Never could get my head around trading since the early gamma days. Rares are simple enough and you can even get in a little exploring, but those pesky NPCs are just annoying. The best thing about a good jump range is that you can quickly blast your way out of the "civilised" bubble and get some peace and quiet. I've been thinking about hanging out near the occupied systems to see what 1.3 brings, but the only thing I've seen in the feature list so far that could be interesting to explorers are the additional fuel tanks that will apparently be available.
Getting dropped from the server several times yesterday made me eventually quit as well. My go-to offline game is still Age of Empires III with the expansions.
Last night after the server threw me out again, I didn't care to log in again and continue the grind. And I lost the feeling of looking forward to playing the game.