically described the tier 1 acclimation as easily attainable which means it's easy to get those potions -- does this mean that the dwarves with their frost racial have the advantage of not having to buy a single set of easy attainable potions for frigid environments?

Also feel like your suggestion for deity-centric resists sounds even worse than what's currently on the table and probably a balancing nightmare in the context of having multiple climates in a single environment. I wasn't too impressed with Original Sin's environments either. A fire-scorched area, so you just cast a gigantic rain aoe spell to nullify all of it? A snowy mountain, so you're stunned for 4 seconds every 10 seconds unless you throw a fireball at your team or sit at a campfire every 10 feet to stay warm? Pretty garbage IMO. Haven't played OS2 yet but can't imagine they took major strides. It was cute for what it was, but nothing I'd want to see inspired in Pantheon.