I do hope we can still get rare items, I actually have an alarm set while I'm sleeping so it can wake me up on time to get the free item so I'm not missing any refresh cycle. The best stuff I've gotten so far were Companions and Apparel, but I would love some genes.
I honestly miss when we got rare things in beta. Like, no genes or anything with the official release. I think my most rare item so far was a tree apparel item.