Personally, I've never been very struck on Vancian - especially on the table-top - because it just didn't gel well with anything but D&D's magic system. None of the fantasy novels with magic that I've personally read (except Discworld, which sort of a parodied D&D) ever used anything like Vancian for their magic. And indeed, prior to D&D 3.0, my system of choice was Rolemaster (which uses power points). (Note that while I play 4E, 3.5 is my system of choice (or more accurately, 3.Aotrs, since it stuffed full of house rules and cribs from 4E Pathfinder and anything else that has some good ideas!)
That said, I liked the magic in PD:T and BG2, especially once you got to higher level and got going (plus there were some delightfulyl fun spells!)
So I wouldn't object to to Vancian, in priciple.
That said, I think the ten-minute adventuring day problem needs to be addressed. I like playing wizards - especially in CRPGs with all the shiny, shiny death - but the whole eight hours rest thing has either one of two effects: either a) if freely available, it becomes mostly irrelevant (you could replace it with a 4E short rest or something) or b) if restricted, it can be a pain in the arse sometimes. I never have gotten around to finishing Mask of the Betrayer, for example, despite the fact I was a Warlock, the fact that the major NPCs were all primary spellcasters was a real pain, because we couldn't stop to rest without going whappy from the soul-hunger. I felt like I had to race through the game, and it made it rather not-fun. (I don't like even soft time limits (specific quests aside) for the same reason - I find them distracting and at worst, I find I end up basically following a walkthrough so I do't "miss" anything.
There is, of course, the possbility to just whole-heartedly embrace a), and then just set the combats up such that you expect each one to basically be a boss fight, where both the PCs and the enemies nova all their resources; this is what I generally tend to do when running on the tabletop (and how I often played BG2/IWD). (If it's not a boss fight, I don't worry about the PCs slaughtering it). This, of course, basically leads to "you rest for eight hours, moving on", which, as I say, renders the time period effectively pointless. (But at that point, you've shifted the basic paradigm away from resource management over time to tactical resource management. Now, I don't object to that, as it gives you lots of high-stakes, exciting combat, but it does require a shift in thinking away from more traditional RPG "random encounter" or very short combats. Middle-Earth Third Age was the closest I saw in that regard, in which the combats were all fairly stiff opposition, as opposed to the often fairly trivial thinsg you find in say, JRPGs and some of the IE stuff.)
I think there needs to be a balance between the two, giving you some limitations, but without them becoming too much of a pain for the wizards to play. In my own heavy modifications to 3.x, what I have done is convert to a mana-system, but basically, I give the classes two pools - one for 1-3rd level spells (which refreshes slowly over the day) and one for 4th plus level spells (which requires the old eight-hour rest). Between the former and the D&D's Reserve feats (which, for those not in the know, basically gave you a spell-like ability you could spam of a certain type (e.g. the fire spell one gave you a little explodey fireball you could spam, the strength being based on the highest-level fire spell you had loaded), it meant that wizards didn't tend to run out of spells to cast (which is a particular problem at bottom level.) (4E's at will/per encounter/per day system isn't too bad in that respect, I'll give it that, if making everyone work in the same way isn't the way I'd have done it.)
I'd be happy with something that let you set up your spells for the "day" either full Vancian or more like 3.5's sorcerer (i.e. you have a number of spells per level which you can cast as you like); or possibly better, something like the Spirit Shaman, which basically allowed you to change the spells you had access to cast every day (i.e. spells known), but allowed you to cast the spells like the sorcerer.
Mana pools work too, but there is a tendancy for them to become a bit less utility-ey, and generally you tend to find they give you less breadth of variety of spells.
So I think what you want is a magic system that gives you bigger spells less frequently (and perhaps "loaded" like Vancian) and then some weaker, supplementary spells that you could spam when you ran out of big ones (either by giving you a lot more spells per day, a regenerating mana pool (either during or at the end of the encounter) or with short cool-downs. Any of the above would work.
On the other issues, I definately like the idea of a variety of spells available (as the IE games had) - even if, if I'm honest 95% of the time I stocked up on various flavours of "explodey-in-yer-face!" though I quite like the idea of upgrading spells as well. (Perhaps either though some sort of skill or feat/quirk system (either permenantly or liek 3.x's metamagic feats), or through "recipes" or scrolls or something found through the game. (So you could upgrade your (spammable?) magic missiles to, I dunno, D6+2 damage or something, or memorise them so that they do elemental damage (instead or in addition to) or something.
I also like the arcane/divine spilt, though I think taking a leaf from 3.x and even 4E and giving the "divine/nature" side a few more explodey-in-the-fcae options (different ones to the arcane side) would be nice.
Though if I'm honest, I'd go further for wizard-magic/divine-magic/nature-magic/psionics or something...! (Again, blame Rolemaster for having "arcane/wizard" magic, divine magic, mental magic, their arcane magic (which was basically a sort of magic made from the others combined), possibley elemental magic seperate from that, prosaic magic (which was like really crappy professional magic for use in leather working - fear Strand Bolt, the level 30 spell! (For reference RM's Lightning Bolt and Fireball, staple offensive spells were like levels 8-10...)) and psionics (in two flavours...) Which is, to be honest, waaay too much to expect from Eternity (and the poor Obsidian staff as that sort of magnitude of workload would probably send them all whappy...!)
Well, that were a big post to start on the forums with weren't it...?
Yes. This. That would be nice. I am a huge Undead fan; I'm practially Undead myself... Lots of Undead, definately. Though, for my necromancy, we can lose the zombies and the Vampires (and maybe ghouls), though, and stick with interesting Undead, skeletons (because skeletons are cool), LICHES, wraiths, ghosts (there's a lot of play with those sort of generic Undead when creating a new mythogy) and some more obscure types that could be new and fresh... relatively speaking, of course... Draugrs, from Norse mythology, for example.
