As been mentioned, the disjointed feel of Tor has a lot to do with the world spanning across planets and galaxies. This isnt the case with WoW which only exists on a single planet spreading across continents. With Tor, it is almost impossible to replicate the wow feel of exploration because the game world is spread across the universe.
Players need to travel via their own space ships, theres no changing that unless you want to see stuff like teleport ala star trek or portals like in wow. I think this is not an option for most players for obvious reasons.
Personally what the game really needs is an end game planet that is both large and open that allows players to converge and do stuff either together or against each other. A stronghold that matters and relevant to you as either a pve and pvp player. Ilum was the answer to this but it has gone stale and the pvp aspect of it seems to be broken beyond repair. A dynamic event of sort can go a long way to ensure players stay engaged and relevant to Tor.