As @Sara_Seraph said:
You have to look at the history of EVE to appreciate how we got to where we are now. In the beginning, character portraits were fairly primitive—orders of magnitude less customizable than they are now. And we had them because we (the human players) like to have face to identify our character with, and with which to identify others.
When Incarna was released and WiS/Captain’s Quarters was introduced, we got the new, fancy character creator and full-body avatars (it was only a headshot before). We also got apparel and augmentations, and a currency called Aurum with which to buy them. This was when microtransactions were introduced to EVE.
The stated goal at the time was to eventually allow characters to walk around in stations, go to bars, gamble in casinos, and do other stuff. In reality, all that ever came of the feature was a single room and a locked door (Captain’s Quarters).
WiS/CQ withered on the vine, but the vestigial character creator remained, because (as it turns out) the microtransaction model still works, even without WiS. Players will pay to purchase apparel and augmentations, if only to dress up their character portrait and avatar. So, really, CCP figured out they could have their microtransactions without spending any more dev cycles on WiS.
Anyway, that’s how we got dress-up dolls and no dollhouse.
