Thoughts on 2011-Wildy, Clans and a Jagex Conspiracy

Remember when we had the year of Jagex fixing stuff?

And in some ways 2010 was the year of high level content and dungeoneering?

So here's what I think 2011 is going to be about (and before I go on, not all updates will be about this. Just like this year not all updates were dungeoneering but we got a lot of stuff related to it).

2011-The Year that Clans return to Jagex. In force. For a reason.

First, there's the developer blog that came out earlier this month about tools that support clans. Jagex is saying that there will be a true "clan chat" along with the ability to create ranks, have a clan registry and other features. That's going to be a major undertaking requiring both game engine and web development effort.

If you were in RS prior to 2007 you'd remember some of the dominant pking clans and how the removal of the old wildy killed off a little clans. Some have survived, a few have grown but most just faded away. Even when PVP worlds and clan wars were introduced they (clans) weren't the same.

So what did we get this week? Let's be honest, it's not a poll it's an announcement by Jagex saying that the wildy will be back. And what will come back with the Wildy? Clans!!

I've been a rampant multiclanner and have been in all kinds of clans. And I'd guess that 80% of clans are pvp/pking/warring clans with about 10% skiller clans and 10% others.

And why does Jagex want to do this? Cause it's an MMO. People play RS to interact with others. Some of the interactions are positive, others are negative. Depends on viewpoint. But it's about interacting. And what provides lots of interaction and therefore keeps people coming back? Clans.

So my guess is wildy is coming back, Jagex is going to make a push to be more supportive of clans, and they are hoping that the clans cause people to keep playing more/longer which is what their business model is all about.