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.

Runescape RAW League

Runescape clans have began to be more organised in a sense when dealing with clan ranks. This has taken the form of the RAW League with the primary aim of regular warring within the runescape community.

Not all clans have taken it upon themselves to be entered into the league ranking and not all clans wishing to be included would adhere to the rules. As of 27/04/07 the following clan rank list was updated to reflect the current standings:


1. Divine Forces (DF)
2. Corruption (Corr)
3. Damage Inc. (DI)
4. Lithuanian Forces (LF)
5. The Runescape Warhungers Federation (TRWF)
6. THE (THE)
7. The Mighty Red Dragons (TMRD)
8. BlacKnights (BK)
9. Eternal Honour (EH)
10. Violent Resolution (VR)
11. Chivalry Legions (CL)
12. Anarchy (@)
13. Wilderland (WL)
14. RuneScape Elites ((RE)
15. Gladiatorz (GLADZ)
16. Red Devil Clan (RDC)
17. The Flipscapes Clan (TFC) ~
18. The British Elites (TBE) +
19. Masters of Dragons (MoD)
20. Echo of Silence (EoS) +

The RAW clan ranks are not an official method of ranking clans but it is a good indication on how various clans are performing on the battlefront.

A total of 60 clans are currently active in the listing and I felt giving a list of the top 20 would suffice to demonstrate a level of warring required to make it to that level.

Jagex presently do not have any clan support in runescape and the formation of the RAW league and its success, may persuade Jagex to look at implementing greater clan facilities into runescape.

Runescape Clans and P2P Wilderness

Clans in runescape dominate the wilderness without any shadow of a doubt. However, the clan atmosphere is in a different league between free to play and pay to play (P2P). A recent dicussion on runescape community forums asked the questions and wanted opinions of people on what destroys the P2P Wild?

There were some different views taken by different people, although it boiled down to a small number of reasons:

1. No Honour Clans
2. One Itemers
3. Ancient Magic
4. Cost of items significantly greater

The list is relatively short and in some aspect it can easily show a reason why numerous people prefer to fight on free to play rather than pay to play. Runescape clans will not be as strong overall in P2P and therefore have less control over situations. This enables no honour clans an easier task to crash and interfere in any clan wars.

When any clan war in runescape P2P wild takes place there will be a network of one itemers and no honour members assembling and getting ready to crash the war. The fun element for them is taking the enjoyment out of the wilderness for other people. Clans will normally be much weaker in overall strength on P2P as not all clan members would be runescape members. However, almost every single no honour clan member or one itemer will be a member.

The organisation isn't as great on P2P when events get crashed as the crashers are simply their to cause mayhem - this causes confusion in clan ranks and members are less likely to return when they do not know what is happening or who exactly is crashing etc. With less organisation, lower members and more confusion, many clans simply refuse to hold P2P clan wars.

Overall, the cost of item replacement is certainly one factor that determines a persons ability and willingness to return to any clan war, although the fact no honour clans continually crash wars is probably the main reason in my opinion. The no honour clans will normally have a significant amount of ancient mages and therefore be able to cause huge damages quickly to any group of people. This hampers the ability of many melee based members to actually be able to do anything to help their clan. Consequently, returning is often pointless and certain fatality would only come of it.

Free to play runescape wilderness is much more evenly balanced in terms of the pking triangle and clans can maintain a much greater control over their organisation even when they get crashed. On top of that, all runescape members will be able to afford replacement of rune sets much more readily than barrows items or other specialist member items.

I don't know whether Jagex will ever get around to coding some sort of clan support, but one reason they should look at it is as a way to prevent the no honour clans (normally the same people associated with multiple types of cheating and scamming), from ruining the fun of the majority of more honest runescape clans and pkers in general.

Runescape Honour Versus No Honour

In the runescape clan world there has been an ongoing debate between honour and no honour clans. Personally, my preference is for some sort of honour system. I don't mean it to be extremely organised, but moreso, for it to be recognised as being respectful to other clans and showing common courtesy.

Runescape is a game at the end of the day and although Jagex do not officially recognise clans in runescape, perhaps they should consider the wider picture and look at adapting some formal clan system into the game. This would enable clans to be more organised from within the game user interface and would help establish some honour system.

Clans that respect each other will generally be classified as clans with honour, while clans that continually crash other clan wars or tournaments will normally be classed with no honour. In addition to crashing events or clan wars, no honour clans will also employ tactics that are frowned on by many of the runescape clan community. Activities such as luring, running from battles and looting at other clan wars can be broadly classified as without honour.

The fact Jagex do not recognise clans is one major limitation on being able to formalise some clan ethics within runescape. It is therefore normally set by established clans that want to promote a more active wilderness. This limits the impact of any generally agreed principles and as it is disjointed, it is really left open to individual interpretation - causing arguments or conflict within some runescape clans.

Overall, honour in runescape clans is never likely to become something that Jagex would adapt. It will therefore continue to be a cause of contention among the runescape clan community and we will continue to see the rise and fall of clans as time passes on. The large majority of runescape clans do work with their own rules and generally could be considered honourable clans. However, there has been an increase in the number of clans without honour and if this trend continues it can possibly have a large impact on runescape pking overall... with less players wanting to remain active in their clan and less pking in runescape in the long term.

Sacred Templars Defeat TRWF

A planned PK run-in saw an epic battle between Sacred Templars (ST) and The Runescape Warhungers Federation (TRWF).

Sacred Templars had been out in the wilderness and had heard there were a few clans out and that Divine Forces (DF) was massing ready to begin their PK Trip. We then heard TRWF had a large number of people and our leader contacted their leader and arranged a PK run-in.

Starting opts:

TRWF 320opts = 107 people
ST 282 opts = 94 people

A full discussion can be viewed at Runescape Community

The epic battle lasted almost 2.5 hours and for most people involved, it was the best wilderness encounter for a long time.

Initially, TRWF had the upperhand as they outnumbered us and were able to take out any ST members quickly who had became isolated. As time passed by, both ST and TRWF lost a few members due to the time of the run-in. TRWF appeared to lose more people than ST as both clans done an admiral job in returning multiple times.

In the end, ST were victorious with around 210 opts (70 people) grouped together when the fighting ended. Overall, this was a great wilderness experience as there were no other clans that intervened, although there were many looters who may well have been the real winners due to the amount of rune sets that were left on the ground.

Dark Slayers Prevail

Dark Slayers clan (plus future applicants) claimed victory in a 1 vs 3 clan handicap battle.

Dark Slayers and their future applicants had arranged a battle with the Wilderness Guardians (plus their juniors), Cursed Lands and Rune Raiders (plus their juniors).

The summary of the battle is as follows:

Times

Fight began - 7:30 PM
Fight Ended - 8:00 PM
Total Fight time - 30 minutes.

Statistics

Ds starting options - 399 (190 people)
WG starting options - 330(confirmed)
CL starting options - 220(confirmed)
RR starting options - 250(confirmed)
Ds ending options - 350+

The battle itself was blighted by the presence of the dreaded looter (apparently 120 of them) - In runescape a looter is basically someone too much in love with collecting pixels to get serious about helping a clan improve its wilderness presence.

This showing by DS does tell the clan world that Dark Slayers have a strong future ahead of them due to their future applicant programme. This programme, or similar ones, has been implemented by the majority of the top clans including my own clan, Sacred Templars.

Congratulations Dark Slayers, and hard luck to the other clans who fought in this battle - although it does give a lot of lower level people invaluable battle experience that should ensure the growth and prosperity of their own clans respectively.

Sacred Templars Vs Divine Forces

The scene is set.

Sacred Templars start to muster for a PK trip and Divine Forces have already been out pking and have large options of around 270 (90 players). Sacred Templars pull together 210opts (70 players) and know that Divine Forces are out in the wild. A request for a planned run-in is made and subsequently accepted. Returning was permitted and no boundaries had been set. Below is one of the options pictures for Divine Forces and at this time I do not have any starting opts pictures for Sacred Templars.



Sacred Templars march into the battlefield and rush the waiting Divine Forces Clan. Immediately, Sacred Templars are scattered and disorganised due to being spread out by marching in the way they had. Divine Forces quickly get into the swing of things and are piling people quite effectively and managing to keep their attacking groups limited to about 2 main calling piles.

The battle starts to spread out and there are many Sacred Templars walking around looking for a target to attack as they have chased a Divine Forces member east, then chased them west and then east again. The signs look ominous for the Sacred Templars - defeat is inevitable on this occasion as the initial attacks left the templar forces spread far and wide.

The green dots in these 3 pictures represent Sacred Templar members. As can be seen in the first two pictures, Divine Forces appear to have much greater control over their organisation, subsequently appearing more effective in picking off opponents.
However, the pictures are not 100% accurate, not all clan members are visible as green dots due to having their private chat off.

This final picture shows more what battles normally appear to be - close knit groups of friends working together to try and successfully overcome all foes in front of them. During this particular encounter, there were not many moments where either clan showed full control over their actions.

On this occasion though, Divine Forces did hold their ranks tighter and as a result duely claimed victory.

The Victory celebrations can be seen in full flow below at Edgeville Bank after the Divine Forces Clan has returned from the Wilderness.