The history of Geodesa is likely the bigger, indeed even the likely central, question of the MMO. As far as IA ever said, “The Quest for Earth” was not the title of the game (That’s “Infinity”). It’s the title of the opening chapter. Indeed, the original plan was for Earth to have been found at the close of beta testing.
Don’t be distracted by the red herrings.
Thanks. Good explanation! What I’ve read so far is already fascinating! 
Yup, the foundations for a solid background story has been in place for years now, and if it gets special attention I can only imagine it getting better. That said I really do hope that if IB is successful we might just see some more “major” factions than the three currently to be expected. As for Infinity not having intelligent aliens… EvE does pretty good without them, so will Infinity. But the more funding/profit the company makes (and “knowing” the MMO will come in so-called chapters) the more I would expect them to eventually add factions, even alien-ish ones… Because it’s not like their Game World will ever run out of room to fill with stuff…
Humans are pretty boring. Space games aren’t so compelling to me without aliens. 
Aliens are human constructs. And aliens in sci-fi are anthropomorphized. They’re just green humans.
So true, usually the most interesting aliens in Sci-Fi are the ones we can connect with, the most human-like…
Maybe I-Novae can set a milestone in creative pseudo realistic Aliens?
I have to disagree that human like Aliens are the best. Its the cheapest and you can apply himan problems to them.
Star Trek could be transportet 1 to 1 to the Worldseas with the Alliens being exotic tribes!
For instance create world spanning invissible microbes that can communicate to electronics directly … lol … thats an Idea I just made up and now I remember Stargate had an episode with exactoy such an alien race.
Lets make a thread with alien ideas.
In the last version of the history we did, the fall of the Deltan Empire left a number of isolated groups of colonies of which the SFC was just the largest. There was also a fairly large “pirate” faction that broke off at that time variously called the Dynamo or Adregans.
We made lots of background material such as a heavily debated twelve thousand word timeline that covered ten thousand years of history. We also produced profiles of the cultural, aesthetic and organisational details of all the primary factions which were each around three thousand words long.
Well that is impressive to say the least!
Don’t confuse human with humanoid. We would find a completely alien species as relateable as a blue whale or a tube worm. A species of spacefaring tube worms that you can’t communicate with would be a “pseudo-realistic” alien species. Are you riveted yet?
Is it weird that my answer is yes?
Got to agree with Terran on this, Kichae… The ONLY reason I don’t want to see aliens in Infinity is that pretty much any alien species you find on TV or in gaming is bound to be some cheap 2D copy-paste, criminally oversimplified take on some tiny aspect of human culture.
Honestly, spending an hour looking into how a society of intelligent alien tube-worms could function would hold more intrigue (for me anyway) than the Star-Trek franchise in it’s entirety…
Actually, tapeworms, paramoecia or any other lifeforms on Earth would most probably be closer and more relatable to us than any alien we may meet. Atomic matrices on a neutron star, measuring time in atomic vibration, or sentient stars communicating through coherent neutrino beams… and it would probably be much, much stranger than that.
Also, aliens in any setting call for some answer to the Fermi paradox. Or things can suddenly become very stupid. Or creepy. Or both (I’m looking at you, Avatar).
There can be several possible answers to the Fermi Paradox.
I’d suggest a combination of the calculations we did and the number of active spaceships in EVE-Online.
Put the “activeness” of EVE online into the galaxy of Infinity. Then make 10% of those “Aliens” search for the Human Civilizations. It will take them quite some time untill they hit the cores and contact will be sparse and maybe short lived depending on the reaction of the “Aliens”. Maybe they are so shocked by those fast turns and reaction times of our ships that they will instantly flee?
Or did you apply the Fermi paradox to something else?
but i like aleins
Well, the problem with the Fermi paradox isn’t simply that the galaxy is vast, it’s also that it’s been there for a vast time. So if humans can expand to a sizeable fraction of the galaxy in a comparatively negligible time, so could anyone else. Something there would be at least some traces of - ruins, dismantled worlds, Dyson sphere remnants, galactic energy networks, stars someone fiddled with or simply massive energy processes… Some of this stuff should be pretty hard to miss.
Another problem, more specifically with Infinity or similar not-too-hard SF settings, is the Apes vs Angels problem. Basically, it says that our time as modern human, between the bone-throwing Ape and the unrecognisable posthuman ANgel is negligible, galaxy-wise. A few dozen millennia at best, a mere instant for the galaxy.
But somehow, everyone is pretty much at the same point, and being there for a miserable ten thousand years before is enough to get you called the Ancients. Somehow, everyone managed to emerge to sapience and technology at the same time. And even more, meet right at the time where they are roughly evenly matched - no Roman legions facing ICBMs equivalent.
Some shows will explain it, generally with having at some point some Precursor race being responsible for the apparition of all the newer ones, directly or not. In some cases, it’s even part of the plot. But then, it can be argued that they are all sort of human.
Anyhow, I’d say that Precursors wouldn’t fit unless they are actually us (the Earth inhabitants). And in this case, ‘alien’ wouldn’t exactly be the best name.
Note that IMO, the best answers to the Fermi paradox so far are:
I think we just don’t have the resolution or outreach yet to see remnants of past or even present civilizations.
Lets say there is a giant thriving Space Faring Alien Race inhabiting the Milky Way right now. They’ve been here for … lets say 200 000 Years.
How should we know they are there? Cool they’ve build a Dyson Sphere somewhere hidden some 10’000 Light Years away. How should we ever notice it? They send millions of survey probes trough space? Oh the 1 km ship must have passed us by 10 Light Years.
And I don’t think they bother sending EM into space.
So why does it work in Infinity? In Infinity they have space ships that can travel hundreds of light years in days, communicate FTL and have FTL sensors … Scientist of Earth would have checked out the 50 Nearest stars, documented them and send the data home by tomorrow with such technology!
So, they’ve been here for 200 000 years. That’s extremely short. The galaxy is more than 10 billion years old, so they somehow appeared almost at the same time as us. That’s a pretty big coincidence. Them being out there for a billion years or more would be less improbable.
And that’s far more than long enough to expand to the entire galaxy, even taking their time.
Somehow they didn’t blow themselves up, and they are interested in interstellar stuff.
They sent probes around, to do some extensive exploration. They build a million probes - or better, they build self-replicating probes so with a few dozen they will end up with some on each star system eventually. That’s actually what some scientists advocate for future human exploration, actually - “simply” put a few 3D printers.
So there is no reason that there shouldn’t be a probe around. And anything doing anything more than playing dead rock, like changing orbits, transmitting information on interstellar distances, using active sensors, would draw a lot of attention.
Then they build Dyson spheres. Again, assuming that they were interested in interstellar travel, there is no reason for them to build only one. Meaning, they should have built those pretty much everywhere. Which is something we would have seen.
And Dyson spheres are petty game compared to the stuff you can do on a galactic scale. Some time ago, I read an article about building a massive power-plant on the central black hole and using clouds as maser transmitters for power lines across the galaxy. And if we can think about how to build (and use) it, it means that someone would find something equivalent and do it. And galactic engineering is probably hard to miss.
And then you still have to explain why we are only the second ones.
Another explanation would be that no species has ever succesfully left their home solar system… At least not alive…
Which begs the question of why.
What makes us so special? Is it statistics? Luck? Some evil overlord’s oversight?
And then the second, more ominous question.
What HAVE we avoided? What is enforcing Fermi’s paradox?