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Ive been in clans. Lots of them. And i can tell you not one is standing today, in the sense of how it was when i was a member. Clans, and from my experiance being only in map making clans really, seem to fail. Why do they fail? Do we blame inactivity? Or not doing what the clan is about doing, such as map making?

A clan, what do we consider a clan? I call it a group of people, who work together because they share an interest in a certain activity. Ive been in clans that were about rank, and clans that were just a group of friends, id have to say they were equal experiances for me. But i had a problem with rank. Rank gives you control over another person in the clan, which leads to conflict. Im not saying everyone should be equal, but id elect 2 leaders, 2 co leaders and have it stay as that.

Now lets look at the clans that have fallen that i know of.
Mp). Mp is alive, but it has been dealt some very heavy blows. This brings me to believe that dedication to a tag, can mean the difference between a clan dying, or being reformed. Inactivity, betrayal, and other factors lead to those heavy blows.

N(G)M. NGM died because its leaders left it. The other members squabbled amongst themselves and then left when it was evident no one else was taking the clan. So inactivity was this cause.

S.T.A.R.S. My personal favorite. S.T.A.R.S was a clan made up of about 4 groups of friends, and did include rank. It combined the two elements and had them work well by dividing members into squads. This worked, very well infact, but there was obviously a problem. Personal alliances between friends and squads made it like a bunch of sub-clans under one banner. Two sides then emerged, one the Scoms, the origonal members, the other the Dissidents, the newer members. In the end the dissidents broke off and stole the tag that the SCOMs had created. After a time SCOM fell due to more personal alliances.

Now, looking at it from my perspective, do clans do more harm then good? True they have the potential to do more good, but more often they wind up falling due to leaders and other members making everything so personal. Example being that clan Chef is disliked for member stealing. But is it stealing? A member, is a person, a person has free will and their own mind. Who are we as a fellow member of theirs to tell them they belong to the clan their in and not where they wish to go? Often we blame the other clans members for convincing, and/or lying to the person to get them to join.

At this point its horrible, its like politics. Back stabbing, stealing, personal alliances and friends, all factors taking away from the single focus:
A clan is there for a group to work at a common activity.

So why? Why do we do it? Why do we "steal" members? Form personal alliances? Take so seriously what we do online as a single activity in our busy lives?

Discuss.

I think that clans are good, not needed but good. Starcraft wouldnt be better without them, I dont think that Starcraft is better with them. It is just like an alliance in the game. You just do it for fun and it is nice to have someone to help you.

Why do we do this you ask. Well we just do it for the sake of doing it. You dont need to be in a clan to have a name, you do it for fun.

Why do we steal members. Well, every clan wants to have the best members, the most activity, the best maps, the best everything and if you get all the good members, good map makers and such, this gives you the best clan, no.

Personal Alliances, people naturally make friends, you learn to at young ages. You will bring your natural habbits into SC, the first ally you have in a game. You get attacked, you normally would die from this attack. Ally brings in a buch of units and saves your life. You suddenly fall in love with the person who you dont even know. You and this perosn talk and eventually win the game. Do you talk to this person after this game? If you do you normally play another game right. I know I do, being in a clan is just making sure that you always have that person to go to later on.

I know I have been trying to get a couple of my real world friends to play SC with me. This is why I have two computers and two discs. Well it finally worked. After school we go online and play each other or others. A clan works the same way. You make a clan and you will have a friend to play with.

If you really think about it, while most Starcraft players try not to admit it, my sister reminds me everyday. It is really quite pointless playing Starcraft right. You play a game for 5 hours, when you get off the computer, what in the real world do you gain from playing on the computer that long? Do you get more units, nope. You just lost that time to do your homework or something.

We all just play this game because it is fun. This pretty much answers everything, it is fun and we enjoy it. It gives me something to look forward too.

Even so, is that the point of a clan? When it boils down to it, personal issues get in the way of the fun, as does the focus of the clan sometime. Contests, deadlines for inactive members who havent been map making and such. I just dont think clans these days have the main focus of fun. The stealing attests to atleast that much, as do the personal alliances that are formed not out of friendship but to work against others as was my point. In S.T.A.R.S if you had leverege on anyone you used it to advance your position, and try to hide the fact that you did it. Things like that are all too common in clans.

I dont feel this at all in Clan Mp though we did just clean it out. Between Me, Blu, and Minigame I feel no sort of pressure like this. I think that Mp has just had a couple of bad apples that were power hungry, there gone now!

Clans are like part of the personality of the player. Sometimes you join a clan that is inactive just so you can change it and be in the lead of everything. I have played under the tag Oo.Zero.oO for so long I feel the clan is part of me (I'm sentimental). I really dont have much in common with the players now in Oo because I don't really like bounds, defenses and such maps. There has been clans I have wanted to join because the playersbest represent me, but I have grown attached to the tag and Oo is part of my family even if a distant relative.

Exactly the kind of thing im talking about. And it makes me wonder if a type of clan which isnt marshalled by such a person or such politics can exist peacefuly with other clans, or even exist at all.

I've been in a large amount of clans, with most of them being outside of the realm of Starcraft and only one being an actual Starcraft clan. I'll list all of the ones that I remember and why they were either positive or negative.

Jedi Outcast

AAA - This clan was amazing, we had a strong group of members who were friendly to each other and a strong set of leaders that were dedicated to the clan. I had no enemies in the clan and it was one of the best clans I have ever been in. The reason I quit that clan was because of the lack of a forum or any other means of communication and my inability to log onto the clan server.

Imperial Forces <(IF)> - IF was an interesting clan. The leader tended to be a bit powerhungry and tended to rule with an iron fist. Nevertheless, I never really had a problem with him until he kicked my favorite co-member out of the clan for accidentally making a comment (that was merely gibberish) inadvertently during a clan meeting. This, illogically, set me off and instead of trying to plead his case, I quit. This clan was largely positive, however, the management constricted the livelihood of the clan.

Sith Empire (SE) - This clan was another amazing clan. The leader wasn't on much, so I didn't really know who he was, but the main people in the clan were very fun to be around. This is another clan that I really enjoyed being in. However, there was a power grab and the leader was kicked out and formed his own coalition. So, in essence, there were two splinter SE clans that were fighting for dominance. This annoyed me, so I posted on both of the sub-clans' message boards that I was leaving until the whole matter was sorted out. However, the power struggle turned me off to the clan and Jedi Outcast in general so I stopped playing the game online.

Starcraft

Myths of Darkness MoD- - MoD was essentially my first Starcraft clan. I loved playing with and being around everyone in the clan, and never tired of any people in the clan. The only reason I quit the clan was that I stopped playing Starcraft for a while due to an influx of school homework. However, now that I've rejoined Starcraft I still play around with a lot of my friends that were formerly in MoD.

I think that clans are a generally beneficial grouping of people and that to remove clans would often kill the community of games, as they provide an easy way for people to make friends online. While not all of my clan experiences have ended on a good note, I still think they were good experiences for me. That said, however, I am not really interested in joining any more clans, as I feel they can, especially in Starcraft, tie you down to a certain set of allegiances.

So, in short, I think that clans are beneficial, but I don't plan on joining one again.

The primary failure of clans is the fact that hardly anyone online is a organized and concise leader.

The sad thing about clans leaders is that many only want to be in a clan for "power reasons". Ex: SEN Moderatorship, Channel Operatorship. The one thing that makes clans survive is friendship inside them. Also, you need professionals to run them.

I've been in tons of clans over the years and I basically stay in them for the camaraderie. I can just as easily make a ton of maps on my own without the aid of any "clan," but its nice to belong to a greater entity. I used to also find it fun to climb ranks in clans, hoping to get somewhere. I suppose it just gave me something to do.

I think the main problem is that the leaders recruit immature and stupid members. And sometimes the leaders themselves are immature and stupid.

The perfect example of this in Mp would be UBCS, the whole reason why he was so great for that time is because of the amount of members he got, but this same reason lead to his downfall because they turned on him, also that happened twice when he created nGm.

Ok ive said this verious times in various forums, and im going to say it yet again.

NGM COLLAPSED DUE TO UBCS AND MOOGLE BECOMING ADDICTED TO WoW BECAUSE IT IS DRUGS.

No one turned on anyone. There was not an activity issue untill he and moogle left. There were NO problems until they had to go and get addicted to WoW. Im not saying all of the members were good high quality members, but a majority of them were, and as i have said time and again while it was there, we had fun.

Edit:
And UBCS's policy of "if you dont like it leave" worked just fine, those loyal to the clan being run the way it should have been stayed and were there. Those that werent what the clan needed, (The immature, dull, and problematic members) were booted swiftly on their butt. UBCS was only taken down because his policy worked so well on those that shouldnt of been in Mp. Look at Mp now, how many of those problematic members are in Mp today? None that i can see pal. They werent loyal to Mp and UBCS knew it, and that is why they were kicked out and decided to rally around Minigame for revenge.
GG'd

Please stop posting false information.

Also: My ideas for topics > all. See all these replys?

I disagree. I think clans can be a rather positive force.

Take a look at (U)... how many people do you think have tried to improve their mapping skills so they could join (U)? Look at all the maps they've created!

I think that [MM] is a positive force too... many of the modders that have joined [MM] have improved a lot and produced some amazing mods.

My personal philosophy is that a sucessful clan exists for 3 reasons:

1) Primarily to have fun. As Dada said, why go alone? Why not hang out with a bunch of people that share your interests?

2) To help each other. Clan members can work together and solve any problems they're having with their creations.

3) To inspire others and raise awareness. Once again, how many people do you think saw a (U) map and decided that they would try to make something that awesome? By working together and creating great maps and mods, clans can inspire others to take up map/mod making, and can give people a goal to reach for: namely, joining that clan.

They can be. But my point is they usually are not.

GgG is an awesome clan, 4 years and running. It isn't like all of these stupid map making clans I see, always fighting with eachother. Clan GgG is the only thing that keeps me on Starcraft now. And about the rank and power stuff, GgG has a good solid set of ranks... 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 925, Co-Leader and Leader. Each have their own power, since the bots are customized. No 400 can abuse commands on a bot anymore, and only 900 and above can really do anything on the bots... so the clan is pretty stable. Maybe the clans you have been in aren't successful, but I know a bunch of clans that are doing good, and are stable like [MM], (U), GgG, ScVz(Which is about to die after I think 7 or 8 years due to inactivity now.)

GgG once had a senate and a constitution... and it was pretty awesome

About the member stealing stuff, that's just bullsh**. People aren't property.

Clans can be a positive or a negative thing.

Take for example, MM.

When I began to get into modding (for the third time, but that's a different story) I saw MM at the bottom. I was like, "Woah, there's a modding clan!" and I decided I would get into this clan. So I worked, and worked, and eventually came up with my first mod, which was good enough to get me in the clan. Seeing the clan, I was proud to be in it. We have good, mature, organized members, who work hard (sometimes ) and have a good community.

There's my positive spin, and a lot of the negatives have already been pointed out, so I'll leave those untouched.

I agree, I think that clans help motivate people for map making. Withought clans poeple would probably just be all noobie map makers and some okay map makers.

Sometimes its the petty wars scandals and fighting that make a clan fun to be in. It really isnt fun to be in a clan that never has any issues.

Well, I think the perfect clan would have active members that are good at both map making and the game Starcraft, of coarse every person has their enemies, but being known as the clan with all the fighting is never good. Once I get Mp back up to where it should be, you will see a good clan.

You are exactly correct.

Exactly! From moment I played my very first (U) map a few years ago, I knew that I wanted to be in (U). And though I never got around to it (mostly due to a complete self-deprecating look at my map making skill) I've always wanted to join. Hell, (U) is the reason I started making maps in the first place.

The people in Oo are the ones who made me want to join not the map making. The recruitment map made me not like it because it took me forever to do those. Thats the only bound I ever wanted to beat and did just becase I liked the people in the channel. Most those people dont log on any more though. R.i.P.