Ah, must be client side then. Well, tbh the spoiler isn't even something from the game - it's something we only learnt about way back in the Waking Titan ARG

It's very much a game that's built around finding other people and building a community - that's why the various player made factions are given the official thumbs up and everything. Just a big ol' sandbox.

If you want something with more character and story, I'd go to the expeditions - they're unfortunately time limited (though HG usually reruns all of them at the end of the year), but they all offer a self contained story outside of the main plot that takes place in a smaller space and usually contain more characters and give your character a role that's actually integrated with the larger world (like for example, in one of them we were explorers with the cartography guild out to document a worm cult). Also they're usually full of interesting gameplay restrictions to use and abuse which is fun. Imo it's the most interesting thing the game has to offer.

Spoiler tag worked for me with Sync client.