First time into the beta was this past weekend, and I really enjoyed it except for a feeling of being confined where ever I was. I made a Consular and got to level 15. Apart from the starting/home world, I was able to explore the space station (I forget name, the one that had the Esseles flashpoint and Hammer Station) as well as making it to Coruscant.
The only other MMO's I've played are WoW, and Everquest. To me, both of those games gave me a true sense of "hugeness" and openness, where you could literally walk for an hour in one direction while finding new places. However I felt a little confined in each map or location that I was in while playing TOR, almost as if I was in a large instance (Yes, I know the worlds are their own instance, but for a whole planet it seems kind of small). I remember doing the bonus Guild quests to kill all the guild people on Coruscant and it wasn't really open at all, just a few rooms connected to each other by two seperate routes...hardly what I would call open.
Maybe this is the model that Bioware is going for, which is perfectly fine as it's their game. And maybe it is actually different with other planets or locations which I didn't get to experience. But I felt like I didn't have much freedom to explore or find secret or hidden places.
Did anyone else feel this way?