Zooming out
It’s funny, the game actually lets you zoom out a lot more during the Lupius encounter in Arah Explorable. So technically it’s possible.
I assume they limited the zoom for performance reasons.
Search the forums for FoV and you’ll see a LOT more about this issue. Basically, the reason why you feel you need to zoom out is because the FoV is really narrow. Anet is looking into it.