EVE is not two-dimensional and offers a lot of major and minor factions. That combined with the size of the cluster makes almost all non-spaceship-combat related interaction voluntary. That means that characters ( and to some extent players, too, although it's imho mostly the other way around ) rarely meet antagonists 'in the wild'.
Even if there were factional places where characters would hang out, it would be a very limited amount of people per channel. You can set up a "Capsuleer lounge" in Jita, where everyone currently doing business in Jita might come in ICly, but that's another place that would be entirely voluntary.
Avatar-based MMOs are rather small in the playable area and force chokepoints on players.
The current situation in EVE and its RP has two major reasons: A lack of places where characters have to go to achieve something aside voluntary socializing and a rather limited amount of visible RP corporations. Add the 'current' stalemate of EVE's story development into the mix and you seriously hamper people's motivations to invest time and energy into, what is essentially, a lot of work.