That reminds me of the Order of the Stick webcomic, when a female dwarf cleric (Hilga) tried to kill her husband with a poison sandwich. Regretably for her, it didn't work. ;)
Fine, but why not full-blown orcs instead of half-orcs? That "serious backstory implied" is just stupid. With neutral orc tribes in the monster manual, it would be not that hard to justify.
Sha'ir
Wow, THAT's something I did not expect from WotC. Time to dust off my copy of The Complete Sha'ir Handbook (one of the best AD&D modules I've ever had)!
Yeah, but it's not the whole story. COMPUTER games looked like that. Arcade games were better: remember, Virtua Fighter 3 was released in 1996 (and in 1998 for DreamCast).
Nowadays, good computers beat arcades (they still exist?). I don't buy your protest of "3d modeling is trickier than 2d...
Concerning Mystara as the whole setting, I agree with you. But, being someone who started playing D&D in the era of AD&D 2e, I really liked the Karameikos and Glantri setting books. A lot.
That said, I voted for Al-Qadim, because its books were superb.
I loved that idea. It seems a good business strategy for the pre-4th edition months, and also just the kind of RPG material I like. Focused on story and mood instead of rules ;)
Of course, the "Any Edition" logo seems intentionally misleading, with that "4ny" thing.