Clans Wars and Grand Exchange

December updates for Runescape have mentioned Clan Wars minigame that is due to be released this month. This comes on top of the recently released Grand Exchange that has sent the runescape market into turmoil, although clans will have benefitted from the fact that resources are all much cheaper.

The introduction of the grand exchange would therefore appear to be beneficial to all clans - as they can get all pking supplies bought much cheaper on the grand exchange than they were able to buy for previously. Has this provided more benefits to pkers or has it taken away the benefits of pking?

There are 2 camps. Some people argue it is now much cheaper to pk and are more likely to pk as a result of it being more affordable, while others argue that it has made the financial rewards much less worthwhile and are likely to pk less. The overall impact of the grand exchange is that prices for many items have crashed due to the large amount of supplies in the game. This may change in the long term, but the immediate impact has many thousands of players refusing to use it.

Having outlined this alongside the planned Runescape Clan Wars Minigame, will Jagex make it something that clans will actually use? It is very hard to know how Jagex are treating this as many people have wanted a Clan War Arena within runescape for a long time and it would certainly help ensure that wars are less likely to be crashed.

It certainly is an appealing feature, but there has been no information released on whether items would be lost or won. If clans do take up the clan war minigame, then it will be much easier to provide more accurate clan ranks than previously. Although with so many possible types of war available, it is inevitable that Jagex will only appease some clans and will further alienate other clans and players at large.

Overall, clan wars are something many people have wanted and Jagex almost always take a different view to the majority of players. The success of this minigame will definately be dependent on the clan community embracing the same vision as Jagex, something that generally hasn't happened yet.

All I can hope for is that Jagex have done proper research into how the clan community would like something like the clan war minigame introduced, and not how Jagex perceive people want it introduced.