Yes it's an mmo and it should feel like an mmo but I do know many people including the devs wanted to capture the single player feel. My opinion they did pretty damn good but some don't think so. I have come up with a solution to this.
Later with an expansion have it be more of a single player map, like the normal zones for leveling. It would be for end game. So we would have an entire map that would level you from VR 12 to VR 13. You can go anywhere you'd like to explore and quest. It would not be like a zone now where you can't go anywhere you want because you'd be killed instantly from higher levels enemies. Just one big massive zone for vr12 players. Pretty much craiglorn but it won't require a min of 4 players to go through it.