Richard Edmonds

Many, many RuneScape players have been in at least one clan in the online world of our fantasy life stealing game. However, how many of us have actually considered running a clan of our own? No, I’m not on about a cheap, ill-mannered, ill-planned attempt at creating a solid base and abandoning the project after a few days. I’m thinking more of the lines as to having a very popular thread on the official forums, a website for your clan, around 15 people online in a VoIP at any given time, an event per day that churns up many dedicated players to ensure everyone has a ‘whale of a time’ (man I love that saying!) and to have many clan-to-clan wars.

Basic Understanding Of Clans

To begin, you need to grasp what a gaming clan actually is, what it involves, how it is created (and managed), what happens day to day and how to recruit members. Online gaming guilds/clans/communities (which ever you prefer to choose, RuneScape normally go with clans) started with gaming over the Internet, it wasn’t introduced in RuneScape, nor is it part of the game itself. The main idea for these uprising gangs of people at keyboards was to come together to enhance their enjoyment and experience of that covered game, while participating in events, going all out against other erected clans and create a name for each other.

That being said, the same principle and reasons behind today’s RuneScape clans are exactly the same. Let’s start this off at a nice, steady pace with a few points to consider:

• Time: You need to make sure you have enough time on your hands to dedicate to your clan, also consider time zones.
• Communication: What will your clan use to communicate? The in-game Clan Chat is almost useless, possible VoIP solution?
• Hierarchy: Careful consideration is required in deciding how your clan ranks will be structured.
• Members: You need to have an application, requirements, maybe even a trial to ensure all your recruits are the best.
• Events: What will you guys do? Clan events will need to be organized to daily, weekly and monthly occurrences.
• Location: Where will your home be? You may need to consider a website, meeting place in-game and other geographic possibilities.

RuneScape itself doesn’t have the best clan features available, but they are in the process of fixing this. Hopefully sooner rather than later. I really do think there needs to be greater clan management, maybe even built in VoIP functionality and other basic features that other games already implement (which is a big downside of RuneScape in my opinion). However, there are many events that your clan can do once created, these can include the following:

• Castle Wars
• Clan Wars
• Revenant Hunting
• King Black Dragon Slaying
• Barbarian Assault
• Pest Control
• PvP/Bounty Hunter
• House Party
• Skill Grinding
• TzHaar Fight Pit
• Kalphite Queen Hunting

Planning

First step on your clan creating journey is to figure out what on Earth you are going to do! This huge task isn’t one to go rushing into, nor is it to start right away without thinking about the sacrifices you will be making: for example, you will have a lot less time for your own needs, you really do need to have a steady income of gold. You need to strongly consider the serious time dedicated your clan will need. To begin planning, have a look around my blog, some other RuneScape blogs, help sites, fan sites and maybe some articles on clans to really get a good, solid background on RuneScape clans themselves.

With this powerful (hopefully) bank of knowledge, you will now be able to fully plan your future excellent clan. To begin with, you will need a name. What is a clan without a name right? Think carefully about this as it isn’t often that clans go and change their name out of the blue, so make sure it’s something that hasn’t been taken, is unique to your clan and is likeable.

Next you will need to consider what your goals will be, what requirements you need to have in place for recruitment, how you will recruit, what your clan will do, where your clan will meet, whether or not you have VoIP or not and many other factors.

Creation

The clan will not be anywhere without actually being created, get your Clan Chat set up for your clan with the Clan name and settings on who can enter the chat, who can moderate etc. The actual chat is very limited (features listed below the screen shot) and takes away time when typing to other team members, which is why I always vote for VoIP alongside the Clan Chat for increased effectiveness (this of course can be a slight downturn as your players will need microphones to chat). With the Clan Chat as set up and ready to go it is time to get a forum thread created on the official RuneScape forums, this will bring a lot of attention to your clan and may act as the best way to recruit.

The forum thread will need to contain basic clan information, such as:

• What the clan is about?
• Any clan rules for member to follow?
• What events are planned?
• What is the current member list?
• How do you go about joining?
• What are current relations with other clans?

This will give visitors to your thread a view of what your clan background is, what your clan is aiming to achieve and if it is the right choice for them. With the thread created, you will need to get your own forum/site created, there are plenty free forum hosts and clan sites available for you to choose from. If the clan begins to grow in reputation, you might consider a paid hosting option with a YOURCLANNAME.com domain.

With the CC, forums and the official thread created, it’s time to start inviting some friends off your buddy list!

Here is a nice little run through of the settings in the above Clan Chat window:

• Clan Name: Pretty much self-explanatory.
• Who can enter chat: Set this to the lowest rank that is allowed to enter the Clan Chat.
• Who can talk on chat: Set this to the lowest rank that is allowed to type in the Clan Chat.
• Who can kick on chat: Set this to the lowest rank to have moderation ability to kick players from Clan Chat.
• Who can share loot: Set this to the lowest rank who can get in with the loot sharing of the clan.

Jagex don’t give Clan Leaders a lot of features to play with, but the basics are there for you to make a name for your clan and get it up and running. I can see this changing in the future however, due to the increase number in guilds/clans throughout the MMORPG world, and RuneScape itself.

Recruitment

This is a really fun part of running your clan, you now have it set up but you are missing something right? Of course you are! you are the only one logged into Clan Chat, you have no one else on your member list and your own forum looks bare, you need members! Good thing about this part is that there are a number of ways of going about recruitment, some as follows:

• Official Forums: Invite players on their ‘clan seeking’ threads, also make sure your clan thread is bumped to the top of the list to ensure maximum traffic potential.
• Announcements: You can announce your clan is recruiting in game around busy areas such as the Grand Exchange. Make sure you don’t annoy people by spamming the chat, you don’t want to seem desperate, do you?
• Making Friends: This is one of the easier options, befriend others that have similar interests as you, want a stable and mature clan. These will most likely be the more committed members.
• Advertise your site/forum: Run around to other RuneScape blogs, sites and general advertising forums to promote your clan, don’t spam other sites though, you want a clean record.

If possible, try aim for the Players that seem like decent players, but not too high levelled. You need to have respect in the clan and recruiting players that are way better than you skill wise isn’t recommended unless you know them well. With some recruitment going on, you should have around 10+ members through using some means of getting noticed. Make sure to assign recruiters or have a recruitment day for your clan to participate in per longing the lifespan.

Management

With your clan being fully set up and having a good number of members, it’s time to arrange events, start clan wars and more to really keep the general interest in the clan high. You need to remain active whenever possible and sacrifice your personal gaming time to contribute to the clan. Some players will need to be kicked, others promoted, this comes with the job on being the Leader, which can be fun or stressful.

You will need to make sure your clan thread on the official forums is updated and bumped regularly, you should also make it stated that your clan members should visit and post on the thread every now and then. As for your own site/forums, these will need to be maintained with updates and moderation.

Enjoyment

Now you can sit back and enjoy the clan, make sure you enjoy the events as much as your members. Remember to take a few hours per week away from your clan if you feel that you are loosing interest slightly. That is about it on this short, detailed guide on creating your own RuneScape clan (you can actually take some of this advice onto other platforms!), I hope you create long-lasting, popular gaming communities!

Be sure to ocmment with a link to your clan or if this guide has helped you, to know that I can help others learn about how to create the perfect RuneScape clan is a reward in itself.

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