Thought I start this thread to see what people have heard about this campaign setting specifically any changes planned or what you think should happen?
I can't help thinking that with the changes with magic items they don't have any upgradses in equipment come either courtesy of a dragonshard delivering a charge to an existing magical item to upgrade it or have House Cannith simply perform the upgrade if there's no available wizard, since if you have to have specific treasure caches or whatever they're called why would any player want to swap their +2 dragonslaying sword for a basic +3 weapon?
As someone who's currently running a 4e Eberron game, I can't wait to see the new material. I've heard from a few sources that there will be few changes to the Eberron canon. The default year will still be 998, and that everything you know about Eberron will remain largely the same.
That said, it'll be interesting to see how they handle dragonmarks. I expect to see something similar to the "channel divinity" feats from the PHB, but that still leaves the "non-combat" marks, such as Making, Scribing, etc. with little in the way of new options. I'll be interested to see how they overcome this obstacle.
I'm also looking forward to seeing how the new races fit in. I've heard that Dragonborn are going to be a dragonic servant race from the interior of Argonnesson and that Teiflings are from the Demon Wastes. Both of those make sense to me. Eladrin I'm not so sure about, although it's possible that they represent elves who fled to Thelanis to escape the giants. I'm hoping that they make an actual racial distinction between the Valanar elves and the Areneal elves this time. Of course, we'll also need full rules for gnomes, warforged, shifters and half-orcs for an Eberron setting, but I think they've all been announced for PHB2. I haven't heard anything about changelings or kalashtar yet.
One nice thing about the new setting book is that much of the races & classes stuff will be handled in the PHBs, which should free a lot of space in the setting guide for more fluffy stuff.
As far as changelings, the fact that doppelgangers are now playable from level 1 would remove some of the need for a 'lesser doppelganger' - simply have the ones in proper society called changelings, and the job is basically done.
Yes, my current campaign has a changeling wizard and a shifter ranger, and we're just using the appropriate rules from the MM. I'm concerned that the dopplegangers are not quite balanced with the core races. They get bonuses to Int and Cha, which are both "mental" stats, whereas it seems with the PHB races, an effort was made for each race to have one good physical stat and one good mental stat. Also, the dopplegangers power is not useful in combat, and sometimes a bit too good outside of combat or for setting up surprise attacks.