I'd probably prefer buying MoM again from Gog.com to playing a 'strict' MoM conversion mod. But a volunteer effort to make a MoM2 with Elemental's engine could be the thing that finally gets me seriously interested in modding as both a player and a contributor.

The Guardian Spirits are one of the things I've been missing regularly since the beta started. I still think that controlling a shard in base Elemental should require a spell and not a building or at least a spell and a building.