sorry man, I can't see an open environment as you suggest. MAYBE easier ways to jump to your ship like in Kotor and even expansion of your abilities for customizing your ship. That looks like it will be the customized environment for swtor. It may be limiting, but I bet we will see it actually promotes some advantages.
plus they haven't really put limits on how many characters we can have.. so that adds alot of potential. I do forsee more flashpoints/quests/heroics, perhaps more planets to build on. While I kinda wish, with the limitations they gave us, that we wouldn't be tied to actual servers, I can understand why they deployed that way. So I understand why it would be nice to add a connection to a "space". unfortunately, I have friends that went to other servers so to play with them I have to create alts. :/ I guess no biggie tho...