When you start a new character, you are given pre-set faction standings towards a number of the major factions, including the pirate ones. I'm pretty sure this is what he's talking about.
Added to the inability to create complex characters from the outset - in this case, starter schools that don't match your character's race, lack of equivalent 'starter' corps for factions not among the Big Four, this used to be a very disheartening prospect for the new guy who wanted to make (for example) an Ammatar loyalist or a Caldari dissident who's working for the Guristas, because not only would his/her character start in an inappropriate rookie corporation, but they would have pre-set standings that were based on loyalties the player didn't get to have any say in.
I don't see the problem here.
I don't think that you are 'supposed' to have a character with a background that spans years of actions in New Eden.
Everyone is equal when they start their career.
In EVE there is this great capacity in RP to actually have a
history that consists of the choices of your character and very real actions that it has done within the sandbox of EVE.
In EVE the fact that all RP was very real, in the sense that it required you to actually to do something in game, was why I was interested in it.
Not because I could godmode a Mary Sue to a spaceship.
As a GM on PnP RPGs the kind of players that have spent ages making background stories for themselves where they explain all the choices that they have made in their previous life before the campaign starts have always annoyed me.
Not because of their personalities, or that I felt that it was a waste of time.
It was because they were playing by themselves instead of interacting with the world and the people inhabiting it.
The penny that dropped for me was that I think this is how CCP feels.
They created the world, the background story, it has been filled with other players and NPC entities.
They created the 'campaign' for the players to be in the 0.0
The lowest priority for CCP are the people that have the inclination to play by themselves.
Not in the 'campaign' or with the world.
Hence, very little background information.
EDIT: Had a penny drop.