Clan


 * For a list of RuneScape Clans, see our sister site, the RuneScape Clans Wiki



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. The official Runescape Wikia chat clan is R S Wikia.

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. A warring clan need almost all the time a QG, useful for making briefing to organise wars. 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.

Merchanting 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 merchanting clans (also known as "price manipulation clans") 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.

These clans are often heavily criticised because their operations are nearly identical to the real-world practice of 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 merchanting clan. Others accuse the founders and higher-ranked members of the merchanting clans of scamming players, because they often buy items to be merchanted before announcing the items to their lower-ranked members, and sell the merchanted items before announcing as well. In many cases, this leads to a significantly reduced profit, or even a substantial loss in money for the low ranks.

Jagex has reacted to the criticisms of merchanting 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 merchanting clans and the dangers that go along with joining one.

Apart from the informational sticky, Jagex has said that no further action against merchanting clans will be taken for the time being. In a merchanting clan discussion thread, Mod John H clarified Jagex's position on the matter, saying that they did not believe merchanting 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, merchanting clans were not breaking rules as long as they followed the new forum rules.

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. Castle Wars, Stealing Creation, Soul Wars and the Great Orb Project are the most common (safe) activities for clans to play.

EPIC NOMSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
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 agility training area in the wilderness.

Union war
Union wars (or Ally Wars) are often fought in huge (sometimes 1000s of players) in either Clan Wars or in a PvP World. They can be organised weeks in advanced between two or more unions which will have many clans in them. These wars can last hours because of the amount of people and are often very publicized within the RuneScape community. Winning a Union war could mean many things including 'ownership' of a particular RuneScape city (Player-Owned city, POC) or just to say that one union is better then another.

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.

Unions
A Union is a group of clans that form together, to form a large alliance, or union, where these clans work with each other in many different ways. Unions range from relatively small (a few clans, or one hundred or less members) to very large (1,000+ members, or over fifteen clans). These unions provide protection and support for their clans and their members. They often do activities together such as Clan Wars and Soul Wars.

RSB Unions
There are many different major RSB (RuneScape Board) unions. The majority of them are clan alliances, like the United Federation of Alliances or The Dark Confederation. Most of these unions are about helping their member clans, developing bonds, and having fun events together, but there are also those who war each other to show which union ranks supreme. Different unions operate in different ways, each with different forms of government, event scheduling, and diplomacy

Many unions take pride in warring other unions, and often declare on other Unions to gain ranks on ladders. Most of the time, however, RSB unions don't interact with other each other, and instead, focus on improving themselves.

Anti-Union
An Anti-Union is a Union that aims to destroy other Unions and organizations. For example, an Anti-Union might crash another Union's events and flame/spam their thread until that Union gives up. An Anti-Union might also declare war on any Union/clan/organization that is not allied to them. Some Anti-Unions will send a person to crash their clan chat with spam. Anti-Unions normally don't last long, as not many people wish to join them and action can be taken against them.

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.