Speaking from my own point of view, it's at least moderately true though. It took me about 9 months to get to level cap in WoW during my first play through (when it was 60) and 3 months on the second (85 and I knew what I was doing). SWTOR was 2 months and I found myself playing a lot more of it than I did WoW. In fact, I've played SWTOR so much at this point that I have 10 level 50 toons. Honestly, that's never happened in any other game. Ever. Even in WoW I only had two level 85 toons (and just 1 60 way back when), and that was only because DKs start off at 55. I know this is anecdotal at best but there it is.
Edit: Just went to look at one of my 50s I've not played very much and got there before the double exp weekends, my Sage, and she's at 5 days, 18 hours. Again, didn't play much once I hit 50, and even taking into account potential PvP queue wait times (we'll say 12 hours in all), with lots of spacebarring except for class story, which honestly won't take up the remaining 6 hours on that extra 18, and that's still over 120 hours. So the time needed to level is there, but people just blow through it.