Ok, here are some quotes I found on ENworld with some commentary and emphasis added:

compiled on ENworld:  My comments in red. I place emphasis with intalics & underline

James Wyatt -- And it is a rise, let me tell you. I'm so excited about Fourth Edition I can barely contain myself. Running the Delve in our booth yesterday was awkward—I saw so many of the things I have grown to dislike about 3E come into play. Oh, the poor rogue's useless against all these plants and elementals. Oh, the poor dwarf didn't confirm his crit. Oh, look at all the people forgetting about attacks of opportunity (especially at reach) and getting pummeled as a result. I can't say too much about it, but you can be sure it's not just grapple that got an overhaul.    --Sounds good to me, I hope that AOOs stay around in SOME for though.


James Wyatt -- I'm playing a paladin in Andy Collins' monthly game. I love paladins—I seem to keep writing about them in my fiction. (Check out "Blade of the Flame" in the Tales of the Last War anthology for a concise example, or read my other novels!) But I've never liked playing a paladin. At one point during the design of this game, I made a paladin for a game where we were testing out Dungeon Tiles, and it made me so sad. I could smite evil once. Then I was done—down to swinging my sword once per round. I wasn't sad when I died. I love my new paladin. --So Palidins can now be good without their horse? They are no longer just underpowered fighters?

Mike Mearls -- Design game elements for their intended use. Secondary uses are nice, but not a goal. Basically, when we build a monster we intend you to use it as a monster. If we build a feat, it's meant as a feat, not a monster special attack. If we also want to make it a playable character race, we'll design a separate racial write up for it. We won't try to shoehorn a monster stat block into becoming a PC stat block. The designs must inform each other, but we're better off building two separate game elements rather than one that tries to multiclass.

As an example, the a theoretical minotaur PC race write up draws on and evokes the feel of the minotaur monster, but it doesn't simply copy over the rules.

BTW, who knew that so many people disliked Vancian spellcasting? The entire audience in yesterday's seminar cheered and clapped when we told them it was (mostly) gone.

James Wyatt -- See, in 3e there's a basic assumption that an encounter between four 5th-level PCs and one CR 5 monster should drain away about 25% of the party's resources, which primarily translates into spells (and primarily the cleric's spells, which determine everyone else's total hit points). What that actually means is that you get up the morning, then have three encounters in a row that don't reallly challenge you. It's the fourth one that tests your skill—that's where you figure out whether you've spent too much, or if you still have enough resources left to finish off that last encounter. Then you're done. So basically, three boring encounters before you get to one that's really life or death.

It kind of makes sense, mathematically. The problem is, it's not fun. So what lots of people actually do, in my experience, is get up in the morning and have a fun encounter: there are multiple monsters that are close to the PCs' level, so the total encounter level is higher than their level. There's interesting terrain and dynamic movement. Sometimes there are waves of monsters, one after another. Whew! It's a knock-down, drag-out fight that could really go either way. And it's fun!

So you get up at 8:00 AM, you have that fun encounter, and you rest "for the night" at 8:15 AM. Repeat as needed.

It was like I was preaching again. I was on a roll. Andy said the people in the front might have been a little scared of me.

Mike Mearls -- The important thing to keep in mind is that we're not necessarily interested in changing things into completely new things. The core lies in making D&D an even better version of D&D, not some other, new game. I've said this a few times at the con, but we have no interest in turning D&D into a miniatures game, a computer game, a game that requires a laptop at the table, or a boardgame. We want D&D to be D&D. -emphasis from original or enworld

For me, the best moment of this entire process, the real pay off of working on 4e and playtesting, was getting the chance to play D&D for the first time again. For my playtest dungeon, I used the sample map from the 1e Dungeon Master's Guide. As the characters crept down the dungeon stairs and fought the first group of goblin guards, it felt like 1983 all over again. No one was exactly sure what lurked down in the dungeon depths. Goblins were still runty little evil humanoids, but they pulling off little tricks that players had never seen before. Throughout the playtest, I kept thinking back to the first time I rolled dice behind a DM's screen, leading players through the Keep on the Borderlands and (the admittedly forgettable) Blizzard Pass.

Rodney Thompson -- After having played (and worked on, a bit) D&D 4E, I really feel like a lot of things get blown out of proportion. When I play my 4E rogue, I feel like I'm playing what I call "3rd Edition ++" to steal a computer programming colloquialism. My rogue still sneaks around, leaps from the shadows, stabs a bad guy, and retreats just like in 3rd Edition. But my 4E rogue does all that, then leaps over the heads of a line of enemies, waits for an opening when an opponent attacks him and then counterattacks immediately, and twists the knife to create a huge gash in the enemy. I'm still finding traps, unlocking doors, ambushing bad guys, leaping from rooftops, and all of those things, but as I do so I'm far less distracted by the rules than I am under 3E.

Don't get me wrong, I love 3rd Edition. But I think of 3rd Edition kind of like a first generation console video game in that sometimes it isn't programmed very efficiently. Ever played a first-gen game and seen the "slowdown" effect, where the system can't keep up with the graphics or the number of bad guys on screen? That's how I feel about 3E these days. I like what it's trying to accomplish, but it just doesn't happen very efficiently and things slow to a crawl. 4E on the other hand is like a late-gen game; the programmers have learned better ways to do things on the console, and as such you have even better games that don't experience as many slowdowns. When you think of the roleplaying gamer as the console, you can see what I mean. 4E benefits from many years of game design, and I think people will see that they still will be doing the same things, they will just be able to do them faster.

Going back to some 4E specifics, one of the the things I have enjoyed about 4E is that it's very much a "yes you can" game. It lets people do fun and exciting things, and it lets them do them without much complication. My character is Thicket, a brawny-dextrous rogue that's not too up on social graces and has some friends in low places (I can't believe I just quoted that song). At one point out tougher fighter-types and gone down and I was the #1 target for the monsters. While the other players whittled the enemies down, I was leading them around in a chase across the battlefield, running up walls and flipping over bad guys to keep them from laying down the inevitable smack. I'd built the character to be kind of a mobile combatant and it worked to my advantage. Thanks to one of my magic items I would occasionally dash across the battlefield when an enemy got too close, and we barely made it out alive. It was very exciting, and I essentially played the defensive role in the party once the fighter-types were down, just in an unusual way.

Rodney Thompson -- So, since the convention is over, I think it's safe to reveal my secret to the world now. When someone came up to me to talk about D&D 4th Edition, I was allowed to share this secret with them: Wizards will be able to cast 25th-level spells. Maybe some of the other guys will share their secrets with the world now too. Thanks to everyone who came to talk to me at the show, though! --The D&D podcast did mention a house ruled 20 level spellcasting system at one point. I know this has confused a lot of plyers (I'm fifth level, why don't I have fifth level spells?)

Christopher Perkins -- In case you're wondering, Asmodeus won't be joining Orcus in the new MM because, as I previously hinted, the Lord of the Ninth is getting a promotion to god status in 4E. His holy (unholy?) symbol will be among those appearing in the Player's Handbook. I'm thinking we should get rub-on tattoos of the various holy symbols in time for next year's show. lol Also, I'm thinking how much fun it would be if R&D folks, myself included, actually ran some 4E D&D game sessions next year at Gen Con.
--What? Orcus is WAY cooler than Asmodeus. And Orcus is listed as being closer is becoming a true god than Asmodeus in hordes of the Abyss.

David Noonan -- Daily Work: Plus I had a nice, meaty design assignment to work on. Suffice it to say that I'm working on a significant customization choice your character makes midway through his or her career--and it's a choice that'll evolve over, say, ten levels or so. More on those when I get 'em written.

David Noonan -- The Gish: Gish lovers (and those who are, um, gish-curious), I've got your back.

Terminology Note: When I say "gish," I'm not referring specifically to githyanki fighter/wizards. Nor am I talking about a really good Smashing Pumpkins album, Gish. I'm talking more generally about characters who are capable melee combatants and reasonably good arcane spellcasters, too.

One of the things I'm working on is some character-building pieces to support the archetype. And as I write, I wonder, "I'm not sure the gish needs the help. He might be OK with just our crazy new multiclassing rules."

Multiclassing: New multiclassing rules, you ask. Yep, we've got 'em. Multiclass characters are running at a couple of our internal playtest tables right now. Early results are promising, but we're talking about only a couple of characters, so we haven't seen broad proof of concept yet.

It's easy to critique 3e multiclassing, but it's also important to remember that they represent a massive, double-quantum leap from multiclass/dual-class rules in 1e/2e. We really like the configurability and freedom of 3e multiclassing, the way it's extensible even when you add new classes to the mix, and how it respects (to a degree, anyway) the changing whimsy of players as their characters evolve.

But it's got some problems--and in particular, it doesn't tackle the gish very well. There's the arcane spell failure problem, which takes some levels of the spellsword PrC, a little mithral, and some twilight enhancement to take care of. But beyond that, the low caster level can be just crippling for the fighter/wizard who wants to blast the bad guys into oblivion, rather than use his spellbook as a really good utility belt.

So that's one big problem--the caster level situation. In 3e, we've cemented over that with some prestige classes and feats. But there's another problem: Your journey through the "Valley of Multi-Ineffectiveness." For the gish, it's hard to truly be, well, gishy at low levels before you've figured out a reasonable answer to the armor problem. You can't really wade into melee like a fighter, because you're gonna get creamed. So you have to take an "I'm basically a wizard for now" or "I'm basically a fighter for now." That works, but you're just biding your time until you get to play the character you want to play.

And for the gish's cousin, the wizard/cleric, his "Valley of Multi-Ineffectiveness" isn't quite as deep, but it lasts a little longer--until he qualifies for mystic theurge, anyway.

So the improvement we're seeking from the multiclass system is something that solves some specific math problems (the caster level thing) and some specific career-path problems (letting you feel like a blend of classes from the get-go).

The Gish, Today: So what does this mean for our gish PCs at the playtest tables? Well, from very early levels, he's weariing armor, stabbing dudes, and casting spells. He's not as good at stabbing as the fighter, nor as good at casting as the wizard. But he's viable at both. In theory.

In theory? Well, like I said, the gish characters don't have a lot of mileage on them yet. And creating hybrid characters involves a careful balancing act. Multiclass characters can't be optimal at a focused task (because that horns in the turf for the single-class character) and they can't be weaksauce (because then you've sold the multiclass character a false bill of goods and he doesn't actually get to use the breadth of his abilities). There's a middle ground between "optimal" and "weaksauce" that I'll call "viable." But it's not exactly a wide spot of ground.

Finding that viable middle ground isn't a problem unique to 4e. The 3e designers (myself included) took lots of shots at it; the bard, the mystic theurge, and the eldritch knight are all somewhere on the optimal-viable-weaksauce continuum. And any WoW shaman, druid, or paladin knows firsthand the sorts of continual rebalancing they've undergone as Blizzard tries to keep their hybrid classes in the middle of that continuum.

grr. Am I the only on who finds these characters annoying? I've yet to see a concept of mixed spellcaster/fighter I like yet....I saw a good Arcane Warrior is Monte Cooks years best d20 though...

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-Nova

IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies. --The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Noam Chomsky. The New York Review of Books, February 23, 1967.