Out of Pod Experience

Thought there was a parallel with Eve in this article, it made a dedicated solo like me chuckle.


The Lives of Sociable Spiders.
(International NY Times, p8 MAY 14th)

"Of the worlds 42,000 known varieties of spiders, an overwhelming majority are peevish loners: spinning webs, slinging lassos, liquifying prey and attacking trespassers. Each spider unto his own."

But about 25 arachnid species have a more sociable and cooperative strategy, in which dozens or hundreds of spiders pool their powers to exploit resources that would elude a solo player" (...continues)


Read it your own way, but I don't feel quite so abnormal now, waiting patiently on my web in a Pilgrim.

Alliances might consider the spoiler too - " Personality differences are accentuated when arachnids live in groups"

Grrr spiders?

Thread has been moved to Out of Pod Experience.

Did you know that, as a group of dogs is called a pack, and a group of birds is called a flock, a group of spiders is called a tank?

ISD Lack of Faith removes post suggesting Solo is the norm as it opposes CCPs view. Good employee I suppose. Much drivel in this section. Thanks mate.

Because arachnid social dynamics are applicable to anything... how?

Can you think of anything more terrifying than a swarm of spiders?

The point is that solo 'play' is not abnormal. Solo players are ostracised in this community whether or not it is acknowledged.

EDIT: Ostracised may have been too strong a term. Solo players that come to the forums and cry, because they can not handle the consequences of solo play, give those of us that can handle it a bad name.

But, those spiders do not really work together...

I know it seems like they're working together but in truth they're just ignoring each other, while doing their own thing. It just works because every spider in that swarm want's to fix it's own net, which happens also to be the net of all the other spiders.

They all move at the same time, pause at the same time, attack at the same time because if one of them would divert from that pattern, it would become prey. If my memory serves me right that has something to do with how they detect prey trapped in their net via the fibration it causes with it's panicky squiming.

EDIT: I've been trying to find a suitable YT clip about those spiders, I've seen them in some sort of documentary, was creepy. A little bird got trapped in their 20metres in diamnetre net and hundrets of tiny little spiders descendet upon it, all moving and pausing and moving at the same time, the very same moment even, as if being remote controlled by some primal uber hive mind... got nightmares from that one...

EDIT2: Rogue drones should be like that, the moe creepy CCP could make them, the better.