Clan World Nostalgia

[RagingPanda 339]

 

[3lite 111]

 

[3lite 111]

Random blog documenting a few weeks of fights, during which 4 separate clans (VR, DF, EH, Corr) had pulls greater than 100 people and DI had a pull of 150.

http://clangen.blogspot.com/2009/03/

Edited October 18, 2020 by 3lite

[@Brian 2,793]

Some interesting statistics on clans around July 2006

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Clans that do not pk with FA's

"The" Clan
Total amount of members : 276
Number of retired members : 31
Amount of members who come to pk trips : 70-100
Activity % - 28% - 40%

Gladz
Total amount of members : 243
Number of retired members : 33
Amount of members who come to pk trips : 40-100
Activity % - 19% - 47%


Clans that do pk with FA's but have a limit

Damage Inc.
Total amount of members : 157
Number of retired members : 5
Amount of members that come to pk trips - 68-85
Amount of members that come to Official pk trips - 100-114
FA Limit - 15
Activity % - Pk trips = 44 % - 55%, Offical pk trips - 65%-75%

Divine Forces
Total amount of members : 144
Number of retired members : 2
Amount of members that come to pk trips - 68 on average
Amount of members that come to Official pk trips - N/A
FA limit - 15
Activity % - Pk trips - 47%

Sacred Templars
Total amount of members : 143
Number of retired members : 7
Amount of members that come to pk trips - 55-75
Amount of members that come to Official pk trips - 100-110
FA limit - 15
Activity % - Pk trips = 40 - 55%, Official Pk trips - 73% - 80%

TRWF
Total amount of members : 184
Number of retired members : 15
Amount of members that come to pk trips - 40-60
Amount of members that come to Official pk trips - 90
FA limit - around 10
Activity % - Pk trips = 23% - 35% , Official pk trips - 53%

Mystic Knights
Total amount of members : 167
Number of retired members : 15
Amount of members that come to pk trips - 30-40
Amount of members that come to Official pk trips - 80
FA limit - around 10
Activity % - Pk trips = 19% - 26%, Official pk trips - 52%

Corruption
Total amount of members : 170
Number of retired members : 20
Amount of members that come to pk trips - 60-80
Amount of members that come to Official pk trips - N/A
FA limit - Around 5-10 OJ's only (Organized Juniors)
Activity % - Pk trips - 40% - 53%


Clans that have no limit on the amount of FA's allowed to pk with them

Dark Slayers
Total amount of members : 211
Number of retired members : 15
Amount of members that come to pk trips: 40-50
Amount of members that come to Official pk trips: 70-80
Amount of FA's: 85
Activity % - Pk trips = 20% - 25% , Official pk trips - 35% - 40%

RSD
Total amount of members : 170
Number of retired members: 5
Amount of members that come to pk trips : 45-58
Amount of members that come to Official pk trips : N/A
Amount of FA's: 95
Activity % - Pk trips = 27% - 35%

Junior Clans
Note : ONLY added those who tend to fight "mainstream" clans from time to time

"The" Futures
Total amount of members : 225
Number of retired members : 0
Amount of members that come to pk trips : 60-80
Activity % - 26% - 35%

The Corrupted
Total amount of members : 84
Number of retired members : N/A
Amount of members that come to pk trips : 33-50
Activity % - 39% - 59%

 

[@Brian 2,793]

The infamous Hohto manifesto:

Quote

My goal is not to hurt RSD. However I’m aware that it’s not really from the wet dreams of that clans and in a short period of time it may cause more problems than help. The basic principal of writing this is to show the state of one top clan, give a chance for the other clans to learn from the mistakes done by one of the oldest clans and to show RSD that every coin has two sides. There are consequences for the things made in RSD and those have led into the current situation where the clan looks healthy from ouside but from inside it’s filled with diseases. I don’t only say it’s ok for you to spread this post, I’m infact now asking you to spread it as much as possible. Copy it to your clan’s forums, read it and think about the points: RSD is not an abnormal clan. It shares many common things with your clan too.



Hello comrades,



I personally am one of the oldest RSD members ever. I’ve was part of that clan since RSC, I experienced majority of its important RS2 events and I could say that I got a slight idea what RSD used to be, what it currently is and where it is heading to. I started writing his post months ago, but now as I’m not part of the clan anymore, I felt like it was time to release it. In this article I’m trying to focus on the weaknesses this clan has and how could they be fixed. Before replying something like I should have done this while being part of the clan itself, I’ll tell you this: I did discuss about the matters, I posted analyzes and basically only things I faced was the so called group hypnosis: people were too blind to see the forest from the trees and agreed with the same principals. I’ve divided this into two chapters: the current and the future. In the current chapter I’ve taken up 10 weaknesses. I’ve concentrated on “mental weaknesses”, “organizational weaknesses” or whatever you want them to call. After this post started to become larger and larger, I was starting to think give it a proper name. It would have been rather dull to call it “post about RSD” or something like that after writing all these thousands of words. Finally the idea came from Kingarmato and his passion towards commenting me reading communist manifesto at one point. Thanks mato, you just gave an article to this article!



* The biggest problem in RSD is currently that attitude I described: the blindness to see problems and the shyness to talk about things that aren’t right.. In most cases people don’t have their own opinions and they tend to agree with the current policy. This has led into a situation where all game or clan requirement related modification suggestions are lynched almost automaticly. The best example of this are cases when I compare private convos to public debates: most people tend to go with the “main lines” in public and try not to cause any discussion.



I personally call this phenomena as a mass hypnosis. People don’t tend to question the things said to them and just blindly follow, agree and defend them. This also has led into a situation where actual chances are hard to get as majority of the people don’t think there’s a better alternative. Failures and mistakes are too rarely fixed or even detected as the current system can’t be questioned by the majority. There’s a huge number of examples about this in the RSD history, but if we look only this year, the best examples are the requirement questions, the number of members and their correlation.



19th December 2008 this case went to totally new level. We had a post asking “what do you want from RSD?” and people had posted their points. Some points were of course totally ignored, despite the fact that those points had caused the loss of multiple members, demoralized people and were discussed about earlier. After all the censor and other junk I decided to write a bit longer post. The reply from Icedrop himself came within hours. His message was quite clear: there’s no problem in those and it’s not a proper suggestion as there supposedly wasn’t a way to fix it. It was quite funny, seeing that “let us disagree with the opinions” or “give us events on certain times too” are quite self explaining: you shouldn’t need to say how to fix those, it’s clear for everyone. However he also stated that it’s pointless to write as long posts as I did. Quite sarcastic how the shorter versions caused no discussion at all and my longer post bursted the buble and caused almost panic there. I know I didn’t make new friends there either, but it’s funny how RSD members even pmed me at our irc server and said that I managed to make Icedrop look like a fool with his replies. His attitude just was that there are no problems and he tried his best to ignore all the negative stuff, just like we had earlier said.



What I’ve seen, many people can’t think the cases from multiple different points of view. This leads into a case where they agree with the majority and don’t bother reading or listening to the people who disagree. It shouldn’t be too hard to encourage people to post their own opinions and cheer them to actually say WHY they believe in their opinion. The current way of saying “I think it’s ok” is not how the clan gets furher, the line should be “I think it’s ok BECAUSE…”



* RSD’s main attitude is that things are fixed “because we are RSD.” There’s been quite a lot discussion about the number of members and in most cases the answers were vaggerbondish “do you think we sit here with thumbs in our arses?” or “we’re RSD”. Yes, you are RSD and it looks to me that many people infact do have the thumbs there, at least by judging that comment and how the situation evolved. I heard that sentence multiple times on my last weeks of RSD and what worried me was the fact that people saying it were also saying that it’s the keyfactor to the success.



RSD believes too much into the attraction of the name and actions while it forgets the good old day recruiting. The problem has been noticed, people are trying but the problem itself can’t be fixed when people are too blind to see the actual cause of the problem and the current situation as a whole. For ages the (after the removal of wildy) the number of members was quite the same. There was statistic about that and it was clear to anyone who wanted to see it: the number of RSD members was stagnated and it was explained by reasons that didn’t depend on RSD. Same time the other clans managed to attract members who felt to the same combat category as the RSD members. In the other words if the problem wasn’t in the clan itself, how could the other clans still keep growing?



No, RSD won’t get anywhere just because it’s RSD. It has its brand, but the brand itself won’t take it anywhere if the men and women behind it don’t do the right things. From here we have a nice connection to my 1st point: Most people can see that RSD has a problem with the recruiting, yet many people refuse to either believe it or say it loud and even lesser number actually has balls to say that there’s something wrong and something should be done. This has led into one major thing: the old loyal members are leaving in masses: RSD is the sum of the members and when the pieces change, the puzzle changes. However currently Icedrop seems to try to put the new pieces into old holes. Of course it doesn’t work like that and the results are horrible.



The best example of this problem are the RSD analyzis on the top clan lists or how other clans should react towards RSD. When one RSD member was selling his item that would have required bounty hunter trading, he was wondering how people outside the clan scene wouldn’t trust an RSD member. This clearly sums up the attitude: it’s not like every single person in RS would know RSD and what it is supposed to stand for. For second, RSD members tend to wonder why some clans are ranked above RSD and try to find anything from anti-RSD attitude to conspiracies to explain it. This is just one more example of the “because we are RSD” attitude: RSD should prove its current state all the time just like every other clan and not rely on some ancient history.



What I’ve seen, it’s hard to get rid of this attitude. It has been there since the days of RSC and it has moved from a member to a member. It’s so strictly there that removing it would need a lot of new blood to the certain ranks and some examples of showing that things can be done in other ways too. Currently it seems that the ones who actually can influence people are left alone, put aside or just ignored. This means that if RSD wanted a change, it should open a genuine path to share your opinions. By this kind of forum it would be possible for people to influence and get influenced. However there’s some quite big buts: does RSD and the leading members really see any changes? Are they ready to get feedback that’s not positive? Do they have guts to say that they are’ve done mistakes?



3 . Currently most of the ranks in RSD are given out for weird reasons. It seems that if you meet the following qualifications, you can get any ranks: you know the right persons, you meet the minimum requirements for the rank (i.e. been long enough in the clan) and you bother to app. I’m not going to give names who shouldn’t have gotten their ranks or who missed theirs due stupid reasons, but I’m saying that currently the most suitable members are not always the ones who get ranks.



Is this a problem then? From my point if view it’s a huge problem. It has led into a situation where ranked people don’t have the need to listen to normal members and do their job in order to benefit from it. The last few months have shown this really well. RSD tends to have pk events during certain hours and they won’t change. We made a clear note about this, trial members have publicly said in multiple occasions that was the reason they didn’t app for full membership, didn’t even test the trial member period and eventually it was one of the main reasons why I’m now clanless and writing this. The problem was made clear, a nice number of members agreed with it and people were even doing something in order ochange it. What happened? Nothing, RSD pk leaders ignored the need for a change and kept doing the thing that had already caused damage to the clan. Only reason for this kind of behaviour can be the selfish attitude. If they had listened to the members or wanted to actually help the clan, they would have done something. It’s not a surpise that the pk times were made to favour the pk leaders.



If you want to get a good example of this, take a look at me. I for example was a moderator for ages and yet I don’t feel like I should have gotten the rank in the first place. I wasn’t active enough at the forums to spot things done wrong and I got strong opinions which I’m not afraid to talk about. This led into a case where I could be in the middle of a debate which wasn’t probably always the most suitable thing for a ranked member. Add this to the fact that I really rarely even did any modding, I find it weird how I could keep the rank for so long. However the funniest thing is that I lost my rank after I had been striked for something that wasn’t even against the RSD rules. In other words there was no control on how you did your job and the written rules were only guidelines that could be followed.



From this we get into the point where some people talk about something and do the other. I find it humorous how Vaggerbond (in this case I just had to give out the name in order to protect all the other pk leaders) could talk about taking stuff seriously and listening to the pk leaders, yet same time his own actions distracted people from it. If a person can say the f-word 12 times in a minute (I infact counted this) and after that complain how I criticized him AFTER the event, I find it funny how he can talk about stuff like he talks about. This was just another example of the hypocricy amongs certain members who are supposed to be the backbone of the clan. By the way if you want to get an image of this, here are links to our private discussions after I had said I can’t take a man seriously if he uses the f-word so many times in so short amount of time. http://koti.mbnet.fi/hohtava/vagger/

Note: Some of the pics are from 19th dec 2008. The first one was was sent to me after I asked him publicly how can he judge people the way ranked people do. That question was censored by the way. On later parts you can see how well the team work is in RSD: the brother of a coleader is threatening to get me kicked and benefitting from the role of his brother. After this episode I decided to make a picture of this case asking if it’s right and I posted it to our irc. You can guess how fast F1r3o came online (he’s never in irc so it was a miracle) and the way how he started it made me leave in the end.

[22:53:40] <F1r3o> Hohto

[22:53:45] <+Hohto> http://koti.mbnet.fi/hohtava/vag.png

[22:53:47] <+Hohto> comments?

[22:53:47] <F1r3o> If you've got something to accuse me of mate you can say it directly to me

[22:53:57] <F1r3o> Instead of being a organ like usual?

[22:54:19] <F1r3o> Or go and female dog and whine and do nothing if you'd rather.

[22:54:23] <+Hohto> how am I being a organ when the brother of our leader threatens to use your account to benefit from it and use his family connections to benefit?

[22:54:38] <F1r3o> Directly after you sarcastically stated he would do it

[22:54:50] <F1r3o> And he sarcastically remarked at your pathetic level

[22:55:01] <+Hohto> directly after he had spammed my inbox after question marks, called me a organ, a prick and whatver

[22:55:14] <+Hohto> 'with

Yup yup… I get my inbox spammed, called with names, threatened and in the end I’m the only guilty one…



The way how ranks are given also reflects negatively to the public relations of the clan. I’ve been talking about it for ages and I’m not the only one who agrees with this. It’s stupid how RSD can give irc ops or hops to people solely based on their ranks. In other words, RSD gives rather powers to people who don’t use the irc than to those who use and who actually know what they’re doing. This is only one example how the RSD logic works: people who don’t have a clue about irc and who app for something completely other (for example pk leadership) get rights in place where they don’t even go to and same time people with the knowledge are ignored and usually said that they’re not “trustworthy”. I find it funny how much one single rank can do to the level of your honesty. A perfect example of this was Beckham69. When he set up the irc server for us, he obviously got powers. After we moved to Seers, he lost every single piece of powers and only had voices. Did he really become such an dishonest person after the server hop?



However it’s not this easy. I was told by Vaggerbond that I didn’t help the clan by being a moderator in the past and not having a rank at that time and that the rank itself is basically useless. Quite harsh text, seeing that he had no rank by the time, my rank was taken away for false reasons and thus I couldn’t app for other ranks AND basically what he said was that if you’re not part of the 5% who has an “important” rank, you’re not helping the clan. Not even if you had been in the clan for 3 years, held a rank for ages, gotten multiple awards in the clan, sacrificed hundreds of rune and range sets, wasted thousads of hours and written probably the most words in RSD. OK, if that effort means nothing, then how can you value the newer members at all? Basically it means that the rank is what gives you your value, not your actions to help the clan or your dedication to fight for it.



If RSD wanted to solve this problem, it shouldn’t be too hard. By putting a bit more effort on looking every single side of the applicant isn’t too hard.You don’t really need to be an agent to figure out how to find out how the person acts in irc for example. It’s not that hard to see how the powers are currently being used. If having a rank is the thing how irc rights are given out, why the hell don’t you put up a secondary rank that gives you rights in irc? Ranked people are meant to serve the clan and the clan equals for its members. Why can’t members get ranked people into charge if their actions are wrong? If you allowed an anonymous way to vote some ranked members away from their ranks, there would be actual ways to affect how the ranked people use their ranks.



* RSD currently has no proper goals and hasn’t had them since the second version of the bounty hunter came out. People can talk about being #1 and so on, yet nothing seems to happen. I’ve been part of RSD multiple times when it has taken the #1 spot (legendary Di fght, last christmas DF fight, etc) and if I compare the attitute BEFORE the actual fights to the current situation, there’s a huge difference. When RSD was going for #1, people were dedicated, the dedication seemed to “plague” from a member to member and the clan itself seemed to go further and further all the time. There’s a huge difference between that stage and the current stagnation.



Currently RSD claims to be f2p+p2p clan, yet same time the clan could go for months with only one or two proper p2p events. How can a clan call itself a p2p clan if it even doesn’t do p2p? RSD claims that it can’t set up fights as the other clans won’t fight, however I don’t think this is the actual problem. RSD could set up clan wars against horrible clans (for example clans that died over 400 times in 1.5 hours in f2p) but it couldn’t find up any clans that would do p2p, not even with rules that would give a handicap? Seems weird to me. This was just one example of the difference between the talk and the walk: RSD can be p2p in their speaking but in reality RSD’s f2p with few random p2ps.



During my last weeks in RSD people were comparing today’s RSD to the RSD in 2007. Funny how in 2007 it was compared to the RSD in 2006 and so on. For many it seems that the reality is something unreal and irrational thoughts are ruling the thinking. The funny thing is that when people were doing the latest comparison, a funny quote popped out. It goes like “Last year EVERY member we had was reliable and dedicated, we didnt even have to worry about turnouts, because they were always great, and we ALWAYS gained opts.” It’s funny because it shows clearly how lost some people are. Even though I don’t fully agree with the line, it reminds the importance of goals. People don’t even know what they’re fighting for at the moment. How are you planning to get people to return until the day after tomorrow if they feel like they aren’t listened and the result of the fight doesn’t matter?



It seems that in RSD people have some kind of false illusion of being great. People are not ready to work to get anything or able to see the mistakes. I’ve written about this already quite a lot and there are many chapters about it still coming. That’s just a result of the thing I had dedicated this section to: the lack of goal. Without a goal there won’t be a thing to motivate people. However if there’s an illustrated goal of being #1 clan, it can easily demoralize people. Without being able to see the weaknesses, the clan won’t get even close to it. This constant failing of course doesn’t help the clan and when the goal is set too high, it means that the fall is even more dramatic.



It seems to me that RSD doesn’t know what it really wants at the moment and it is scared to take any steps to any directions. It follows the other clans and only does things that that the other clans do. RSD can’t make its own decicions or set proper longterm goals to reach. If RSD was a serious clan, it would set itself a proper goal, a way to reach that and do anything in order to reach it. RSD did this before the legendary DI fight, before the DF fight and so on.



* RSD can’t threat old members properly. There’s stickied topics how to do it, yet there’s a huge difference between the words and the actions. When Jaire for example was kicked (I agree that the kicking itself was justified), he was officially called a deadweight. How are you expecting anyone be like “I’ll do my best to fix it!” after that? If all the years I had wasted for the clan was worth nothing, why would I want to rejoin? However it didn’t end here: after Jaire decided to join DI, certain people (even ranked) became total idiots and showed no respect towards him. I don’t see what else should he have done: he got kicked and by the actions made by the leadership it was quite clear that he wasn’t wanted to the clan. This means he had no moral ties to RSD and yet people show him zero respect when he decides to join another clan.



I don’t know about you, but at least I’d like to get some respect for everything I’ve done. RSD can mock members who have woken up really early to fight, stayed up till the morning to fight and sacrificed hundreds, in some cases thousands, of hours due direct events and indirect stuff like getting armours or making friends with other clan mates. If after everything that you can be called a deadweight and if you don’t feel like coming back due that, your future choices can be judged by people. How does that help the clan to get back some members if they will changes?



There are other good examples too. Cruck Mage for example had been a loyal and good member in the past. He had left due a real life situation that led into inactivity. When we finally managed to re-recruit him, he was kicked after 8 days. For what? Of course inactivity! How can you even be inactive in that short of time? To make it even better, he had more events in those 8 days than I had had in 18. Does that sound right? Of course accidents could happen to anyone, but in RSD those accidents seem to more of a rule than a random misfortune.



This is not only a proplem with the current members. It also gives an image of a clan where you are doomed to be part of the RSD forever or become a reject in future. This kind of an attitude problem is not in my eyes something a clan that wants to attract members should have. I’ve been personally wondering wether to app back in future or not and at the moment I have the feeling I won’t, at least not in the near future. Why? Because of this exact attitute problem: respect is a two bladed sword and if you want respect, you have to be respectable. In my eyes RSD is ready to take the respectable actions done by you but not give the credit or respect for them.



* RSD has weird ways of punishing people for breaking the clan rules and following them. It seems to me that there are written rules than can bend or break depending on who breaks the rules. This causes a moral dilemma where you don’t always know are you breaking the rules or not.



I for example went to court in late 2008 for reporting our member in our clan chat and causing him a mute that way. This would be ok for me if I had broken any rules by the clan, but in reality there was no rule about reporting rsd member aslong as it’s not for the pk related spam. Well, in this case it was clearly offensive lines I reported and those lines had made people feel uncomfortable and leave the clan chat. In other words I was reporting him for breaking the rs rules but also for giving a bad reputation to the whole clan.



When I was at the court, there were people who actually had their doubts was it me who really reported. I leave it for anyone to decide was it really me, but I took the full guilt for it. This shows the problem: there was evidence, there was a muted character and there was me who said it was me who reported. Yet people were looking for points why it couldn’t have been me. If you look at the whole picture, it was quite comical: I was being in court for doing something that wasn’t against the rules and the court members weren’t even fully certain was it me or someone else.



To make the case even funnier, take a look at the RSD memberlist. There are members who are not the original owners of their characters, RSD has a rule to follow RS rules and yet that kind of stuff can happen. In other words you can break RSD rules without any problems and you can go to court for doing something that’s not against the rules. Is this how an honest and mature community (or at least so called) works? In my eyes the rules are there for a reason and they should be followed. If they can’t be followed, then they should be removed. This is how well things work in RSD: written words are worth as much as a promise from the worst NH clans. It means nothing what’s said, written or promised.



Cruck Mage’s kickings could also be notified here again, but lets check another case. I already mentioned earlier and showed a picture of how Vaggerbound without any ranks threatens to get me kicked after he had called me with multiple names and spammed my inbox due the fact that he believed everything’s right in a clan that prepares for 3 days to fight against DF and gets downed in an hour and suffers from many points I’m mentioning in this post. I should probably remind you that he is F1r3o’s real life brother and thus there was a reason to take the threat seriously. At least so far I haven’t even gotten a notify from the court and I was once again ignored by the leadership on the case. It perfectly shows how the punishing policy once again works. At the moment it seems that outside of the leadership there is one huge tumour in rsd and that’s Vaggerbond. Not many people can poison the atmosphere with real life slander, threaten then to get someone kicked and same time break the rules himself. Of course after that he can survive with his relations. Am I bitter to Vaggerbond? Not really, only few people have the gift of sending so many messages with so few words and same time having weird illusions of himself.



If RSD wanted to get rid of the rule problems, the solutions were pretty darn easy to find. Write a rule that the written rules are the ones to be followed in every single occasion, modify the “follow RS rules” rule (by for example on cases of the rule nr. 1) and actually put everyone into the same category. It seems to me that people can break rules if they are widely known: those people really rarely get reported and even in court they can get away without proper punishments.



* The way how RSD arranges events does not reflect to the way how members have divided. This is once again result of the so called RSD mafia: the events are arranged to meet the needs of our pk leaders, not the actual members. This has multiple aspects starting from the event types ending to the event times.



We’ve had votes on pk times and the message was cuite clear there. It’s not hard to say that there was an order for events during one time and if the trial members had had the chances to vote, it would have been almost dominant. However still the events were all the time prefering few single timezones. What I experienced by myself and what I heard from people who decided not to app after their trial membership time, this was a real problem. It seems that RSD doesn’t even want to give a chance for those who are from some weirder timezones. I’d understand this if there was only few individuals, but in these cases the problem was quite a bigger: the number of people suffering was rather high and they had expressed their feelings. In other words, the pk leaders were in most cases far too selfish to actually listen to the members.



The second problem I faced was the rules in clan wars when that was done in p2p. In most cases the rules were set in away that benefitted the other clan: we couldn’t use our high summoning average, in most cases the good items (=wealthy banks) were disallowed and so on. I would have understood this if the opponent was a lot weaker, but we did this even against clans that were by numbers at our category and in p2p experience ahead of us. This kind of events could have cheered people to actually work to gain wealth, work on summon and to show non-rsders that we actually are something. What did we do? We basically said “we don’t value your work on getting items or summoning” and showed to the clan world that we can do welfare fights.



The setting of rules and event times has a perfect example. This happened on sunday 23.11.2008. We had first set a pk for that night, starting on a perfect time for gmt+2 unit which had been asking for an event for ages. Well, we ended up getting a fight against EOS. First of all, EOS was the clan that a big majority didn’t want to fight. We’ve had a bad history with them and their actions before the fight justified the doubts. They for example pmed the details to every member of their forums and showed totally zero respect before the fight. Ok, this was a bad thing but not worth a chapter alone. The second one was that it was made later and without a time limit. Once again an event started at 22:30 for the people who had put a lot of hopes of an event during a good time. Eventually RSD lost the fight as it lasted so long that gmters went to bed. The funniest part is still to come. The rules were made so badly against us that even though I heard a different story from few different sources, it’s hard for me to believe that we had set them. I find it funny how a clan like RSD can give all the advantages to the enemy. A normal or a wise clan would set either equal rules or at least try to get rules that benefitted them. So far we have the points that RSD itself have the advantage to the enemy, ignored its own members and arranged the event to help the pk leaders. These points were bad, but not the only ones. After setting up the worst possible event some really high ranked rsders started to censor all the critical posts and basically telling us to agree with them or be quiet. Is this how the clan events are set?



The main concern I have is the actual way of RSD events. Most fights currently last for hours and too many of them are short prep events. This means that it might be hard for you to schedule your weekends or nights. Same time most of the prepared events are either non-pk or they are pk trips where you don’t have enough power to hit certain clans. I personally didn’t really enjoy hiding at greaters and hearing that we aren’t strong enough to hit *insert clan name here* or something around that line. This means that if you don’t have the possibility to stay up whole night being ready, you will most likely miss or get surprised by a good fight. This is a clear problem when you are trying to schedule your stuff and same time be active in the clan. It’s not a problem if you live in the right timezones and you got nothing to schedule. If you don’t meet those requirements, you’re not in the best possible position. It’s not only a problem for the individual that suffers from that. It reduces RSD’s chances to recruit new people and keep the old ones.



* RSD has turned from a community to a loose network of multiple packs of people. People can talk and talk how to get to know the new members better and how to keep up with the old members. However what I’ve seen, this doesn’t work in reality. I understand that you can’t be friends with everyone, but what I’ve seen, some people are fine by being only names on the memberlist.



It seems to be relatively hard to get to know rsders. We don’t have a public team speak, our irc is almost fully occupied by the same people from years to years and the same problem is with our clan chat. If you want to get to know new people, you pretty must have to be a member. Otherwise you’ll get to know the 10 members who are active in irc and in the clan chat. How are you meant to get referals then? This leads into a situation where same people basically have to ref every new member.



The best way to notice this is to check the “know the members” topic in the members section. Some people are in game all the time but almost never in the clan chat or irc. This means that people don’t really get to know them and in cumulates as “don’t know” or “never really spoken to” answers in that topic. That should be a clear message: not only to the clan but to the unknown member too. How can you expect someone to be loyal to a clan when the clan is filled with people mean nothing to you? Why would I sacrifice 5-8 hours of my time for pkin and lose 10-20 rune sets during it? Just to benefit Mr and Mrs Nobody fighting next to me? Yea, for sure.



Another thing I’m concerned about are the retired members. I understand it’s acceptable to give the old members a break if they real life situation doesn’t allow scaping. However we have people with retired rank who haven’t been in any rsd events or gained any xp in over 250 days. However the funniest one was a member who had sold his account and kept the retired rank for a total of 100+ days without even having an rs account. This is more like a security risk in the form of leaking private information than an actual attempt to keep a good member. If someone’s been retired for 3-4 months, he/she either isn’t coming back or should be dedicated enough to rejoin.



* For ages the mantra in RSD has been “quality over quantity” and this attitude has caused problems in recruiting. RSD for example had the infinite run rule. This basically meant that a lvl 126 f2p with the ability to tank was autorejected while a lvl 114 f2p with no knowledge could get in. This is an exaggered example, yet it shows the dilemma we are facing.



RSD can get some mathematical average up at the cost of absolute power. This same applies to the pkin activity: RSD can praise their percentual activity and put down the opponent’s average while the raw numbers are cruel: 80% activity doesn’t help if the opponent can pull 20 people more with 55% activity. I don’t know about you, but if RSD really wanted to be the best of the best, it would need a lot more than this so called percentual activity. It can’t rely on the fact that possible members cared about percentual activity more than winning a fight with a nice number of actual people fighting.



The paradox in this system is the fact that while keeping up with this “quality over quantity” mantra, RSD values certain additions more than the others. For example in the case I showed infinite run meant more than the actual wealth, experience, skills, dedication or leadership abilities. In other words, in RSD some secondary things are worth more than the skills or personal abilities. We faced this with many people. I personally know multiple people who either failed to app due the quest or didn’t app in the first place due it. Same time people with a lot less pk experience, lower levels and less wealth were coming in. Is this the logic RSD wants to follow?



The problem described wouldn’t be a problem if there was a lot of training in RSD. However it seems to be a total opposite. There are even ranked people who are saying they won’t get past X level in summoning, magic, ranged and/or prayer. This woldn’t be a problem if RSD didn’t care about them, but infact they do: there’s all the time talking about bringing up averages and getting X average combat next month. If ranked members can show that kind of example, why would the lvl 120s train either? It has become more of a rule than an exception not to train certain skills to 99 and use excuses such as “costs too much” or so, even by people who do have enough money and spend so many hours in game that making the money shouldn’t be that bad.



If RSD made the application procedure easier and stopped using stupid requirements, such as special item requirements, the total power of RSD would rise a lot. It’s not important is the average hp level 0.01 higher or lower than DI’s average and it doesn’t matter in the long run. It would be more important to have a high enough average and the highest possible hp1+hp2….+hpn where n is the amount of total members. If RSD also wanted, it could easily encourage members to train their skills that actually helped. I’m quit sure this kind of thing won’t happen with the current “basemembers”, though: it would require accepting the fact that the recruiting policy has been a failure and it would force people to change their opinions on training and the satisfying levels. I’m relatively sure this won’t happen in any near future.



* This one is pretty much a compilation of all the first 9 steps or points. RSD should be ready to be able to adapt to the changing environment faster ad better while it should be ready to modify its own organization and fix the weaknesses. Currently it seems to be far too hard for RSD to change anything that is related to their organization and if anything new occurs in the clan scene, RSD definitely won’t be the first one to benefit from it.



This problem isn’t just something that has been haunting RSD since the early days of the clan. When RS2 came, RSD was one of the first clans that could have been taken seriously in that place. However when the MB trend rose and the no honour clans started to crawl out of their dirty caves, RSD almost vanished as it couldn’t react to the change in the environment. Currently RSD seems to have that same kind of problems, however not (at least yet) in the same scale. I’d also like to point out that the speed of the downhall is now slower.



The best way to look at this situation is to look at the leadership. The problem with RSD is not in small things: of course binding, TS calling or stocking up could be better but those aren’t the reasons why RSD is falling. The leaders draw the big picture and should be able to guide the boat to right direction. This of course didn’t happen. From the leadership (leader+co leaders) only Godstruewill survives with no negative feedback here: you harvest what you have sown and he hasn’t sown anything worth a bad word.



Icedrop was a great comrade and a high ranked RSDer, but as a leader he has failed quite miserably. He hasn’t only managed to drive away multiple great persons, including ranked people, he has also managed to put the whole clan into a stagnated stage and later even managed to start a downfall. Same time people are praising his leadership abilities: I don’t know is it due the blindness to see the situation or naïve belief that a leader can’t do bad things. It actually reminds me of George Walker Bush and some hardcore republicans: even though outside it seems obvious that the leader has failed, the republicans are trying to put the guilt on other parts or just can’t see the thing that the things done were not the right things to do.



F1r3o is a weird creature. I’d say he’s closer to a pk leader than an actual leader. He seems to be able to ignore all the negative feedback and somehow turn it into your fault. I don’t know how is it possible that after almost being on our knees begging for even few gmt+2 based events he turns it into our hands. I don’t know did I really understand him right but according to him I, a person who lost his rank due a stupid reason 1 week earlier, should arrange a pk instead of 7-8 pk leaders. I don’t know how can he even expect me to do it: I’m of course not satisfied with the way of leading and after I was judged to be non-trustable I’m asked to do someone else’s job. Same continues for ages: he can always turn out the point to totally minor things and argue that everything’s fine, even when multiple people disagree with him. His strategy reminds me of the totalitarian state that seems to work in RSD: all the negative sides are being ignored and if possible, you’re turned into the reason for something else.



Future:



This one was relatively hard. One or two updates, new members or leaving members could change a lot in the clan scene. However this is my assumption and I base it on the following facts: I’m assuming upcoming updates are equally benefitting or harming the clans, the number of “basemembers” leaving clans is equal and that kind of members leave RSD as often as they do other clans and that no new trends rise.



Members: I’m quite sure the RSD members number rises percentually at the same speed or a bit slower than in the other top clans. If RSD manages to start a good recruiting campaign it can catch them, but if this was gambling I’d bet my money on some other alternative. If RSD manages to change the direction and get closer to the top, there will a nice number of glory hunters joining. However my prediction is that if we count somekind of an average number of members from the topclans and compare it to RSD’s current number of members, it will be around the same in 6 months from now: there won’t be an absolute growth.



Ranks: On this I don’t think we’ll see many chances. If we compare the curren ranked members to the ranked members from 1 year from now, there will be quite minor changes: some people have gotten higher ranks (like from a moderator to a court) but only a handful of the ranked people outside the pk leader rank have been in RSD for over 1 year. In other words I’m saying that only 1 or 2 people who have joined after I published this post will have ranks 1 year from the releasing date. I don’t count in the pk leader rank as it seems that literally anyone with nothing but a mic can get it, at least for a while. However I’d like to add here that outside of EST and GMT, there has been only a handful of pk leaders in the whole RSD history. Percentually non-EST+GMT units are so heavily under representated that it’s almost impossible to believe.



Compared to other clans: Without major changes, preferably both organizational and mental, RSD will stagnate to the current position and not rise towards the clearest top. If I could now bet money, I’d say that 6 months after the release of this post RSD will have good fights and it will be recognised widely, but it won’t be a realistic name for the #1 clan. This is a result of the failure to adopt to the current clan world and its requirements. RSD doesn’t listen to the members, their recruitment and event systems are far too inflexible and they got no real goal.



It seems that if we tried to make as objective top list as possible, RSD would be somewhere between ranks 5 and 7 when writing this part. However I do not find it hard to believe that within one year RSD won’t be in top 10. This assumption is based on the facts that RSD doesn’t even seem to want a change even though they are on a downhill. Of course this is a two sharped sword: bad things follow bad things and good things follow good things. Downhills usually lead into losing members and thus even increase the dropping speed.



In general: I’m sure RSD will keep a lot of good members and get a lot of new ones falling into that category. I’m also almost 100% sure that people who can criticize the clan they are in will find at least 7 out of these principals I listed earlier. In other words I’m being pessimistic on RSD’s ability to spot and fix the problems it has.



Without the help from Jagex, big changes in the clan scene require time. RSD still has all the chances to change the direction. They have a lot of great members, they have their brand and they are not too much behind the top. Things aren’t bad yet, but the direction is worrying. There’s much to do and I’d estimate that RSD has only few months time to start changing. After that the difference between RSD and the other top clans might have become too big to catch in a reasonable amount of time. I’m not saying that RSD should follow every single suggestion I made but if RSD wants to get somewhere, it must start changing step by step. It’s impossible to estimate how many steps does it need to take, but without taking any steps RSD won’t get anywhere while the other clans are getting even more ahead.



ending words:



It was surprisingly easy to write this article. During all the years in RSD I’ve managed to see its downfalls, moments of glory and the normal everyday gaming. During all this I was able to start seeing certain patterns and ways of doing things and I’ve been talking about them in the past: This was just putting my thoughts into the form of written language. The brain process was made earlier.



I’ve been lucky enough to meet countless of wonderful persons and I’ve had great moments in the clan. There’s many persons who have given me a lot more than I could have dared to ask and I will miss many of you. I’m not giving names here, you know it yourself. However in the last 3 months or so I’ve been losing my faith on the clan as a whole and despite the attempts to affect and change, I was quite clearly ignored by the ones who had power to do something. Of course I also did wrong things and I could have done certain things in a different way, I don’t deny that. I’m not sure was I always the best member, a good example or even the nicest person, but I hope I will be remembered as an honest person who was ready to say his opinions.



I probably will personally keep hanging around the RSD irc, maybe clan chat and read the forums every now and then. I was part of the clan for years and you don’t just remove something from you as quickly as you remove a name from the clan memberlist. I’m not completely ruling out the possibility of being in RSD one day, but at the moment I have the feeling that quite a lot should change before that happens. At one point I swore that I’ll have only two otions for a clan: either a clan ran by me or RSD. However just like RSD has changed, I’ve changed too. I currently wouldn’t even think of leading a clan and I don’t rule out the possibility of being part of some other clans.



The point of this article is not to strike against RSD but to wake up discussion wether the current way is working or not. I’m not currently up for a huge debate wether all the points are accurate, however I’m ready to hear your opinion. The point for not wanting the debate is quite clearly explained at the beginning of this article. There’s far too much stubborn people with ranks in RSD, far too many people are not ready to find out or hear anything negative (even realistic) comments and I don’t have motivation to argue about a clan I’m not even part of.



I’ve posted this article in few different forums as I believe there are people who enjoy reading about the negative sides too at times. I’d also be a liar if I said I didn’t believe in RSD willing to censor this article if I posted it only at their forums.

 

[@True 2k8 3,201]

Fun fact.. Hohto is the first person to get a Dark Bow drop on RS2

[Adam_ 1,028]

So what exactly led up to Hohto's clear mental breakdown lol

[@Brian 2,793]

Probably better for someone who was RSD at the time to comment but RSD changed "direction" a lot in those years.

[J2swift 300]

Hohto was just mad people were tired of listening to him be the hypocritical whiner that he was. He hated everything that was going on. He thought everyone's decision was the wrong decision, and only he had the way if thinking to survive.

[Matthew 13]

if someone can find that eos video where they had some guy dressed as jesus please post it, been looking forever but can't find it

[Blue Wall 40]

On 10/10/2020 at 1:14 PM, Dickus said:

I completely forgot half these people ever existed 

Ouch ?

[≈Vanuckle 2,132]

https://web.archive.org/web/20061108041915/http://z10.invisionfree.com/RS_Blaze/index.php

 

? 

[Icedrop 8]

On 10/18/2020 at 10:56 AM, Brian said:

The infamous Hohto manifesto:

 

The length of it still baffles me!

A lot of waffle, nonsense, and unfounded drivel within that essay.  He said so much there is no doubt the odd half-truth in there, but it was never worthy of a full response from the leaders.  He was so far off the mark on so many things so we simply laughed it off.

What I do find amusing is how wrong his future predictions turned out to be.  He posted that at some point in 2008 and in the two years that followed we gained strength, consistency, and stayed as a top 5 clan with some significant spells at #1.

==ice==

[Vannaka 32]

https://web.archive.org/web/20090926004959/http://www.runehead.com/clans/clandb.php

12 years of data of ML's there, so the majority is there, just pick your date/time, search around a bit with the filters.

I dig a bit into this category of Rs clan world nostalgia etc once a while, and come back with sapphires sometimes.   But I only just figured out this sight in August and that was like mining a full invy of diamonds, such a goldmine there.

 

 

Lol yea the manifesto needs to go into a spoiler yo, ffs 

Edited October 19, 2020 by Vannaka

[Stewie 226]

48 minutes ago, Vannaka said:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090926004959/http://www.runehead.com/clans/clandb.php

12 years of data of ML's there, so the majority is there, just pick your date/time, search around a bit with the filters.

I dig a bit into this category of Rs clan world nostalgia etc once a while, and come back with sapphires sometimes.   But I only just figured out this sight in August and that was like mining a full invy of diamonds, such a goldmine there.

 

 

Lol yea the manifesto needs to go into a spoiler yo, ffs 

My fucking god what a find