I do have to ask though, I find the world presented in Eve sufficient to play out the role of a capsuleer. I mean, I always thought that sense of being divorced from the rest of New Eden, and the potential feelings of isolation and loneliness were intended? That in a sense you as a player are meant to feel just as disconnected as your character might be from everyone else that isn't a capsuleer themselves.
Sometimes I wonder if all the attempts at trying to build outside the glass walls CCP built is because they're the same walls our characters encounter?
Well, I personally would doubt that CCP was originally going for that feeling, though they probably did eventually course to that effect - Afterall, the old idea was to have Capsuleers eventually be able to go down and drive around on the surface of planets, fight/talk to people, etc. Hell, elements of that we're resurfacing in the old WoS stuff as little as 3 years ago, to my understanding.
But, that being said, I'd say you're right that we're now supposed to feel somewhat isolated from the rest of the universe. After all, the fiction does a fair amount to suggest that as well.
That said, though. Our characters might be in such a position now, but obviously, none of them were born in their pods. They were normal members of society until fairly recently. Obviously, if one wants to construct fully fleshed out individuals and not just avatars of the stereotypes of ones chosen faction, it's sort of necessary to think about what they were doing during that time.
This, in of itself, sort of requires some degree of worldbuilding, don't you think? Afterall, there are only a handful of fleshed out locations in the game. It'd get old real quick if everyone was from those few places. And the preset backgrounds are impossibly vague even if one follows them, which isn't really enough to take one out of stereotype territory.
I like to think that I'm pretty conservative in that respect - I only have a couple pages of fluff written up for Gwen's hometown, family and local Achur beliefs, none of which I intend to ever dump anywhere directly - though I'm sure others have even less established, maybe even as little as a vague idea of their characters family and the circumstances of their youth. But you seem to be implying that even that is overstepping ones place.
I mean, you can do without, of course. You can supplement IC motivations that might have been driven by a history for ones based around your own.
But, at that point, aren't you basically just playing yourself? Why even bother?