Shardbearer

Any Idea on who the reader for the audiobook of the novella will be? I have no idea about the relative costs of narrators, but Michael Kramer is a fantastic Voice Artist, especially for fantasy novels. He's done all of the Wheel of Time books, as well as my favorite book The Way of Kings.

It probably has been said before, but isn't this why there are 3 different hardcore modes?

I so want to be able to train my rogue in the lute now.

I feel like a bard can be a subspeciality of rogue, and a paladin could be a heavy armor/heavy weapon specialty of cleric or cleric/warrior. Though I do like the idea of gaining the title/attribute of Paladin throughout the game. Its very DA:O to have to acquire the subspecialities, possibly through training and/or gaining the trust/membership of a faction.

I like the ever expanding mega dungeon and the story behind it.

Have you ever read 'Warbreaker'? Nightblood is awesome!

I hope that doesn't mean too much micro management, and that they can handle their inventories on their own if you so please. Or better yet, have a large shared party inventory, instead of being split between multiple characters. God I hope not. Never played a game with decent enough AI that I could trust my companions to intelligently "handle their inventory on their own". In systems like that, your companions inevidably make the most retarded choices. They'll use up the charges on their best wands when fighting.... goblins. They'll chug down all their healing potions when the fight is almost won. They'll use up all their summoning devices regardless of the threat in front of them etc. And shared inventory? Kill it with fire, as you guys like to say, here. No. The way the IE games did it worked well, and with a little bit of 21st century tweaking, they can take the IE systems and make them work VERY well. PS: Micro-management is a loaded term. There's a negative stigma attached to it that doesn't do it justice. How about "Full Control". Yeah, when I'm playing a party-based RPG, I want full control. I wouldn't want shared inventory, but it would be nice to have all the inventories open at once, so I don't have to keep clicking back and forth between characters trying to remember where I last stuffed something

Actually I was hoping some restrictions on items, particularly on armors. It always seems weird when a Dwarf Plate can be shared with other party members... Unless Dwarves have invented stretch metal in Project Eternity :D "Get the Breastplate stretcher!" One of my favorite scenes with the king from Game of Thrones season 1

No thank you, crits showing wherever there's combat text (log or floating) is enough for me

I don't know if weather is possible, but a portion of a combat area mid hurricane would be pretty cool. Also Underground cities that are NOT abandoned or otherwise tomblike... Also, ice/glaciers/tundra is always cool, especially in a climate/area that isn't supposed to have ice, like underground...

The Edair artwork seems to have a very reasonably sized shield...

My two points would be that different opinions exist as to what's "hardcore", and that I was under the impression the intended audience was the people that were fans of classic computer RPGs, with most of the games referenced I wouldn't even describe as hardcore.

Agreed. Every emotion can be profound in a well written narrative, but the problem is when people shove tragedy into a story for the sake of having tragedy in a story, or any other emotion or aspect of story for that matter.

I honestly prefer everything happening in the rendered game world like most of BG2, rather than cinematic cutscenes. Imo, the cost to benefit ratio of cinematics is not favorable within a project with limited funding like this.

Moronic ideas deserve all the hate and vitriol they can get lest they somehow take hold. And frankly we should stop with this stupid notion that everyone should be enjoy games in any way they want - this way of thinking has brought us the current generation of "cRPGs" and should die in a fire alongside its proponents. I enjoy RTS games but suck terribly at them. It would never occur to me to demand they change just so I could see the story - I just cheated my way through Broodwars. I didn't say the game should change to accommodate how different people enjoy games, or that we can't criticize bad ideas. All I'm saying is that arguing that people are enjoying things wrong or playing a game wrong is subjective. Heck, I agree that there shouldn't be armor transmuting or whatever. For example, I do enjoy playing a role-playing game and making choices as if I were the character, but I like to stay within the frame of the created world, what armor I find is the armor I find. If I don't like what I'm using either for stats or looks, that's just motivation to go find better armor.