How does the clan world reach out to new blood?

[Des Troyer]

Just a quote from a post I made on my own clan's forums earlier on. I had a chat with Gene earlier on about this very topic and his views were as eloquent as ever.

My post:

It is 3pm EST / 8pm GMT and there are 37,500 people logged in on OSRS right now. Perhaps about 500 of those people are members of clans, 750 if you want to be very generous. How does the clan world reach out to the tens of thousands of people who are all around us whenver we are in-game?

Linking them to RSC would be the worst possible advert for the clan community at present, same goes for inviting them to a toxic crashwar clusterfest. I feel as though the onus is on mid-sized clans & small clans to appeal to new blood. Warring really isn't all that difficult and there are many people who would enjoy being in a clan if only they weren't oblivious as to how immersing it can be. There are so many people who think that topping up their skill totals, getting a quest cape and becoming rich is all there is to the game. They typically achieve one or more of those things, lose interest and drop off.

After EOC destroyed what remained of the clan world, OSRS has allowed it to rebuild from scratch and growth has been happening slowly but surely. Having said that, we are still a long way from having 20-30+ active clans again. With that in mind, are clans simply failing miserably at being social? Too elitist? Too exclusive and cult-like? Just what is stopping the clan world from talking to people whilst doing stuff in-game for all the times when not warring or PvMing with clan mates?

In 2003-2006, clans were so much larger and there were more of them. I don't feel as though this is only down to the fact that there was 3-4 x more people playing the game. I feel as though clans were much more inclined to be interactive with randomers and were inviting them to hang out in their communities. As the years have gone by, "community clans" have become obsolete and every clan being PKing/Warring based, it's as if the clan world has isolated itself on a tiny island that it hopes/expects people to find out about from messages in a bottle (RSC posts).

Thoughts?

[Mojo]

I had a look at the same topic on TR boards and Jack (who's in RoT of all clans) makes some good points.
Currently most of our members were recruited from RSB and some of them do instantly disappear once accepted but this is still an excellent place to try and recruit from.
We've also had a lot of people join via His Lordship's YouTube videos in the past so streaming could also potentially play a part too.

As you also suggest the clan world is far too elitist with it's expectations and requirements.
At the same time as making many relevant points Jack himself is in a clan that requires level 122 combat and 10s of millions of GP worth of return sets to join. This cuts off 99% of the playerbase from joining.
Clans could try and be brave and have lower level requirements but I don't see this happening.

[btraill]

I try to bump the RSB threads as much as possible.. But yes, it's definitely not the most reliable source of recruits. Retention is definitely not that high.

I've also been getting into the habit of socializing in areas that I'm skilling/grinding in and extending awareness to our cause! :)

[His Lordship]

Making a video partly relating to this now.

EDIT: ! No longer available

mojo edit: fixed link

[Lordsamm]

Got an idea why the clanworld is so unattractive at the moment. I think it has to do with the Era's Runescape knows. When Jagex decided to remove the wilderness on 12/7/2007 the clanworld like we knew it ended. Ofcourse it kept on slimmed-down with CWA and bounty worlds but it would never be the same again. At that point in my opinion Jagex never decided to revive the wilderness and made Runescape more a PvMing-based game and started a new Era.

Personally I quit the game in Jan-2010 but always followed Runescape on Dutch community boards. When they decided to bring EoC in the game, Jagex got so many resistant and decided to bring the Oldschool Runescape version. A brilliant move because they were not only satisfy the exisiting players but also a lot of players who played the 2007-version. I was also hyped and immediatly started to play this version of Runescape. I started playing with a lot of old clan mates, old rs friends and even a big part of my irl buddies who used to play. It did not last longer then a week. The nostalgia was great but we all grew up and had less time to play the game where we had to start all over.
Last year summer I decided to start playing again and made a simple f2p pure with 40 att, 60 str to be able to pk quickly. An RL buddy decided to play with me and for some reason I became a member again. I joined a Dutch community CC. After a while the CC grew much and the leader of the CC decided we need a forum. This wasn't a big succes and he wanted a second platform for communication. I suggest to use IRC and he asked me: "What the hell is IRC?" I then laughed but the whole CC was asking the same thing. I told a long story about clans, pk/warring and IRC and no one in the CC (about 40 ppl) was ever part of a clan like us. In fact almost everybody didn't heard of it too. It turned out that almost everybody in that CC played OSRS because they hate EoC. They rather play Pre-eoc but have to do it with this version of the game.

to come back to the different Era's Runescape knows. I think the most players in the game today are PvM-based and don't have much knowledge about the whole clanworld. They know about Edge pking because they're watching streamers like b0aty and Skill Specs but they dont pk in clans.

I think streaming can be a solution to attract newer players. If they see a big f2p war included TS calling, they can see the excitement of this part of the game. It is very hard to gain viewers for this. So there need be a lot of advertising and I think this can be done by asking Jagex to show a war on their Twitch account. Also Reddit is the place where the most actual things happen, so advertsing there is a good move to gain a lot of coverage.

TL;DR version: People nowadays play OSRS because they hate EoC and they only know runescape as PvM-based game. Streaming can be the solution if you have a good plan of action.


P.S. Sorry for my English :P

[btraill]

Good idea we just have to be careful when streaming PK outings as it gives more incentive for people to grief and crash.

Having said that, I still think it would he great. I've been meaning to get back into streaming.... I may give this a whirl tonight.

[Suffud]

I've not really spoke to any random people for a long time enough to befriend hem a lot on 07, but my old clan air was a mature baised clan on the requirements, generally we used to get people from the rs forums every now and then, 1-2 a week-2 weeks, some stayed, some left. Otherwise the best way to recruit was your friends, and people you meet who seemed like they would fit in if you got talking to them.

The game currently feels very anti social in some aspects as too many people are all about EXP EXP EXP and being efficient when playing, in my opinion this kills the fun and relaxation with the random chats that can happen, eg random topic on game of thrones at rouges den. The large clan events in the past I never paid attention to when jagex advertised them, it just seemed pointless when I was not actively involved. The best thing to aid reqruitments would likely be jagex themselves posting articles highlighting the incentives to join clans, potentailly doing a 'Clan of the month' article.

[Taibz]

A ton of people playing OSRS today are people who have grown up with RuneScape. This means they are quite alot older than they were back then. I think community event videos/streams (Such as our drinking event, which I found to be amazing and a great way to get to know people) might be very attractive to the older people. They've had their fair share of RS, so a community might be what they are looking for. Just like Des mentioned in his post, most clans are PK/War-based. What we have to offer is so much more than that, and I think we should really showcase that side of our clan. If it wasn't for WG, I would have quit RS a long time ago.

[Da Kno]

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[Lordsamm]

The last hope for PvP is deadman mode.
If that flops, theres no going back.

I think the big clans wont participate in deadman mode. I hear ppl say on zybez that the clanworld is growing atm (Mid-sized clans who pulls 50 ppl on wars).


Something else is quite interesting. They going to poll this question tomorrow: Should we flatten some of the hilly areas in the northern F2P wilderness to make more useful spaces for PvP?
Does anybody know what areas they mean exactly? Imo they making it easier to flatten the wilderness and taking away some experience you need.