Clan



A clan, sometimes known as a player guild, is a united group of players who choose to participate in player killing, training skills, playing Activities, and other activities 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 activity. Other clans are much more organised, sometimes using an outside website. While many clan websites are totally harmless, players should still exercise extreme caution.

Jagex does not support clans outside of the game, so in order to keep clans in-game and prevent players from going to third party sites, they added the clan chat feature on 6 August 2007. When in a clan chat any message you send will be visible to every player who is also in the chat. Before this, clan leaders wishing to convey a message to all their members would have to private message each one of them individually. Additionally, clan members will appear as purple dots on the mini-map, making it easier to locate members.

Types of clans
Players can make a clan dedicated to anything, from player killing to fishing. Below is a list of the most popular types of clans. A clan may fall under multiple types like the following.

Chat clans
Those clans are very popular in RuneScape. Chat clans are clans of different people on different worlds in different areas that join a certain clan to chat. They sometimes disobey Jagex rules and talk about things such as real-life business.

Military clans
A Military clan is a clan based on real military units. They often have strict organisation and emphasize discipline. They may also use actual military tactics and try to be as close to the army as they can.

Warring clans
A warring clan is a clan that goes to war with other clans. These clans often have a high number of players and low requirements so they can be successful in a battle. These clans can also have high requirements and gain a lot of people, thus making it easier to win. Recruiting is a major part in warring clans as they can be used as calling friends, auto typing (against Jagex rules) and asking random people

Price manipulation clans
A non-combat clan that focuses on playing the market to gain profit from investments in in-game commodities. Historically they were a collaboration of players who attempted to predict natural market shifts and making advantageous investments. They used to be fairly rare, since solo-trading was easier and in some cases more profitable. However, their numbers have gone up dramatically since the introduction of the Grand Exchange.

These second generation price-manipulation clans (commonly called "merchanting", or "merching") are significantly different than their predecessors. They do not rely on natural market fluctuations to raise and lower prices. Instead they pool their wealth together and buy out the entire stock of a particular item. This is intended to trigger a massive price increase due to the Grand Exchange picking up the increased (albeit artificial) demand. When the increasing price hits a certain mark, the clan sells their items, netting a profit. Most of the clans, if not all, claim to be "Merchanting" or "Group-merchanting" and state that price manipulation (as the actual nature of clan) is not illegal, and there is no scam in it. The truthfulness of the clans are yet to be proved, but several clans have already been banned from game and forum.

These clans are often heavily criticised because their operations are price manipulation. They are also criticised for interfering with the gameplay of all those who are not in the clan, because it is often difficult or impossible to buy any items which are currently being bought out by a price manipulation clan, causing an interchange (or multiple ones) of oligopoly and oligopsony. Others accuse the founders and higher ranked members of the price manipulation clans of scamming players, because they often buy and sell items to be price manipulated earlier than their members, which leads to an increased profit for themselves and a decreased profit or a loss for their lesser members.

Jagex has reacted to the criticisms of price manipulation clans by forbidding them to, on the RuneScape Forums, promise huge profits, telling players exactly what to buy and when, and asking that players advertise the clan in-game Jagex has also posted an informational sticky on the Forums to educate players about price manipulation clans and the dangers that go along with joining one.

Apart from the informational sticky, Jagex has said that no further action against price manipulation clans will be taken for the time being. In a price manipulation clan discussion thread, Mod John H clarified Jagex's position on the matter, saying that they did not believe price manipulation clans were as big of a problem as many believed. He said that since they were not creating nor destroying wealth (merely redistributing it) and because all items on the Grand Exchange could be obtained other ways, price manipulation clans were not breaking rules as long as they followed the new forum rules.

Example
Clan "gp league" advertises for members by sending existing members to the GE on as many worlds as possible. The existing members are rewarded with Clan rank if they do this enough. On joining new members are instructed to buy Chaos Talismans at maximum market price, and sell at 13000 coins. This is at the time, say 4k and falling in price. Members wishing to express concern at this strategy find they have insufficient rank to talk in the clan channel.
 * Name of clan changed in the below example.

This strategy has a number of major flaws.
 * Analysis
 * 1) The price for most items is set by supply and demand, for example one can trade Runecrafting guild tokens for a chaos talisman. Increasing the price of the talisman will encourage people to acquire it by other means (either for their own use or to resell) thus increasing the overall supply of the item - in the RuneScape economy this is the total number of the item in circulation, particularly in the GE. This will damp the items price increase meaning more resources are needed to increase the price - effectively the clan needs to either soak up the additional supply or affect market sentiment in such a way that others buy it. Furthermore, demand is also elastic so if price rises, apart from speculators, people will seek alternative goods (such as a Chaos tiara), manage without or delay purchase.
 * 2) Margin: the items need to be bought at the GE max and yet they will need to be "dumped" at the GE min. Given that there is a limited natural demand for the item (due growth in player base, to it being lost, destroyed, collected, left in idle or banned accounts or used, depending on the item) which is less than the demand (artificial added to natural) that caused the price rise, this will generally take as long as - or longer than the price rise, therefore an overall loss will be sustained.
 * 3) Market information: Given that the price to sell is set at 13k - and this is public knowledge, a rational player (including clan members and leaders) will sell just before that price to ensure their items sell, say at 12,500 to allow for margin and a GE update. However wise players will realise this, and the consequence that the price will never actually make 13k, but peak at 12,500 and so sell at a still lower price, say 12k. This reasoning continues by induction and severely damps voluntary attempts by groups to manipulate market prices in this way.

Activity clans
An activity clan is a clan of people cooperating in activities. In Player-versus-Monster activities such as Pest Control, this almost always entails winning the game. In Player-versus-Player activities, however, they often deliberately tie games, which yields fewer points than playing an activity well and winning every time, but is guaranteed and requires little effort. Soul Wars and the Great Orb Project are the most common activities for tying clans to play.

PKing clans
PKing clan used to be a group of players who player killed in the Wilderness, prior to the Bounty Hunter and PvP update. While Player Killing clans still exist, they can only operate within Bounty Hunter and PvP worlds. Pking clans are ineffective in terms of getting loot and items because the new update determines the value of your drop by Earned Potential and other factors which group-killing does not help with. PKing clans sometimes do nothing but PK, however often they will do other activities.

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

Raiding/expedition clans
Raiding clans are typically in the same range of levels and band together to attack locations like the Dark Warriors' Fortress en masse.

Skilling clans
A skilling clan is a clan that mainly trains non-combat skills together.

Business clans
Business clans offer a service or product to the RuneScape community. It is debatable whether they are considered a clan or a company. However, they may also do events to encourage the community to get together.

Player Owned City clans
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 or Varrock 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. POCs normally have a home world. 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 military units and/or guards, which are stationed at entrances or key points of the 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. However some Player Owned Cities do normal clan events like Clan Wars Or Castle Wars and do very little Role-Playing. Instead they use their "territory" as a base of operations.

Pure clans
Pure clans are clans whose members are mostly Pures. They typically have low defence and high Strength, Ranged, Magic, or any combination thereof, and typically engage in mostly PKing activities.

Corruptionist clans
Corruptionist Clans are hired by other clans to corrupt a rival clan. Corruption clan members usually join the targeted clan to spread rumours and often begin fights, with hopes that the targeted clan will begin to disband. More severe corruption can include hacking, sending viruses, or other harmful actions. The corruptionist clan usually receives some form of payment, such as in-game gold. Members of these clans are normally disliked.

God clans
These clans are the sort of clans that fight for their god, such as Saradomin, Zamorak, or Guthix. They may elect to wear equipment affiliated with their chosen god, such as Rune god armour or Bandos armour. Many God clans fight other God clans that are against the God that they are following (like Saradomin God clan to Zamorak God clan).

Country clans
Country clans are clans based upon the country in which its members live. The only requirement to join is that you must live in the same country as the clan.

Dungeoneering clan
These clans often form to have a recruiting help. The unrecruited member says where he is and the party leader goes to him.This is not often used but is good for finding people.

Revenant hunting clans
Revenant Hunting Clans are often found within the wilderness' multicombat zones, hunting for revenants for either drops, or fun. Most of them can be found at the chaos altar in level 36-38 wilderness, whilst some can be found getting food and other supplies at the bandit camp. The Unofficial Revenant hunting worlds are world 141 for free players, and 100 for members.

Help Clans
Help Clans are clans dedicated to assisting players with any questions that they might have in game. A common misconception is that these clan are for new players, but they usually accept higher level players wholeheartedly. So as to answer their questions, and/or further the overall knowledge of the clan.

Bot Busting Clans
These clans are made so multiple people can go 'bot hunting'. This involves going to different worlds and reporting macroers. Most of these clans are highly secretive and only give their clan chat names away to certain people, for fear of spamming from bot making companies.

Anti-Price Manipulation Clans
These clans try to make price manipulation clans efforts ineffective by mass producing the item that the price manipulation clans are buying.

Extreme Alching Clan
These clans are designed to make alching fun, they alch in extreme and weird places all across runescape with a different place each day.

Wars
A war is when two large clans fight one another. Before the Wilderness and Bounty Hunter update, this happened in multi-combat sections of the Wilderness. After the updates, however, this type of activity was limited mostly to Clan Wars until the release of PvP worlds allowed them to once more take place in the Wilderness. While sometimes the war will resolve an issue held between the participants, they are most often either for fun or simply to vent frustrations. The longest clan war was Sky Thehero vs Ice Foreverr which lasted an amazing 14 hours.

PvP war
These wars are often held deep in the wilderness by greater demons. The most popular version of this war is called a PKRI (player killing run in) where when you die you are allowed to return to the fight again. These wars tend to last quite a while and members lose lots of money. Matched options wars and full out wars still do exist, but are very rare to come by in the modern days of warring. Also, many players like to do this by the algility training area in the wilderness.

Ally war
Sometimes clans will call upon allied clans to help them fight a war. When several large clans band together, it is called a Union. The resulting war can take hours and involve many hundreds of players.

Skill war
These wars do not involve player killing at all, but are instead a race. Clans compete against one another to determine who can gain the most experience or resources in a set amount of time.

Metal wars
Metal wars are wars where all participants wear a single type of armour. This is typically Iron or Steel, since these metals are very cheap and can easily be replaced if lost. Sometimes these wars allow the use of better weapons than the agreed upon armour, although sometimes they also dictate that participants must use the same type of weapon as armour.

Clan Wars
The most popular method of war is to fight in the Clan Wars activity. This is popular because no other players are able to interfere, and it can be set to a safe mode, meaning when a player dies, they lose nothing. There is also an option of item loss upon death, although these wars are not very frequent and will typically be a type of Metal War.

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. However, this has recently fallen out of practice due to a minimap update in which members of a clan chat are now marked with a purple dot, thus making it easy to discern friend from foe when fighting even without uniforms.

This type of thing can be very popular with POC's as the uniform will be their identity to what job they had.

Clan support
For the first years of RuneScape, Jagex did not offer official in-game 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 accidentally attacking a clan mate and made it easier to identify them inside and outside the wilderness. In addition to this, the in-game minimap was updated to let members of a clan chat see their fellow members as purple dots on the minimap, easy to tell apart from the opposing clan's members, which still appeared as white dots.

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. Clan chat is essential to LootShare and Clan Wars.