I have to completely disagree with you, and I have or had six years of WoW playing. Just Tatooine alone feels much bigger than any continent in WoW. What makes Azeroth seem bigger is that the zones are completely different from each other on the continents. Starting at the third planet you travel to you start to see how much bigger the zones are in SWTOR. The trap is that due to the way they are designed, they actually look endless, so when you hit that invisible wall (which WoW has PLENTY of) some people feel let down.

Now, I don't have any idea why people keep saying that the game doesn't "feel" like an MMO. Why, because I don't have 50 people all fighting for the same quest mob or item? There's plenty of people around, grouping via General chat is easy, lots of fun and provides a real bonus where WoW seems to discourage grouping by the xp reduction. I see a lot of people out in the world, and if I join a player or group that's in another instance I can transfer to that and see them.

"You explore by travelling from one part, one zone to another in a continuous and natural manner and the game world opens up in front of you in a seemingly never ending vista." That's exactly how the game plays. The real difference between WoW and SWTOR right now is that in WoW you could take different paths to level up, because there were multiple zones for each level range. SWTOR doesn't have that yet. However, Cataclysm leveling is even more linear than WoW used to be, if you only stick to one path. You can jump to the other path, but you lose out on the storylines you have been following that way.