Community Management: Clan Submissions Page

Welcome to May�s edition of the Clan Submissions Page! This month, we�re taking a close look at the Jagex Cup, both past and present, as the competition is nearing to its fruition. As I had mentioned in last month�s page, the Jagex Cup is gearing up to be another major spectacle for the summer and another opportunity to show who�s boss when it comes down to combat, skilling or a delicate combination of the two. We�ve been frantically planning, rushing around and burying our heads in documents ensuring that it all goes to plan - not to forget all of the valuable input our players have been giving us. As always, if you have something that you�d like to see on the Clan Submissions Blog, send it to me at postbag@jagex.com with �clan� somewhere in the title and I�ll see what I can do!

Good luck in the Jagex Cup!
Mod Timbo

The Jagex Cup is a clan competition in which we search for the best clans within RuneScape across three different categories - Combat, Skilling and a Combination of the two. Clans are free to sign up to each category and must register their clan in the Jagex Cup forum on the right threads. Once your clan is signed up for a category, the process is a little bit different for each so let�s take a focused look at each category!

Combat
The Combat category will be held in Clan Wars all in free-to-play worlds to ensure that no-one can miss out! Held in a similar format to the infamous FA Cup here in England, a draw will be made for each round pairing clans together until the final eight, or quarter finals, where there will be a structure so you have an idea of who you might be fighting!

The rules and times are decided between the two clans on the Jagex Cup forum and if no decision can be made between them, there are some default rules to fall back on and a J-Mod will ensure that a time is set that is fair for both clans.

Skilling
The Skilling category is a little bit different as it�s difficult to have skill wars between different clans and run a tournament structure! So what we do for this category, is draw a skill for the week and then take the best five hours of skilling from that week from each clan, make an average xp/hour and then make a total average for a clan.

There are, of course, a few rules that you have to abide by for each skill to ensure that there are no shenanigans going on. You cannot use any activity rewards such as the Stealing Creation tools, cannot use quest rewards/XP lamps and a whole host of other rules (just make sure you read the rules before entering!).

Combined
The Combined category is very similar in structure to the Combat category, there will be draws made for each round until the last eight but each match is held within Stealing Creation! Stealing Creation provides the best combined playing experience of both combat and skilling as well as teamwork to ensure that your clan is victorious.

As it is held within Stealing Creation, this means that this category is for members only, Stealing Creation is pretty good with its rules with the only rule being that the winner on the end of match screen is the winner of the match!

I hope that managed to give you all an insight into what the Jagex Cup is all about and is making your mouth water at how many people you can own over the course of the competition!

Last year saw the very first Jagex Cup and the first clan competition that Jagex has ever held on a large scale. Announced back in the early days of March 2009, the competition ran at the unusual time of March-May but was a massive success for everyone that took part. Here is a brief overview of what happened in each section!

Combat Cup - Winners: The Titans
Everyone polished their Rune armour, finished fletching their bows and practiced their Bind spell in preparation for an old school Clan Wars tournament. The first round draw had 51 matches in total and a massive 102 clans taking part in the Combat Cup. The draw threw up a number of interesting matches; David vs. Goliath fixtures of smaller clans getting a chance to fight the top clans and a real headline fixture of The Titans vs. Corruption. The Titans managed to battle bravely and overcome their fearsome rivals to advance in the tournament all the way until the final where they met Damage Incorporated. After a fantastic match, The Titans were victorious and crowned the winners of the Combat section.

Skilling Cup - Winners: Divination
The preparation for the Skilling Cup must of been daunting, with no idea of what skill was going to be drawn next - everyone wasn�t sure of what to practice on or what to prepare for. The first skill drawn was Fishing so it was time to bait the line, sharpen the harpoon or find your best reel in preparation for a week long of skilling! Zhho (now called Zach) managed to gather the most fish with an impressive overall average of 71,395 xp/hour with Fishing. Woodcutting came second and Zhho was not to be bested with the highest average of 93,891 xp/hour while Hyperblade91 achieved the biggest amount of xp in an hour breaking the 100,000 xp/hour barrier back before choking ivy! Divination, with the considerable help of Zhho, managed to battle through and finish first ahead of The Experts and Malkavian Scourge who finished second and third respectively.

Combined Cup - Winners: Wicked Fury
The Combined Cup was the one competition that no-one could predict, there were a lot of skilled combat, or skilling, clans taking part - but how would they fair in an environment where both were key in success? Stealing Creation provided the perfect battleground for a new type of warring and one that was new to almost everyone. Wicked Fury were ultimately the best masters of all skills, overcoming the surprise runner-ups God Hunters, in a game close winning with 28,215 points to 16,845.

With all of the excitement, bloodshed and fun had from last year�s competition, it certainly makes this year�s Jagex Cup all the more exciting and I hope to see you there!

After reading all of the feedback that we got during the competition and after the competition - we knew that we wanted to make this year�s Jagex Cup even bigger and better. Not everything was perfect last year but as it was the first large scale event that we ran at Jagex and certainly the first with all of our fantastic clans taking part. While we�re teetering on the brink of the launch of this year�s Jagex Cup, here are a quick run-through of some of the improvements and additions that we�re looking to make:

Registration
The registration process is an important part of the competition to ensure that there isn�t any cheating and that actual members from each clan are taking part. To this end, we�re going to be making the registration a big more transparent and clearer to understand within the rules with a lot of examples to get your head around the concept. One player will still only to be allowed to play for one clan during the competition but each team�s memberslists will be visible and accessible for everyone to look at. Another slight addition is also freezing memberlists for 24 hours before you fight.

The Skilling Cup
One of the main issues that we wanted to work around was the massive amount of time spent calculating the data calculating the winners of the Skilling Cup. The only reason that we had everyone wearing the trusty Chef�s Hat was so that we could identify you as taking part in the competition - I�m glad to say that the hat has gone for this year�s competition and it's going to be eaiser! Another sticking point was the sessions spent skilling and confusion about when they should start and when they should stop. There will be clear definitions of how skilling sessions work and how the average xp/hour is worked out so that you can work out the best ways!

Combat �sub-divisions�
To add a bit more competition, and more opportunities to take part in their preferred play style, we�re adding mini-tournaments running alongside the main Combat competition with different restrictions on entering. Some of the new sub-divisions that we�re looking to add are Pures (players with 45 Defence or lower), over and under 115 Combat level, members only and community clan. In order to make sure that you don�t feel like you have to take part in every one, we�re only going to allow a clan to sign up to one of our sub-divisions but don�t fret, you can still sign up for each of the main competitions!

Now that you have a fair idea of what�s coming up this summer for the Jagex Cup, make sure that you�re around to take part! The announcement will be in the coming weeks packed full of even more goodies like the rewards and exact dates.

We�re all really excited about this year�s Jagex Cup and its set to be an enormous competition and fiercely fought to prove who are the best clans in RuneScape. To read some of the planning, and a bit more information about the Jagex Cup, check out the forum thread where we�ve been discussing the Jagex Cup plans.

Normal clan submissions will resume next month but for that, we need you to send in your submissions! With the Jagex Cup coming soon, it would be a great opportunity to dust off your quills and clean your print screen button to gather a number of war reports and pictures of the matches. Or if you�d like to send in an article about your clan or show us something else that�s wonderful that you think deserves to be on the Clan Submissions Page - just let us know. Everyone could do with the free promotion for your clan during the competition. :)

Send us your submissions to postbag@jagex.com with �clan� in the title and we�ll see what we can do.

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.