Clan





A clan, sometimes but rarely known as a guild, is a united group of players who may choose to participate in player killing, training skills, participating in mini-games, holding events, or simply having meetings with one another. Clans often have allies and enemies.

Some clans are roughly constructed, participating only in a single task, such as pking or a single minigame. Other clans have strict codes and rules, setting down punishments for breaking these rules.

Jagex does not support clans outside of the game, however in order to keep clans ingame and prevent players from going to third party sites, they have recently added the clan chat feature on 6 August 2007.

A recent Jagex update marks clan members as purple dots on minimaps, as opposed to having to wear team capes to identify clanmembers.

Before the introduction of Clan Chat, players were usually asked if they wanted to join the clan, and thus either accepted or declined. With the Clan Chat system, a player can organize their whole friends list into a complex hierarchy without the supposed clan members even knowing of their admittance into the clan.

Military
A Military clan is a clan based on real military units.These types of clans do military drills.

Warring
A warring clan is a clan that goes to war with other clans. (See below for list of wars.) These clans often have much higher enlistment rates than non-warring clans on the official forums because of many players wanting action.

Non-Warring
A non-warring clan is a clan that does not go to war with other clans. These clans often have lower enlistment rates on the official forums.

PKing

 * Main article: Player killing

PKing clan used to be a term for groups of players who player killed in the Wilderness, prior to the Bounty Hunter update. While Player Killing clans still exist, they can operate solely within the Bounty Hunter arena and the Clan Wars Arena, which is now a safe area. Within the Bounty Hunter arena, it is hard for clans to operate as effectively as they could prior to this update due to the bounty hunter rules which restrict the amount of ammunition that rangers and mages can bring, the addition to the "3-minute pickup" rule, which prevents clan members from adequately restocking food, and the fact that Bounty Hunter is a single combat area.

Pest Control
There are some clans that specifically get together to play games of Pest Control. Some people join these clans for fun, others join clans like this as they believe it is the fastest possible way of gaining combat experience.

Questing
A questing clan is a clan with the sole purpose of doing quests together.

Raiding Clan/Expedition Team
Groups of players, typically in the same range of levels, will choose to band together and sometimes mass attack a location like Dark Warriors' Fortress in the wilderness. Sometimes they can be very organised to, in their words, assault the place. Team capes of the same group are worn by members of their expedition.

Skilling
A skilling clan is a clan that mainly trains skills together.

Name Clans
Name clans find their origins at the very start of RuneScape. In the first days when all the world was PK Player killer for those who had selected the option, players grouped themselves together into clans with a common clan name or tag shared amongst each of the members. Name clans quickly lost their popularity once the main world of RuneScape was switched to NON-PK temporarly. Of the original name clans, a few individual members from each clan remain, while DW is the only name clan to remain active and recruiting in modern times.

Player Owned City
Player Owned Cities (POCs), sometimes called Player Owned Countries, are Role-Playing clans. Generally, player owned cities claim a certain area of land, ranging from a single city such as Keldagrim to entire parts of Gielinor. In this area, the members role-play as though they actually live in the city, hosting events, opening shops, creating jobs, and governing their nation.

In player cities, players generally take on one or more jobs, such as a fisherman, merchant, or warrior, which they do to gain personal wealth while aiding the city. Many cities also have militaries and guards, who they place at the entrances and key points of their region to watch for enemies and monitor the flow of visitors.

Cities often try to distinguish themselves from clans, emphasizing their role-playing goals over more standard clan activities. The line between city and standard clan, however, is often difficult to distinguish.

Pure Clans
Pure clans are clans with the requirement of low defence in them. These clans specialize in the fact that their combat his low with a higher strength, range, and mage. The most popular defence requirement is level 1 - 20 defence. Before the quest Recruitment Drive came out, the defence requirements were lower then 20, but with the quest came the ability to get initiate armour.

Old Clans
Old clans, or Mythic clans, constitute only a small fraction of the RuneScape clan community. These are the clans who have been in existence since at least mid-2002. They have a larger name recognition than other clans, often an extremely large members list, and wield considerable power within the community and whatever union they may be in.

Wars
Sometimes one clan might have a disagreement with another clan, which causes clans to become angry with each other. Usually a disagreement leads to name-calling and hurt feelings, and this is when each person will get the whole clan involved. This usually results in wars.

Some clans have wars for fun, or to prove that their clan is better than another, while others try to avoid wars. Some clans will have a contest in another field like runecrafting or other skills.

Sometimes clan wars will lead to rivalries. This means that when clans are rivaling each other, if one person from the team sees another they will most likely call other members of the clan, and this results in frequent ongoing wars between clans. This can become very expensive and drain the players' coins and items quickly if they are on the losing end. However, the winning end is very prosperous.

When one team wins, there is a momentary time of peace with minimal fights; this is because the losing team needs to recuperate and build up resources in order to fight the other clan again. These clan rivalries can last for very long periods of time.

However, a real oddity is when clans eventually decide to merge to form a larger and more formidable clan in order to take down tougher enemies of their clan. This may sometimes fail because of disputes amongst once-rivaled clan members. But if the merge is successful, the clan may become twice as powerful and continue to build in power.

Types of Wars
Some clan wars may have certain wars and thus have a name.

Iron War
This type of war requires that every member of both clans wear full iron, and is very popular amongst low-levelled clans. There are normally no conditions on which weapon participants may bring, although a rune scimitar is a popular choice. This is less common since the removal of playing-killing in the wilderness and the addition of the safe Clan Wars Arena.

Steel War
This type of war requires that every member of both clans wear full steel. This is popular for mid-level and low-level clans. Usually a rune scimitar is required, but it varies depending on the clan. Again, it is less popular since the removal of playing-killing in the wilderness and the addition of the safe Clan Wars Arena minigame.

Rune War
This type of war requires that every member of both clans wear full rune. Not as popular as iron wars, as full rune costs much, much more than full iron. Some players are so concerned of losing their armour that they may not turn up to the war.

Most of the large clans only accept wars with other clans if it is a full rune war.

Fair War
This is when clans bank all of their weapons, armour, runes and bow and arrow, and go to war. A lot of people have been known to sneak in gloves and boots.

Ranged War
This is when clans fire arrows at each other until one side is dead or players run out of arrows. To make it fair, they often fight over a long hill or ditch, so that nobody can easily use melee.

Mage War
Like the ranged war, clans fire magic at each other until one is dead, or they run out of runes. These can also be fought over ditches or mounds, but sometimes the clans just fight without organising anything.

Castle Wars War
This type of war is done in Castle Wars. It is not very popular because one clan may be bigger than the other, so not all of both clans may fight. It may also be due to the fact that there will always be non-clan members interfering the battle, giving one side more of an advantage.

Duel Arena War
This is sometimes popular because:
 * Staking can be done, so some may win prizes. Although, the maximum that could be gained in 15 minutes is 10,000 coins worth of items for free players and 60,000 coins worth of items for members.
 * Rules can be made that are impossible to break
 * Random PKers/Castle Wars players will not interfere

Clan Wars
A new and popular method of war is to fight in the Clan Wars mini-game. This is popular because of no other players being able to interfere, and it could be set to 100% safe, meaning when a player dies, they lose no items. There is also an option of item loss upon death.

Uniform
It is common to see clans all wearing the same clothing or armour. Some clans only wear a certain colour of cape or hat, but others have everyone wearing the same thing.

Clan Support
For the longest time, Jagex did not offer official ingame support for any clan related activities. Players could group together on the forums or on fansites, but there was no official way to control clan affairs in the wilderness or any other area of the game.

The first clan update was the introduction of team capes. This prevented players from accidently attacking a clan mate and made it easier to identify them inside and outside the wilderness.

Clan chat

 * Main article: Clan chat

If a player wants to create a channel to speak to their clan, they can create a clan chat. This is useful to talk to the people who are in a clan, without letting anybody else know what clan members are saying. To talk on clan chat just type a "/" before typing the message.

Clan chat is essential to LootShare and Clan Wars.