Since it was possible in Genesis i am a little confused with the multiplayer in MoTBW. Is it possible to play on shards in hotseat like in Genesis, at least will they patch it into the game?
Since 1.0.4. introduced hotseat i was expecting a true multiplayer mode not just quick point battles. They're not bad by any means its just they are only part of the game.

With 1.0.5. its still not there i really hope they will add it. I think since Genesis had hotseat it would be strange if they remove it from MotBW.

I'm waiting for hotseat mode until I'll actually purchase. Hotseat is one of the main reasons I play turn based strategy.

Word from another forum is that one of the Devs posted on a Russian-language site that they will be doing Hotplayer MP on Shard maps at some point (how's that for 3rd hand news?!?). No details, but it's on their Dev list. I think they have some more bugs to squash (primarily the "no bonus for Home Shard defense", a lack of Diplomacy functions, and the "AI performance on large map" issues) before they move onto Hotseat.

I'd love to see the Internet MP functionality at some point, but it's not a need-to-have right now. I suspect they're confronted with scarce Dev resources and are trying to figure out what the commercial success will be before they commit to huge deliverables.

The buggy state of the game at launch had to make it harder for them to get a good projection of what long-term sales might look like. Just my $0.02.