I ran into this way back when I played Eve Online...
We always had people or knew of people who got the best ships money could buy ( say, a Thanatos carrier ) and sat just inside docking radius to a station. After aggressing someone, the "player" would get his kicks taking the damage ( destroying everyone who came along ) right up until someone who was strong enough showed up, then docked until the threat to his ego went away. After it calmed down a bit, back out he'd come to pop more player ships.
Eventually the @sshat got himself a Mothership, then proceeded to
really wreak havoc on all the newer players that came out to this one backwater area to "get away from it all", just to be rewarded with the same griefing they had traveled for almost an in-game half hour to get away from. He was a real peach.
As Georgio said, it sounds like many of these guys have big egos to nourish...perhaps some of them really ARE looking for anything that has activity on it for a server, but I'll throw my hat in for the former reason.
Those of you who have more patience than I do can deal with these types, I prefer to stay away from multiplayer.