Clan


 * For information about specific clans, please see the RuneScape Clans Wiki.
 * For the system used to organize a clan, see Clan Chat.

A clan, sometimes known as a guild, is a united group of players who choose to participate in player killing, training skills, playing Minigames, 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 minigame. Other clans are much more organized, 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.

Military
A Military clan is a clan based on real military units. They often have strict organization and emphasize dicipline.

Warring
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.

Merchanting
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-merchanting 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 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 triggers 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.

Merchanting clans are often heavily criticized because their operations are akin to price manipulation. They are also criticized 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 and sell items to be merchanted earlier than their members, which leads to an increased profit for themselves and a decreased or even negative profit for their lesser members.

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 discusson 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

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

PKing
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 times they will do other activities like minigames.

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

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

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

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 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 homeworld the most popular of these worlds is currently world 83. 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 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.

God Clans
These clans are the sort of clans that fight for their god, such Saradomin, Zamorak, or Guthix. They may elect to wear equipment affiliated with their chosen god, such as Rune god armour or Bandos armour.

Country Clans
A country clan are clan which based by country that the requiment is same country to that clan in order to join.

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.

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

Skill war
Some wars don't involve player killing at all, but are instead more like a race. Players compete to see who can complete a task the fastest, such as mining a set amount some kind of ore.



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 mini-game. This is popular because of no other players being able to interfere, and it can be set to 100% safe, 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.

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.