With how they keep specifying that what are shown in this except are Heroic Tier racial feats, I wonder if there are going to be Paragon and Epic Tier racial feats as well.
Other boardgames should also work. I've had tons of fun playing Fantasy Flight's A Game of Thrones and Twilight Imperium with friends that I don't roleplay with anymore due to other time conflicts.
Star Wars Saga Edition doesn't give any freebie stat increases at all. Instead, you get 2 stat bumps to different stats every four levels.
As far as that goes, though, we don't really know what the ability score ranges are going to be in 4e or how they increase.
What I find interesting is that rapiers (as well as katanas, and the rest of the mentioned weapons) are all under the Superior Weapons, which is different than Military. This must be the new exotic weapon category.
As far as less Dex goes, you can use your speed to your advantage by eventually going the spring attack route (still need a 13 Dex, though).
Otherwise, you can focus more on Con and Wisdom.
The writers on the Wizards boards have mentioned that they actually have increased the scales to include larger size categories than Colossal: http://boards1.wizards.com/showpost.php?p=12492316&postcount=67
16/20. The eyes have it, but my thought in the matter came almost exclusively from a line in the Goblet of Fire book about Karkaroff's smilte that doesn't reach his eyes. Fun to learn something actually accurate from books.
As someone briefly mentioned, not advancing levels is rather pointless for D&D, unless the game is only a one shot deal. Most of the fun that I derive from playing deals with advancing the abilities of characters over a period of time, which would not happen without gaining experience.
The main concern would be getting the necessary skill points for the right skills.
Given a 16 Int Human, you would get the following skill points per level and what you need to spend them on:
Fighter 1 ... 24 ... spending 8 points for 2 ranks in two knowledges
Wizard 1 though 5... 6 each level...
Gems are trade goods and should technically sell for their listed price (PH, pg 112, under Selling Loot). However, without appraise ranks, a character really wouldn't know what that price is, and the gem merchants need not be too reliable.