It's foolish to be different for the sake of being different. It's a much better idea to look back and see what works well and what doesn't work well. It's also not wrong to experiment, but you have to be willing to adjust accordingly. They can release the game like it is now, but if something seems broken with how the way the systems work with respect to each other, then it'd be really foolish not to try to make it better after the game is released just because it might upset a couple people.

I'm going to say that I think having tribal safe zones is a good idea. Since, like it's been pointed out, that's a relatively small area. However, are there any "exploits" with this? Well, yes I think there are. People can set up individual homesteads that function as safe zones, so a bunch of individuals could form a de facto tribe of homesteads around a lot of resource nodes, practically cornering the market for those items if they don't appear in suitible quantities. This might not be so bad knowing that they can be killed while transporting their goods amongst their "tribe" mates, but it's still just one scenerio that might not be balanced as well as it otherwise could be.

Another issue is the ghost form. Good players can just stalk and spy on people when they are dead and no one can do anything about it. Or they can keep respawning over an evil player until they wear that person down enough to kill them. This effectively makes good players invulnerable. The Good vs. Evil system needs to be tweaked to make it more fair. It should certainly be harder for an evil player, but only if the rewards for doing so are good enough to compensate. Just that it'd be a harder, more difficult, playstyle would be enough of a detterent for many people to choose to be good. But it MUST be balanced.