I'm not sure how much to hope for from the UI. There were some complaints about Marvel Heroes, early on, that were along similar lines. The answer from the community coordinator finally was along the lines of "the control and UI layout are too engrained, at this point, to make changes that significant." Not sure how that applies, here, since NW, ostensibly, shares its engine with STO and CO. It would seem like they wouldn't want to stray so far from "what works," but there may be something we're not seeing, some industry trend that hasn't made its way to us, yet.
I said before how much it feels like a first person shooter in third person (the specific game I mentioned was Borderlands). Maybe that was deliberate. I actually did half expect the scroll wheel to change my on-hand weapon a couple of times.