Tabula Rasa patch notes look promising

We've been waiting for a while now, and they've been teasing for a while now, but Tabula Rasa's 1.4 patch notes are finally available for perusing on the official website. On top of the promised universal attribute respec, there's a huge list of changes (both announced and not) too long to list in this space, but we thought we could pull out a few of the ones we're most excited about:

• Item rarity has been changed again. Purples are now only attainable through Shared missions, blues through instance missions, and greens will be regular quest rewards. This might just fix the economy.

• Hybrid races have been added, allowing players to make clones with Thrax, Brann, and Forean DNA spliced in. It's not even three weeks into January and already we have our #1 wish for 2008 fulfilled!

• Changes to the Guardians staff abilities were implemented, upgrading their melee power and hopefully acting as their ticket out of nerfville.

• Health and armor have been brought closer together for both players and enemies, enhancing the importance of health and healing. Higher level enemies have had their health and armor bumped down a little bit to allow for higher player survivability.

All positive changes, and all things we're looking forward to trying out on the PTS. Among the concerns we still have that aren't addressed though is the long-term viability of the game in terms of quests, crafting, and PvP, none of which are really addressed in these patch notes.