[Cspace]

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with it. There have always been PKing clans. There have always been warring clans. But the polarization of the entire clan situation is the problem.

I don't know where you're going with "cape tag" or whatever (I'm guessing that you're trying to take a shot at SeeD)... We do PK as well as many other things, we do what our members want to do. If members want to PK they can PK. If they want drop parties they can have them. If they want to get creative and try something new they can. If we're lacking something it's because there are either not enough interested or no one is willing to schedule it.

My point isn't one against ranks, and it isn't one against warring (which is another thing, I wish players would separate warring from PKing again, they aren't necessarily the same). One who is stuck up about his/her own power will join a clan based entirely on power. "Who is the strongest clan? I'll join them." There have always been clans to cater to those kinds of people. Now all clans are acting as clones of each other, because so many are reaching high levels and the game is getting more top-heavy. All on the top want to find some other way to be above everyone because level 85+ isn't uncommon anymore. All the new players suffer (how many recent new players do you know who are sticking around in the game now in comparison to before?), all the new clans suffer, clans lost their ability to define themselves, and a good chunk of the active players are on some kind of power trip all of a sudden. The RS communities are promoting this unknowingly, and RS itself is hurting new clans from forming and placing their entire basis on these communities.

It is not SeeD that is hurt, we are already established. I just feel bad for all the newer clans that are getting sucked into this, for the mainstream clans are lacking a huge part of what makes a clan, whether members of the warring clans agree or not.

[Bodom]

All people care about nowadays is PKing or warring, its the only way for your clan to have a point by being good at it.

Sad as it is thats what it comes down to and its heaps of fun anyway.

I wasnt taking a shot at SeeD btw, cape tag was just one fun event i could remember the name of.

As runescape gets older more people come into it and the most fun you can get out of your clan is through the pking and miniwars, it outweighs other stuff by a long shot. But having a mix is good, you just cant really say you lead an ownage clan nowadays without having a war record ;\

And you'd be surprised on how many junior clans there are, pure clans, low leveled clans.. just recently i fought a clan for level 70s and there was about 20 people there =\ No way are clans dead for low levels anyway and i know alot of low levels who play WANTING to get into a high ranked clan.

Most high ranked clans have member caps anyway lol.


EDIT: Anyway, you dont play runescape that much as you've said? Do you really know what other clans do? ALOT of events within a clan are for non warrers. DI to name one have a lot of KBD trips, leveling thing trips, KQ whatever. Just people mainly focus it on their ability in the wilderness..

Most clans do also have times where they all get to know each other with CW trips and stuff. They just have different ingame ways than SeeD

This post has been edited by Dave: 03 September 2005 - 08:10 PM

[Cspace]

As runescape gets older more people come into it and the most fun you can get out of your clan is through the pking and miniwars, it outweighs other stuff by a long shot. But having a mix is good, you just cant really say you lead an ownage clan nowadays without having a war record ;\

That's from the perspective of older players who have already reached a high level. Back a few years ago anyone above lvl 80 was rare, and everyone wanted to hit a level like that. Now a ton of people are hitting that and much higher. Since they finally reached that goal after a lot of work, they feel like they're above everyone. They look at themselves in a similar manner to how they looked at those of their level when they had the goal to begin with, and as a result feel superior. But in a game where that isn't so rare anymore, they try to find some other way to be uber. So then they turn to clans to provide this need.

A few really massive warring clans emerge, and others follow in their footsteps. Then those who are in those clans feel like they have a moral high ground above the community. Someone starts the ill-titled 'Top 10 List' to fortify the idea that the purpose of clans is to attain power, which the communities indirectly promote. Along with this idea is the idea that a clan is based on stats of some sort, and if not warring or PKing, it must be skills. So then the clan situation became polarized and single-minded as the members of the warring clans feel like they know something and place clans in a sort of false implied spectrum.

Those falsely labeled 'skill clans' are then commonly judged as lesser, as are clans with lower levels or new players. Clans and players get ridiculed for having lower levels. From the clan perspective, this is really powerful if the leader becomes uncertain in his/her system, so the purpose of his/her clan would then lean toward what is being made popular and what the other players say the clan should have in order to be known. From the newer player perspective, either a person takes to it and spasmodically plays RS to get a higher level or he/she leaves the game because it isn't worth it. With all the other games out there now there isn't always a ton of incentive for new players to get into RS seriously, and with the persistent hammering of the 1337 majority it just wouldn't be worth it if the multiplayer aspect means anything to the person.

And you'd be surprised on how many junior clans there are, pure clans, low leveled clans.. just recently i fought a clan for level 70s and there was about 20 people there =\ No way are clans dead for low levels anyway and i know alot of low levels who play WANTING to get into a high ranked clan.

I didn't say that they aren't out there. There are a lot of them, but they are commonly judged as inferior or newbish if not physically strong. The leaders who are more uncertain in their clans are changing their direction toward PKing because of the persistent hammering that they would have to deal with, and those clans that don't change are ignored. They are looked upon as the "others" and aren't allowed to define themselves or really become known. It is really hard on them, and that's why it's difficult now for them to take off unless they have high requirements and/or focus on the wilderness. Doesn't remove their existence, but it makes it much more difficult to go anywhere.

EDIT: Anyway, you dont play runescape that much as you've said? Do you really know what other clans do? ALOT of events within a clan are for non warrers. DI to name one have a lot of KBD trips, leveling thing trips, KQ whatever. Just people mainly focus it on their ability in the wilderness..

I never said they don't have events that don't involve war. Maybe I should ask if you actually read what I've been saying, because if you did you would know that I'm not ranting about warring clans like you seem to be thinking. I'm talking about the clan community and how the general clan situation has changed, and how things are harder on newer clans and how the spectrum is removing a lot of a clan's identity. The number beside one's name doesn't have any correlation with knowledge of clans or the ability to analyze what is happening and shouldn't be the basis to discredit an opinion.

[Bodom]

Meh to me it seemed like you were ranting about people not caring and bashing clans not in it for pking.

Theres a lot more high levels because rs2 is easy to level in, anyone can level easy if they tried and stopped begging.

Most people do generally have a sense of "elitism" in them when they pass a certain level but once a lower leveled player kills them they learn to shut up about it.

And yeah, high leveled clans should stop bashing the lower leveled.. i have a lot of respect for the lower ones.. What they put up with and still manage to go. YOu just need leaders with faith to have a succesful clan not based on omg your level 100 join.

Things changed so much when rs2 came out involving levels and clans and the wild lol..

[Cspace]

These are what I consider problems:

- The blind categorization. Many just see 'PKing clans' and 'skill clans'. 'PKing clan' is now commonly the term for what is correctly 'warring clan', and of all categories 'skill clans' should technically be the least common. There are not many clans dedicated specifically to mining or whatever, and simply because a clan isn't a PKing clan doesn't mean that it's a 'skill clan'. That is just the pile of "others" in the greater clan community, and a category given to them by players who think they know something.

- To go with the above, even though they are just words, they are the embodiment of something larger. Clans can't define themselves. If a clan isn't conventional, it is made to be conventional by others. Until around 2003 clans were accepted as what they were, and now they are just shoved around like they don't matter unless they have a good war record. To a new clan leader this is really going to trash his/her ambitions if he/she creates a clan that actually is unique.

- RS itself is indirectly promoting the polarization. Not allowing URLs to be mentioned in-game among other things make it very difficult to base a clan's existence entirely in the game. They are almost required to go to RS communities to promote their clan. This means that they will be unnecessarily plastered with opinions and judgements right off the bat when the clan is weakest in will. This is a much larger influence than some would realize on a clan's purpose, goals, and direction.

- While there were many accepted ideas for clans before, the whole range of what a clan can be has been broken down. Players who started in 2003 or later often don't even realize this. Many clans are just following in others' footsteps now and there isn't much basis in creativity anymore. It just makes the whole thing less interesting and all clans more and more the same.

************************************************

To tell the truth, if I'm ranting about any specific entity, it would not be any clans but the communities themselves. The direction of the masses and the outlook of those directing the clan realm on the popular RS communities. It is natural what is happening (with the elitism and everything), but it is beyond me how no one is doing anything about it and that it has reached this point.

[Bodom]

Its much simpler though to just say "You're a skiller" or "you're a pker"..

Seriously, your clans either into it for ranks wars and pk trips with other stuff included, but thats the mainstream of it then its a pking clan (Most clans now)

Or your in it for pking and other stuff just as much (skillers a dying category)

Im not complaining bout any of it cos its more free rune for me :$

[Cspace]

Its much simpler though to just say "You're a skiller" or "you're a pker"..

May I ask you, what is a 'skiller' in your opinion?

[Bodom]

In my opinion its someone who raises all skills, complains when theyre pked and constantly argues for teleporting

[Cspace]

Err, that's kinda an example of what I've been talking about.

Clans are being blindly categorized as 'PKing clans' or 'skill clans'. PKing clans as superior and, based on their opinion which is more vocalized, 'skill clans' as inferior. Just a pile of 'others' and defined in a way to rise PKing clans in terms of general standing and popularity. Forgotten is what a 'skill clan' really is, and ignored is the fact that many types of clans can exist that are both, one, neither, or different than either 'PKing clans' or the ignorantly titled 'skill clan' pile.

It would be easier and more respectful to just call clans 'clans', and if one wishes to know more about a certain clan for them to just check it out and see for himself or herself. I don't see why clans need to be accepted as nothing or pointless simply because they don't see a need or don't wish to get into the artificial meddling of the warring end of things.

Again, I'm not saying this for SeeD. We are already established and are not being hurt by what is going on. I really don't care how people categorize our clan. I am just arguing for the other clans that are having to face this now, it is just stupid.

[Xemem]

below are two exerpts from a wikipedia article on mmorpg's, that talk about the purpose of guilds.
_________________________________________________________________________

Inflation

In many MMORPGs, the economy becomes unbalanced over time due to inflation and can reduce meaningful interaction between players of varying level (i.e., newbies versus more powerful players). This is primarily due to the gradual accumulation of wealth and power within the game. Some MMORPGs have addressed this with varying degrees of success. Asheron's Call, for example, uses a guild system where lower level characters swear allegiance to higher level players and generate additional experience points for them, the theory being that it is in the interest of higher level players to assist the lower players and thus increase the reward they receive. Ultima Online used to have items wear out gradually, so that there is a constant demand for crafting resources, but this need has lowered with additional items which supplement item durability over time. Many games will create items referred to as "money sinks" that might add to character customization, or give a small positive effect. Examples include houses, clothes, or collectibles.

Uber guilds and zerg guilds

Sometimes, the most powerful characters on a server form a single, influential association popularly called an uber guild (first appearing in Ultima Online). In addition, some guilds mass recruit players to be large enough to have an advantage, nicknamed zerg guild after the Zerg race in the popular real-time strategy game Starcraft. These groups can use their influence to affect game play by, for example, "owning" areas of the world, controlling the economy, or using tactics like zerging. Such forces discourage casual players.

In games such as World of Warcraft, most, if not all end-game bosses have anti-zerg techniques to counter zerg guilds' efforts.
________________________________________________________________________

those explain the purpose of a guild(uber guild clan ect.). they also help to make my points...

- the purpose of such an orginization is to provide game stability in play, and economy.

- a guild or what ever you want to call it in the long run is benificial not only to its members but to players out side of it and the game.

- pking and skills clans in runescape, are specialist clans that are more self serving and for that contribute less to game play

- this is totaly lost on newbs

- if you look at rs as a whole it is comprised of many clans like this ( very few like us)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For all this I submit the following.

We should be known as a guild to distinguish our selves from rs clans... a clan is a small essembly of peoples with one small minded goal. and we are much larger and very fluid...we are by our actions a guild and not the smaller more primitive orginization known as a clan and thus should cecede from the mainstream. and be known as something else within runescape that exists out side the small boundries of clans in rs.

[Baseballl]

To tell you the truth, I think RS is slowly falling because of the inflation stated above. As Cspace said, RS is becoming top heavy and isn't as enjoyable for anyone considered to be a lower level. It is sad how being level 70 is now a low level, like Ech stated above he was fighting a low level clan, level 70's.

I don't see RS lasting much longer unless accounts are dumped, virtually taken back to level 3. I could see it becoming a great game again if everyone was to start over on a level playing field. By adding more skills and by max levels, you only hinder the lower levelers. You can't attract people to a game that is top heavy and this will either promote cheating or just simply turn people away. I, like others, miss the days where your level 80 was rare and you had a nice bell curve in the level spread. However, this skewed spread is only going to turn people away and hurt the game unless serious changes are made.

As for clans, I think clans in general are dying out. People just aren't interested in a gaming clan now days, unless previously established back in the beginning of RS such as SeeD. The reality is, people just aren't joining clans and becoming long term members. You have your exception here and there, but you just don't see the influx of members like we had a few years ago. You could say that the interest in clans has dropped alot and now they are only used as a symbol of power, but you just don't see communities like SeeD anymore... That goes to show the dedication of each and every SeeD members because we are thriving where almost all others are failing, which makes us unique in our own way.

[Nuu™™]

I have been playing Runescape since sometime in 2003, and yeah, I have noticed a difference too. Like Goto said, clans where mainly just a guy standing in Varrock square saying 'Hit 111 to join a clan!'. I even remember doing this once, ended up with some nooblets, a couple of 'I will only join your clan if you give me 10k' people, and some seasoned veterans in the 80s-90s, taking commands from ME, me being an amateur in the level 30s. That would never happen nowadays. I don't what happened to that clan, but I would say the nooblets forgot about Runescape, the beggers left empty-handed, and the veterans sold their accounts for 20 bucks on Ebay. *sigh* Those were the days.

Later on I became interested in clans again, and so I looked on the RS forums. Geez, was it just like what Cspace discribed. It was just topics and topics of 'Join the Wite Worors, lvl 90+ to jion!' and the like, punctured with the occasional 'The Neo-Nazi Euro-Asian Industrialist Corporation for Pioneers in the Cyberspace Industry - Rune Sub-organisation' and the like. I decided to join a promising looking inclusive non-expansionist looking clan called Heaven's Paladins. It had some good, organised helpful leaders. The only problem was the other members. Self-obsessed and with short attention spans they were, every one of them. The meetings I went to consisted of them chatting and whining about how boring this was and me and some other Junior Leaders shouting at them to listen to the leader, who was in vain trying to explain something. Soon the leader gave up and handed his leadership to one of the squabblers, and surprisingly enough, the clan instantly fell apart.

I met another clan along the way, a peaceful community clan called The Blue Wolves. I had many fun rubber chicken fights with them. I don't know what happened to them, I never joined them, I was just friends with some of the members, it could still be around, I am not sure.

I joined another clan, the Green Dragons, but I didn't like the members so I left. Another clan I joined was the OC, a big clan, but too military based, I am afraid these sort of clans are too common nowadays. Then I came across another whilst surfing through a topsite, one very different from all the others. It was not so expansionist kill everything related, more of a 'hang out and chat' sort of attitude. So I joined that one. You want to know the name of that clan? Guess.

[Xemem]

well...while game infrostruture is slowly failing, the staff at jagex within the last year or two have done a few things to help sustain a slower rate of decline.

waether or not these were intended to do just that can not be easily known for sure but they have produced a good effect. I will mention two in particular.

- tuotorial island - a good move. having newcomers to the game get an immediate over view of the basics (some what forced, as you can't blow through it with out paying some attention to it) has in my opinion decreased the percentage of what I call first time quiters... those who before toutorial island would having entered the game un-prepared and un-informed, quickly become discouraged and quit.

- members - another good move. I don't think there are many who would argue with the try before you buy concept. personaly I have almost never passed up a free-trial before purchasing a thing (given one is available). If you think about it this makes alot of good sence. most newcomers who make an account would most likely do it on free play and decide if they like the game enough to pay for it. by the time they would get around to subscribing. they are already well versed on most all aspects of game play.

go on a members server(if you are able) and then a free play server and you will notice on average a great divition of lvls. on free play a good player is between 65 and 90 in combat on memebers this is the low end of things. so it is almost as if half the game as been turned over to your low to mid lvl player. this makes where a newcomer starts off(usualy free-play) an easier initial experience.

Now those two examples of how the game has been kept in tact(there are many other smaller ones) having been said. there is of course room for improvement.

clans help such a game. lower lvls alie with higher ups. for the lower lvls the benifit is guidence and for the higher ups it is a go-for boy. an apprentice if you will... so jagex needs to officialy recognise clans and not only that, but get involved(official rs clans).

another area for improvment(though there are pages worth I am tryinmg to limit my self to the big stuff) is to delete old accounts. this will do two things. one it will re-open names long taken for registration. and two it will force some older players who set the bar with high lvl accounts that they dont use to often to stick with their newer accounts.

another possible benifit is that people will have less acounts as leaving one in active for to long is deleted it will become to much of a hassle to keep to many accounts.

you might think that this would actualy cuase more specialization, but no. becuase there will over all be less high lvls and an influx of new low lvls.

so if all this were instituted the game would lvl out to what it was a few years back.

of course this will only work(and maybe you were until thisa point wondering how lol)
if accounts over 6 months old and an accessed in that time are deleted.

these things could help...but over all it is true that the game attitude has changed with more controll over the rules jagex has also premoted more exclusivity...back in the day scams were everywhere, a big reason for joining a clan was protection. having a group of people who had your back through keeping you informed.not just on scams but on weather or not something was a rip off.

it is good that jagex has cracked down on scammers but it was part of what made the small clan important and it was a huge part of the game. it added a touch of wildy into the streets. people could rip you off easy and you had to be carefull and shelter your self a little, and a clan was a good way to do that.

with not being able to get away with hardly anything these days the game has a silent marshal law feel to it and is less fun.

well I could keep going but I will leave it at that for now becuase I am very tired.