My two cents- Space could substitute for a lot of wanted items.
Player housing, screw having planets with user made towns and super laggy cities (ala SWG), give US a variety of ships that are different sizes, shapes, colors, and can differ in stats. Inside give US different rooms with furniture/decoration options (maybe introduce a crew skill for that?).
Mini games, forget card games/swoop races (for now) give US random areas in space to explore (asteroids fields, random space stations, ect...). I think even just flying alone "off-rail" would be enough "fluff" for a while.
PVP, no infiltrating enemyships and disabling them (isn't that what the voidstar PVP almost is?) let it be space PVP! Shooting enemys down?; or up however u look at it. You could even have air space over ilum as a "dogfight" open PVP zone.
A side note too is for added "realism" I fully enjoyed in SWG making sure u didn't leave your ship on another planet. No flying into tat, taking a shuttle to hoth and magically your ship is there! Should only be a legacy unlock or exclusive to smugglers/agents since they can call there ship for a flyby .
Edit:
Also if we have a ship with more than one turret allow us to bring a buddy along for double the damage.