I think you might be right, even tho this seemed a perfect example of a franchise almost custom designed to fit an MMO perfectly.

Players, you have an entire army to create to explorer/defend the galaxy, having tons of people makes perfect sense.

Travel, again perfect sense to travel on foot 90% of the time, and magically appear in far off strange places.

About the only thing that doesn't really make sense would be a sort of in game economy, as technically you'd all be members of the army, but hey, we can gloss over that right?