I agree about the lack of interesting stats on items, especially after playing GW2 recently, some of the items there can be imbued with some quite interesting abilities.

I also find the stat boosts quite low, for example;
I'm currently wearing level 16 gloves that provide +2 INT
A quest here provides a reward of level 41 gloves with +5 INT
25 levels later and the stats only increase by +3, on average we seem to be looking at +1 per 10 levels

It doesn't give much of an incentive to upgrade gear often.