Clans are diverse and serve a variety of different purposes depending upon what their aims are. Clans may generally be classified into one of the following four categories -

PvP – Player vs. Player clans have a competitive goal in mind and aim to outperform other clans in the field of battle. Depending upon the game, this competitiveness can range from attempting to secure a high ranking ladder position right through to attempting to conquer territory or obtain some form of reward above and beyond other clans. PvP clans are usually the most competitive and require great knowledge of strategy and game tactics to run effectively.

My experience: The majority of the clans I’ve run have been of a PvP focused nature. This category of clan can become highly competitive and you must possess a good knowledge of the workings of a game in order to run a successful PvP clan within it.

If you’re never had experience running a PvP clan before, don’t worry. Through this website I’ll be teaching you the required methodologies that you must adopt in order to run successful PvP clans.

PvE – Player vs. Environment clans specialise in all forms of interaction with the in-game environment, usually AI enemies. A PvE clan may have a set aim in mind, such as providing mission and quest completion for its members, or it may be a farming based clan, which is a type of clan that harvests large amounts of items or points of some form, usually for the benefit of all members. PvE based clans are usually diverse, having very different goals to one another depending upon the intent of The Clan Leader. Many people use PvE as a generic category for non PvP based clans, although PvE clans can serve very specific purposes.

My experience: I have had experience running PvE clans in the past. These clans have ranged from laid back clans, where members just helped one another complete quests, right through to highly organised farming clans. Through this site I’ll be teaching you how to operate just about any form of organised PvE clan.

Roleplaying – Roleplaying clans are usually created with the intention of amassing a group of like minded individuals who enjoy playing a game “in-character”. This is to say that when playing the game, the players behave as if they were actually the character they’re controlling.

Roleplaying clans are also diverse and may even include forms of roleplaying that are not related to the game, such as a clan where everybody pretends to be a werewolf, even if there aren’t any actual werewolf characters in the game. Roleplaying clans may even cross over with the PvP, PvE or Social category of clans to some degree.

My experience: I always enjoy roleplaying when I can and have run two organised roleplaying clans in the past. I’d recommend running a clan or guild of this type if you’re the sort of gamer that enjoys in-character social interaction. Roleplaying does require a knack for communicating with other people online, and you will need to possess a certain degree of confidence in your ability to communicate.

Social – This category is broad and I could extend it further, however since I will not be covering Social clans much in future posts, I will give them minimal mention here. Social clans are normally comprised of a group of players that have something in common; be it to talk with one another about a specific topic, live within the same country or just be a group of like minded players who don’t want to be required to do too much by the clan’s leadership. Many clans that do not have a specific purpose in mind fall within this category.

My experience: I’ve run a couple of casual clans that would fall into the ‘Social Clan’ category, although not much more needs to be said. I’d recommend creating this type of clan if you are a more casual and laid back gamer. Creating a social clan is also a good way of gaining some experience in running a clan, and is a good place to start before moving on to running a more advanced form of clan, such as one based on PvP.

Bringing it together -

It is important to note that many clan types may cross over with one another. It is not uncommon for a PvE farming clan to also be proficient in PvP, as controlling critical farming grounds in some online persistent worlds may require a lot of PvPing.

Some individual games may have other types of clans which are unique to that particular game. For instance, when I used to play Star Wars Galaxies many years ago, it was not uncommon for some clans to specialise as “bounty hunter hitmen”, a category of clan that was quite unique to that game.

Before you create a clan, it is a good idea to decide what type of clan it is you wish to run. Having specific objectives in mind is crucial to ensuring your clan’s success. Just starting a clan, without any form of focus on what type of clan you wish for it to become, will no doubt lead to failure. Think into the future a bit, and see where you want your clan to be after it has say, its firsty fifty members. If you want the clan to be focused on PvP by the time it reaches that stage, then you’ll need to focus on recruiting people that will be good at PvP. Likewise, if you want to run a successful Roleplaying clan, then pick individuals that would make good roleplayers.

Whilst it doesn’t matter so much what type of members you have when your clan is new, you’ll need to start being selective in who you recruit as your member base grows. Ensure that each new member will somehow help your clan work towards its goals.