Mustrum_Ridcully
Hero
I think that's a good example on supporting going wrong, not being useless. I remember the stuff from Savage Tides - it looked really neat, and then we're off to another region where all those backgrounds figured in... not at all?Not too much.
Oddly enough, the initial background support offered by Paizo for PCs in both Age of Worms and especially Savage Tide detracted from the APs in my opinion. And, yes, I've run them both.
The trouble was that Paizo spent a great deal of effort in detailing places that weren't ultimately used in the APs that much, especially for Savage Tide. So, character creation focused on that... and then discovered that the AP path took them away from it (almost at once in ST).
If ST was a "Sasserine City Adventure Path", I think the support would have been very useful and could have enhanced the AP. But the way it was set up, it was more a reason to not follow the Path and do something with the city instead.