Hey dude,
First let me say that I have never played Wiz 7 or Wiz 8
. I have played the demo, complained bitterly about a Dec 14 release date in OZ, and spent copious time on Wiz 8 discussion boards. I would suggest you do a searc on importing - I think Scronan has a fair bit to say in one of his posts. The general gist that I understand is :
1) Some, but not all, cool items transfer
2) You get transported over as a level 1 character, with minimal stats, but have the option to allocate points for 5 automatic level ups.
3) You will lose all the cool "cross discipline" spells you used to know - magic users get to select their one spell per level up.