
David Marks |

Mr. Baker just put up a pretty sizable blogpost re: 4E's take on Eberron. Check it out here.
Make sure to scope out the comments as well, as he was being pretty active in answering questions asked when last I checked.
For those who don't want to follow the link, here is his post, but I don't have time to reproduce his responses in the comments. Go read them! :)
I'm working on a number of projects at the moment, including a big Eberron article for DDI (a longer piece than anything I've done for Paizo or the old WotC website) and the 4E Eberron core book. For anyone who hasn't heard the news, WotC has announced that they will be putting out three books for Eberron in 2009: a Campaign Guide (aimed primarily at DMs), a Player's Guide (including material relevant to both DMs and PCs), and an adventure. Beyond this, the setting will be getting DDI support; it's possible that there will be further print books, but that's entirely dependent on whether it proves to be economically feasible - so a lot will depend on how those core books do. Likewise, at the moment there's some significant support planned through DDI, but if you want to see that continue, it will certainly help to let the folks at DDI know that you're interested.
Looking to the 4E Campaign Guide and the Player's Guide, I want to say that these are NOT simply 4E translations of the ECS and the PGtE. You're not going to see a lot of duplication of material between the two; because they are coming out around the same time, if there's material that is equally relevant to both PCs and DMs, it's going to go in the Player's Guide. So looking to the current ECS, things like feats, dragonmarks, racial descriptions, the artificer, spells, and so on would all go in the Player's Guide. Nation descriptions will be aimed at what you need to know to create a character from a particular region - as opposed to the Campaign Guide, which will tell you things like which noble may be undead, who wants to go back to war and who wants to stop it, and so on. First, this means that there will be a much clearer delineation of "These are things known to the public, and these aren't". Second, it means that we will have room in the Campaign Guide to present information NOT available in the 3.5 ECS... whether it's just a greater level of depth on old ideas or organizations (what's House Tarkanan up to? How do you actually use the Dreaming Dark?) or presenting a few entirely new ideas to play with. With the benefit of hindsight, there are certainly things I wish we'd done differently in the 3.5 ECS, along with issues where we've had conflicts and contradictions between sourcebooks in the following years. MY goal is to have the 4E core books provide a solid and consistent foundation for the setting, and to ensure that they are interesting and useful both to newcomers to Eberron and to people who have been playing it since the start. Of course, I'm not the only person working on the books, and a lot can happen over the course of a year - so I can't promise specific coverage on any specific topics or go into great detail about anything. However, I'm excited by the potential I see in these books, and I believe that we've got far more to offer than just a mechanical update to 4E.
With that aside, I just saw Iron Man, and personally, I enjoyed it (it's a popcorn movie, certainly, but in my opinion it's a big ste up from Spiderman 3 and X-Men 3. If you see it, make sure to wait through the end credits!
I can't claim to be a huge Eberron fan, but I've liked what I've seen. I like the idea of diving the campaign setting books into "this one is more crunch, this one is more fluff". I especially like a clearer deliniation (spelling?) between the common knowledge and the super-secret hidden knowledge. Sometimes it's obvious what a player character should/should not know, but sometimes it's a lot murkier ...
Cheers! :)

Antioch |

I like the idea that we get a book for the DM, and a book for everyone else. I can just hand my players ONE book and tell them to have at it.
For my Age of Worms game, I had the Eberron Campaign Setting, Player's Guide to Eberron, Player's Handbook, and Races of Eberron.
This is not counting the other books that the players needed for their class: Magic of Eberron, Complete Divine, Complete Arcane, Complete Mage, Heroes of Horror, Book of Nine Swords, and Spell Compendium.
Having all the Eberron books wasnt the core of the problem, but it did contribute. If they can consolidate all that information into essentially ONE easy to reference resource, so much the better.
Otherwise, for a player new to the setting its pretty daunting to have all those books at hand. I'm more than happy to answer questions, but it gets tiresome with 5-6 players all clamoring for attention.
Glad to see that the story material will still be useful, but not required. I plan on selling them, except for perhaps Secrets of Sarlona. At least until something to the effect pops up on DDI. Hopefully Keith Baker's sizable article is an indication of what to expect when Wizards starts actually charging for access. Since they are rolling out fewer books, it means that I can more easily afford the 10 or so bucks a month.

Charles Evans 25 |
I seem to recall one book for players, another with the secrets, etc, of the setting for the DM being a feature of some of the second edition AD & D Planescape boxed sets.
On the 4E Eberron front, I suspect a lot of the detail to which third edition players had access will be denied to players who pick up the setting in 4E, given the distillation of the setting down into initially just 3 rulebooks.
Edit:
Reread the article posted by David. Interesting that Keith Baker hints that Wizards of the Coast might break their 'three books in print per setting' rule if there is enough demand from the fans.
As to the DDI, it seems to be a very ambitious project and I'm not certain if Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro will be able to make it do all the things which they want it to do so. In theory, yes it could be used for releasing extra material. In practice I'm currently sceptical about if/how it will work.