With Tabula Rasa, level grinding isn't focused on. There are instanced missions so you only play with the people you want to play with.
You can teleport around to avoid lengthy travelling just to hook up with your friends.
When you start an instanced quest, if you fail, you can restart the quest. Heck, if you succeed, you can do it again and try another strategy like stealth.
You can save your character build, and go back to it if you don't like the choices you've made with character development lately.
Everyone gets housing, and an allowance for decorating your housing with items, for free.
You can rebuild your character at any time. If a group needs a certian type of character, and you want to play with them, then reallocate your character points.
The game also features a new ideogram language made specifically for the game, and tons of neat features. It's been designed from the ground up to remove the parts of MMOs that aren't fun and focus on the parts that are fun.
And it's being designed by people who brought you the Ultima games.