Doesn't help you, unfortunately, but I read in an interview with Joe Balcer that they are trying to balance between keeping the pre-orderers happy and giving too much away to the competition. They are also concerned that people will be very critical of the unfinished product, like what happened with WOZ.

Yes, thanks, that's where I read about Balcer not wanting to reveal too much of the design:

"I worked for Gary Stern for more than twelve years and I respect all those guys over there, but I don’t like to give them what I’m doing. Especially in today’s world with the Internet and how fast information moves. We put my layout out there and it was in the competition’s hand in a minute...So, to give a general idea of what’s going on, I’m OK with that. But to dig in to it and actually put out a lot more details, that’s something that I’m definitely not comfortable with." (From Pinball Magazine Interview)

I'm not sure, the only thing I can think of is the return to the shooter lane behind the upper-right flipper on WOZ being similar to the one on Star Trek.

From the pics on IPDB, I don't think the lane behind the flipper goes back to the shooter lane on Spider-Man, but you said "mod" so are you saying that some games were modded to do this? There may be other earlier games that have this set-up, anyone?

Maybe not, but I can still see why Balcer would be worried about releasing too much, if you are striving to stay ahead of the competition, it would be best to keep you cards close to your chest for as long as possible. Especially with release still so far away. If you released detailed information about the game now, other companies would have a year or more before Hobbit is released to come up with something to respond to it.

Absolutely, I'm not shooting the messenger, my 'thanks' was sincere not sarcastic. These were excellent interviews and gave us a great insight into the thinking of some of the people behind WOZ, please continue with your good work. As I said two posts up from yours, I can also understand Balcer's position. So...thanks again for providing them (I really mean it).