Community Management: Clan Submissions Page

Hey there and welcome to the first edition of the Clan Submissions Blog in 2010. I hope you enjoyed your holidays and our last blog. :P I should introduce myself: I’m Mod Timbo and I’m head of Clan Support as part of the Community Management team. I’m responsible for ideas like this Submissions Blog, The Jagex Cup and much more at Jagex. I hope you’ll enjoy this blog and let us know if there is anything wrong, especially if there was something more you’d like to see or something that we missed! Don’t forget that if you’d like to submit anything to the blog, you can send it to us via email at postbag@jagex.com, putting ‘Clan’ somewhere in the subject line.

Mod Timbo

This time we have artwork from Haze, The Skilling Clan and a selection of signatures from Kcafo88 (currently known as xX KCAFO Xx).

The Sabres are a very prestigious clan within RuneScape, being the oldest clan to grace the land. They’ve seen it all from the old signs of player-owned houses back in the early days, the change from RuneScape Classic to RuneScape 2 up until Nomad’s Requiem. Mod Timbo caught up with the current leader of The Sabres, Dazed Sabre, and former members from many years ago (Final Sabre and Siege Sabre).

Mod Timbo: What is your earliest memory of The Sabres, either before you joined or during the clan?

Final Sabre: My first memory of The Sabres, before I joined, was being killed a few times by them. :P Back on Cyber Wars, before RuneScape.

Dazed Sabre: That would be finding out about The Sabres while pursuing my goal to make my own anti-random-player-killing (ARPK) clan, to protect the innocent in the Wilderness, I had been killed several times while training at green dragons when I was low level, and when I learned of the ARPK legacy I quickly signed up, the code of honour and respect is what made me join.

Siege Sabre: My first memory is my first clan meeting, back then all new members had to create a new account with the word 'sabre' in their name, I had barely finished Tutorial Island before I got to the meeting in Falador mansion. I can remember being really stunned at an entire room full of Sabres all stood in rank.

Mod Timbo: As a lot of people know, it's easy to identify a member of The Sabres from their name due to each player having 'sabre' in their name. How did this idea come about, has it caused any recruitment issues in the past and have there been any Sabres who didn't have 'sabre' in their name?

Dazed Sabre: Originally, it was required that all members have 'sabre' in their name. The Sabres began in a game called Cyber Wars. Distinctive by their Sabre names and their "-Crosses Sabre-" greeting, members rushed to join. At one point when the clan was struggling, we opened it to anyone who would like to join and met our requirements, sabre name or not, and so from then people had the option of creating a new sabre character, or just keeping their account. I myself made my sabre name from scratch after being in the clan a while. When the name change came out, we strongly encouraged that people changed to sabre names.

Siege Sabre: Most people still chose to make a new sabre character, even if they didn't use it as their main, but many still made the effort and in time started using their sabre character full time. I feel it's more impressive to have a group of players with 'sabre' in their name by choice rather than enforcing it. The display name update really helped this.

Mod Timbo: The Sabres helped shape the clan, and arguably game, communities over the past decade or so. Looking back, how does it feel to have been a leader of the field?

Siege Sabre: I've always taken great pride in The Sabres' history and their legacy. Even when I first joined The Sabres , occasionally I would get people come up to me and comment on my name and describe their experiences with the clan. I just wish that I could have been a greater part of their early history and been there at the beginning.

Final Sabre: You know, we were generally quite young back then, we weren't thinking too much about doing something huge. We were just trying to have fun, but we were nice about it, and by helping others it turned out for the best. With the massive player base that RuneScape has today we definitely aren't recognized by everyone, like in the old days. You still see people who are like "zomg are you in The Sabres?" and that still makes you feel great.

Continued further down...

We’ve had a great number of events within the clan community over the past month or so, but none more so than ‘The’ Clan’s 10th Anniversary. I know that it’s older than RuneScape itself, but this clan have fought on from previous games and enjoyed the majority in the game that we call home. Here is a piece about their party from Josh1391.

'The' Clan's Birthday - by Josh1391

‘The’ was founded in December 1999, in a pre-RuneScape game run by Jagex called Cyber Wars, as a partnership between Militant and ESQ187. We are one of the oldest clans to remain active since Cyber Wars, moving to RuneScape Classic and then switching to the RuneScape we know and love today.

On 16th December 2009, ‘The’ Clan became 10 years old. We hosted a week of events to celebrate this enormous achievement, our biggest being a massive 100m+ drop party on the day of our birthday.

We started out by massing in world 102 with the intention of dropping as much as possible, as this was a free to play world (to give both F2P and P2P players a chance) many ‘The’ members bought rune sets, god armour sets and corrupt items to drop. As soon as all our items had been placed in the chest, we waited for the masses of people to join us.

There was a 10 minute wait to allow people from all over Gielinor to join us. By the start of the drop, there were so many people that parts of the room simply disappeared (hope we didn’t do any damage to your servers Jagex!). We would like to thank everyone who turned up to the event, including Mod Mat K, Mod Cob and members from the Tip.it Community.

I would also like to thank all 'The' members who gave some of their money to make this event amazing!

Happy 10th Birthday, ‘The’ Clan!

As a regular feature, we’ll be spotlighting a few of our clans from the community in different categories. Don’t worry if you’re clan doesn’t appear here and you think that it should, let us know via email at postbag@jagex.com with ‘Clan’ in the subject and we’ll see what we can do.

Some of the oldest clans:
The Sabres, Clan Jaguar and Damage Incorporated (now closed)

Some of the newest clans:
Devil's Gate, Impact of Sin and The Game (which you just lost! :P)

Some of our more unusual clans:
Dark Magic, Exp Mastery and Grand Corrinian Commonwealth

Some of our high-levelled clans:
The Rising, Divine Forces and Chivalry Legions

If you think you know of other clans that fit these categories, let us know!

That’s right, YOU! If there is anything that you would like to share with Jagex and the clan community here on the Clan Submissions page then do let us know! The way in which you can do this is by sending us what you have, preferably as an attachment if it’s any artwork, to postbag@jagex.com putting ‘Clan’ in the subject somewhere. We’ll take a look at what you’ve sent us - be that clan facts, interviews, articles, artwork and much more - and then pick out what people would like to see and put it on the page. I hope you enjoyed this edition of the Clan Submissions page!

To read the previous Clan Submissions page, click here. To find out more about clans, check out our knowledge base article about them. To see what’s happening in the clan community, check out the clan forums.

Mod Timbo: Have there been any times that The Sabres have been close to closing? And what would you say is the success of The Sabres for staying alive for such a long period of time?

Siege Sabre: It depends on how you define close. There have been moments where some members have believed it to be an option, but I don't recall it ever being considered seriously. We've always had a close knit core of members, and our membership as a whole are very loyal and proud of the clan and when times get hard it shows which members are truly loyal and prepared to work to improve the clan.

Dazed Sabre: There have been a few occasions where people might say it was close, but the length of time that we have been together has proven our loyalty to each other and to the clan. The worst time was probably when the Wilderness came out, a large portion of the clan left the game as it was protecting the innocent and our friends that largely drove The Sabres' passion. We have gone through so many changes of the game; we have adapted and continued to focus on what really matters - having fun with our mates.

Mod Timbo: What would you say is The Sabres' greatest success?

Final Sabre: For this one I'd have to go back to your last question. Just the fact that we've stayed around for 11 years is pretty amazing to me. That we've managed to make it through all those tough times with dignity.

Siege Sabre: I think our reputation. We've been around for such a long time and yet the vast majority of the time when players outside the clan know about us, or have heard of us, they've heard something positive. When bad events have a habit of casting a shadow over good reputations, I feel it's a great achievement to have kept such a good reputation with the majority of the clan world.

Mod Timbo: What do you think is the reason behind RuneScape's success?

Final Sabre: I've been asking myself that same question for years. It has a general addictive quality and it’s not overcomplicated, which adds to its charm. It's sorta like the every man's game.

Siege Sabre: It's accessibility; it's almost just as easy to start RuneScape as it is to start an arcade-style web game. You can play it wherever you have a computer and internet, and yet it offers a huge amount of gameplay and interaction with the other players that you can't get on other browser games. I've been playing 6 years and there are still things I haven't tried, and many skills still to level.

Mod Timbo: What does it feel like to lead a clan with such history and prestige and what are your plans for The Sabres for the new decade?

Final Sabre: I want to say that over the past 11 years I've seen a lot of leaders in this clan, and Ganja is easily one of the tops (not to suck-up or anything). Speaking as a retired member, he has certainly been doing a great job. The leadership of The Sabres is better than it has been in a very long time and whatever direction they're going with, they'll be doing great things.

Dazed Sabre: It is certainly a LOT of pressure to carry the reputation of The Sabres. I feel so honoured to have achieved what I have, and I certainly wouldn't have done it without Rusted Sabre. In the new decade we plan to continue to uphold our ideals of community and honour, while planning a variety of fun events including boss hunting, PKing, warring, and fun community events like hide and seek. It is very important to me that The Sabres are in good shape when I have to eventually retire. We are constantly training the new generations of members to uphold the legacy and traditions of The Sabres. The Sabres are first and foremost a group of friends, and it's my intention to keep it that way.