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It's impossible to tell until we see the core books, I think. I kind of hope the conversion's possible. We'll see.

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I absolutely agree that it is impossible to tell until we see the books. I think it highly impractical to even evaluate if it is worth while to do until we see the new core books. Maybe 4th Edition will be as dynamic an innovation to D&D as 3E was when it came out. Then again, maybe I'll look at it like I did the change from AD&D to 2nd Edition, which did not strike me, overall, as a dramatic improvement.

I suspect that even if I do eventually decide to convert my Ptolus game, it will be after the completion of Night of Dissolution. Given the frequency of play, and the rate of movement my group usually demonstrates, this will be well after the release of 4E.

I remain very impressed with Ptolus as a campaign toolkit: the setting, history, factions, groups, maps, descriptions, etc. Much of it, especially the way the material is setup for creating your adventures, will translate regardless of the game mechanics you use. Just take a look at the number of people who use Ptolus as a setting for Arcana Evolved games.

However, the farther away from the base setting one takes it, the more work required to get the mechanics in place for play. I cannot evaluate if that work is worth effort, or if the change in mechanics justifies the work, until I have seen and played with the new system for a bit. Eventually, the flavor of the base mechanics and the flavor of the setting do have issues working together. I might conceive of running Ptolus using GURPS, for example, but it would certainly change the experience of my players in the city a lot.

If it is justified at all to make the switch from 3.5 to 4E, I suspect I will find it easier on the upper half of the d20 level range. The adventures material outlined pg 589 for levels 10 and above seem to me to be the most "tool kit"-ish of the adventure material - the material I would most likely do my own extensive development work on anyway to fit to my group and campaign. Reworking that material to fit a different core mechanic will obviously take more work, but it may only be a relatively small or reasonable fraction of the work required to get it ready for my campaign anyway.

In the meantime, I feel comfortable knowing that I have a campaign that I enjoy running and that my players enjoy playing in, and that we will be quiet happy to continue on with as is for a long while to come yet.