What's to become of Shadowrun Missions when 4 comes out?

Keep the stories, upgrade the rules/stats?

I think that's a safe assumption. Same for the Location and fluff stuff.

Shouldn't be hard at all, especially if all the 3rd Ed. stuff is still considered "compatible".

AFAICT "compatible" means they kept the stats and damage codes/difficulties the same or similar, but the rules across the archetypes have been homogenized.

The inherent problem that I see:

SR Missions established quite an interesting story line with the new adventures (SRM01-xx). If they switch to SR4, they will have to make the jump from 2065 to 2070 in ... well .... no time at all. Characters will have to add 5 years of doing ... nothing. The story line will have to jump ahead 5 years.
I don't like it .... at all.

That's exactly why the announcement of SR4 surprised me so much. Fanpro/Wizkids has done such a great job promoting SR activities and had such an ambitious publishing schedule planned that releasing a new edition seemed like the last thing they'd do, as they were busy building the SR3 brand.

It seems to me like our publishers have taken a page from the insidious megacorps of the SR world. All along, statements to the effect that there were no plans being made to develop SR4 were being bandied about. In truth, no plans were being made because development had already begun. Sneaky sneaky.

/skeptical.

Hey here is a thought SRM's continue as is in the story line and in a few years time the SRM's hit the wall that is 4th and the characters actually go through the chaos that is system failure and what not.

When done SRM's are now in the 4th ed setting and there is more story to do cause 4th has had a few years to make storyline that can be run in SRM's but hey just a thought.

I would imagine that the current Missions story arc would run its course and then a switch over to SR4 may occur with a new timeline (and characters aged by 5 years or a requirement to create new characters).

Of course this is all IMHO.

Yes, I thought so, too.

My concern with this is:
This 'switch' would have to occur just that moment that SR4 is released (August of this year).
The reason for this is that Missions is meant to draw new players into SR. It makes no sense to show them SR in the old timeline (using SR3), but them having to buy SR4 products (as SR3 products are no longer available) which uses a (probably vastly) different world and different rules and game mechanics.

I think the official answer right now is "We don't know for sure" Try back in Xxx Days. This is as a big surprise for just about everyone. Only a small number of folks know the in's and outs. So as of this day 03/18/05 I don't think there's an answer. Give it a week and I think Bit will know more. Hell he didn't even know about SR 4. There was a very very very strict non disclosure agreement on this news. So much so only a limited group knew. I think maybe one or two commando's may have known but can only confirm that one knew. And he was under the aforementioned non-disclosure agreement. So give bit some time to ramp up. I think in the way that this was handled Digital has it right. Not much is going to change. Many of the adventures I think are written for SR3 but don't quote me on that.