Finally played the game and I REALLY like it, but two notes: 1) I am a Star Trek fanboy, and 2) I have never been into MMOs at all, so old innovations feel new to me.
That said the game basically plays like Dragon Age with no pausing, the graphics look decent on the ground, awesome in space. The fact there are a hundred people in every area with me seems almost like background animation, I don't even pay attention to them. I plan to play it "singleplayer" and do all the main "episode" quests as they described them, then quit. I am pretty jazzed.
That said I only did the tutorial so it might crash and burn afterward.
If you are a Trek fan, wait till you see the episodic missions. They are full of references and stuff pulled from all the old trek episode and they are a lot of fun. I made it to LT CMDR 4 at the end of closed beta and my last episodic mission have me going WOW WOW WOW many times. They seems to have some true Trek fans in the dev team and they have put in references and nods to the franchise all over the place.
P.S. If you need a hand on some of the tougher mission, look me up, I'm @Wiz33 in game.