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Loyalty, Dedication, and Survival


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Loyalty is defined as:

1. The state or quality of being loyal; faithfulness to commitments or obligations.

2. Faithful adherence to a sovereign, government, leader, cause, etc.

Dedication is defined as:

1. The act of dedicating or the state of being dedicated.

2. Selfless devotion: served the public with dedication and integrity

 

 

These two factors can have significant impacts on a clans survival. Without loyal and dedicated members and leaders clans might struggle to survive. Why then does a clan close, is there more factors to it than just loyalty and dedication?

 

Another important factor could be a keystone, the central supporting element of a whole, whether that is a leader, a member, etc. Arches are extremely strong structures as long as the keystone is in place holding the arch up. Without the keystone the arch will collapse, is it the same way with clans? If a clan lacks its keystone will it too collapse? Do all clans have or rely on a keystone? Is this good or bad?

 

Ive listed a few factors that may be important to a clans survival. Feel free to discuss them and provide your own factors and reasoning as to why a clan survives.

 

P.S. If anyone could post why Dark Slayers closed it would be much appreciated, I believe it will provide an interesting case study.

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With love to one, friendship to many, and good will to all.

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It is interesting about keystones that you talked about. They don't necessarily have to be a ranked member of the clan, just a well respected person to everyone else. I've only ever been in one clan so far and still running so I'm not sure I have much to add to the subject. I do think that certain aspects of a clan can fall apart as well when people that were support them take off or lose interest.

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Yeah, keystones are so true. Even if people won't admit it straight out, there's always that one member that shows up to every event, that one member who everyone knows well within the clan, that one member who always performs to the expectations of the leader. A keystone in my opinion doesn't have to be a leader or high-ranked official. Any member of a clan can be a keystone.

 

I think clans fall apart when either some important member goes innactive, loses interest, or makes a scene that doesn't reflect well on them within the clan. I've seen all three of those hapen for myself. Whether those clans fell apart or not all mattered upon whether or not the other members are willing to pick up the slack.

 

So overall, not only does it depend upon key members, but it also depends on whether there are member who are willing to step up and do what needs to be done. I suppose that has more to do with loyalty and dedication though :P

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Personally I think that the keystones should be members who aren't ranked (not saying that Officials shouldn't be loyal and dedicated) because it sets a good example to other members more so than a leader would, for this reason:

 

An Official who excells has to excell, or else they wouldn't be an Official, is the general mindset of most members.

 

A member who excells is a very loyal and very dedicated member, and is doing so without "having to because he's ranked."

 

I'm not trying to say that Officials are on the same level and don't excell, I'm just posting the mindset I have found in most clans. Either way these keystone members are generally ranked up when open positions appear or when a new clan forms and is looking for more officials. They deffinitely are a contributing factor to the clans overall community and survivablity (sp?)

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P.S. If anyone could post why Dark Slayers closed it would be much appreciated, I believe it will provide an interesting case study.
DS' core leadership knew that in the near future they wouldn't have the time to fully dedicate themselves, and their interest in the game slowly fell.

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P.S. If anyone could post why Dark Slayers closed it would be much appreciated, I believe it will provide an interesting case study.
DS' core leadership knew that in the near future they wouldn't have the time to fully dedicate themselves, and their interest in the game slowly fell.

Just like Shadow Elves I suppose, or similar. Shame DS closed, wonder what it would be like these days with them around.

I have lived my life to the best of my ability, but I have not been able to escape fate, anger, or pain.

Bring me the answers, and the road that leads to truth, reveal to me once and for all, how all of this will end.

Shadows cannot exist without the light. But without the shadows, the light has no meaning.

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Keystones are good for survival but are also the reason clans close.

 

Loyal and dedicated members are hard to come by these days, first slump you hit and they leave for a clan that's doing well. People would rather join success rather than create success.

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People would rather join success rather than create success.

 

So true, it's inbred in pretty much every 'civilised' society nowadays that you can buy a quickfix- when that fails you you buy a quickfix for that and so on. It's the same with clans.

 

I think my clan is fortunate in that we have several members who pretty much everyone looks upto. However- I doubt anyone will say that in the entirity of their RS career that they have never become bored with the game. When key members get bored with it then events stop happening- these key members keep the momentum going and when that stops the clan begins to die. The only way to stop that happening is to have ANOTHER member step up and say "[bleep] it, I'm not letting this break down". Unless someone does that it's game over: so sad :(

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P.S. If anyone could post why Dark Slayers closed it would be much appreciated, I believe it will provide an interesting case study.
DS' core leadership knew that in the near future they wouldn't have the time to fully dedicate themselves, and their interest in the game slowly fell.
Just like Shadow Elves I suppose, or similar. Shame DS closed, wonder what it would be like these days with them around.
No doubt they dominated their time, but so did DF in their prime, even if it wasn't as large scale. DS would've eventually hit some kind of slump and lost their reign, but I think they'd still have the upper hand on DI. I can even go on to say DI might have not closed if DS was still around.
People would rather join success rather than create success.
Well put.

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Loyalty and dedication are very important, but i think the keystones are above everything else. Of course a clan needs stable leadership, that makes smart decisions, but the true heart of the clan lies within those few core members that your clan can't do without. These members aren't necessarily ranks, but very experienced members who are looked up to, and just bring the clan together. Without these members, or when too many of these members retire, it can cause a decrease in morale in a clan, and possibly cause the clan to close.

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Keystones are good for survival but are also the reason clans close.

 

Loyal and dedicated members are hard to come by these days, first slump you hit and they leave for a clan that's doing well. People would rather join success rather than create success.

 

 

SOoooooo right

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My loyalty and dedication will only stretch as far as the clan can entertain me. If it's no longer I feel my dedication can be placed elsewhere, whether it be another clan or game.

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Since there seems to be some consensus that certain members are keystones, do these members not become officials? I would think these would be the qualities that you would look for in an official. If so, are they still a keystone or does it change as it is expected? If not, Why are officials chosen? What qualities make them better for the position that the keystone member lacks that would prevent them from doing so.

 

In the cases of DS and DI at least, you say, "DS' core leadership knew that in the near future they wouldn't have the time to fully dedicate themselves, and their interest in the game slowly fell." From what I can tell you can apply that to DI to a certain extent though it was one person rather than many. Are they not keystone members then if the clan can't survive without them despite being officials?

 

If a clan loses a keystone member and is on the road to dying then another person has to step up and become a keystone member, how does that happen? Does that person or people have more loyalty or dedication? Or something else?

 

 

Tried to reply to a lot of the above posts, sorry for not directly quoting anyone. :P

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With love to one, friendship to many, and good will to all.

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I'd personally rather rely on things that create loyalty and dedication than just stare at them. Of course dedication and loyalty are important, but I'd see them as hypernyms for other elements. They need things around or under them in order to be realistic factors: same way as an engine moves a car, the engine must have good components to be able to work in the first place. I'm giving a brief list and explanations here as I can't be bothered to write too many thousands words per day and I know majority in the clan world are more or less lazy readers.

 

Knowing your place: Every clan must have a realistic knowledge of their current situation. If they don't have it, they are doomed to suffer. Without knowing the limitations your clan has due internal and external factors, achieving something new is painful. At least I've seen far too many times of clans thinking to be more than they are and failing due it. Same time I've seen clans losing their momentum purely due the fact that the leadership doesn't have a clue where do they stand and because of that miss the opportunity.

 

Having a vision: A clan must have a goal and a path to walk in order to get people to work together. It can anything from "gaining pixels" to "being #1". The vision must be something that can actually be reached and that people can take seriously. Some people/clans call it a goal, but the name or word itself isn't important. The point is to have the idea where the clan is aiming for and what does it want to be.

 

Strategy: In order to reach the vision, goal or whatever you want to call it, you need a strategy to reach it. This is the thing that separates an actual vision from daydreaming: a daydreamer only sees the ending, not the path. If you've ever traveled anywhere alone, you can think it like this: if you have a real vision, you can plan the route, set a schedule and think of alternatives. If you're a day dreamer, you just think how great it would be in the end and forget that you still have to get there. The strategies can vary depending on your vision, available resources and such, but the main thing is to have something to base your vision on.

 

When we combine these things, we know a clan that knows where it is currently at he moment, it has a thing to aim for and it has planned the way to get there. This means that the clan has a path to walk and it is going forwards with steady steps. It might sound simple, but from my own experiences I'd say that the reality doesn't always match to this "theory". I've seen and I've said that certain clans have used methods (=strategy) that don't match to their goal (=vision). A perfect example would be a clan (This kind of cases have been there but I won't bother naming them here as I want to avoid controversy from the clans' side) that claims it wants to be at the top but that just keeps doing the same way from month to month without having any clear way of reaching that goal.

 

However success isn't always equal for having these three things, it also requires more. Here are some of the things that in my opinion matter. We could always add in more or possibly change/take some away depending on your way to see things. We also can't forget that the priority and points depend really on the stage of the clan: a clan that was founded an hour ago can't be a carbon paper copy of a clan that can pull 100+ people for a day prep and has managed to modify its organisation (as the clan structure, not only asthe organisation at the battlefield) because of the long history.

 

Ability to change: As the environment changes (clans die or born, people quit or become inactive, game gets updates, etc...) your clan has to change too. If you want to be something in 2010, you can't rely on methods from 2008. The difference between a good leadership and just a leadership relies on here. A good leader(ship) is someone/thing that can adapt to the changes and if needed, modify the strategy to match today's needs. From members' point of view a stagnating clan is something that doesn't encourage to dedication. I'd also like to say from my own experience that a good leader is someone who can admit that he has made a mistake, instead of trying to hide it and try to get a scapegoat. Note that the scapegoat can be an event (such as "we are now doing badly because of clan X did this or that") or a person.

 

People resources: Of course in order to have a proper vision, strategy or the ability to change, you need the people to do the things. A clan is in the end more than just the sum of the members. The thing I've been thinking (my thinking is based more on companies than on clans, but due less regulations it works even better to clans) is the question wether it should be the members (or employees) that change depending on the strategy or visa versa. Of course it's impossible to give an exact answer that fits to every situation, but there are things I'd like to bring up. Lets think of the clan's backbone, the key figures (not always ranked people) for example. Driving them away either intentionally or unintentionally can hurt you more than getting rid of few "less valuable" members. It might sound harsh, but it's a cruel fact that certain clans have members who are more than just members.

 

External changes: Certain things that change around your clan can affect to your clan, even if they don't directly hit it. Lets say that one clan dies for example. This means that there are more new recruits that know each other, meaning majority of them might go to the same clan. This happened to VR for example when DI died. Naturally this affected to the environment where EoS, TT, RSD and others fought, even though it didn't directly take away or give them a load of members. If a clanleadership can predict the changes in external factors and thus increase the chances to adjust external changes into their benefit, they're in a strong position.

 

Basically my point is that in order to do well, you need to have the right puzzle pieces in your hands and you must be able to keep the Hoover away from them. There are multiple important tasks in a succesful clan and in my opinion no clan can survive with a hierarchy where one person has all the strings in his/her hands. A clan needs strenghts to all sides (right people to HR section, good callers, operational and strategical side knowledge, etc) and it has to understand the fact that external factors affect to it too.

 

From these points rise the dedication and loyalty. In order to keep people motivated you have to offer them what they want: proper action and in most cases (however for some individuals not) a good community. In other words you must be able to offer a clan that can offer right event things to people inside and you must be able to offer them friendship. Otherwise they will get bored and either go for other clans or become inactive. I also don't believe in being loyal or dedicated members who aren't satisfied: it's impossible for me to believe that someone stays active on things that aren't mandatory (=you can always leave the clan when you want) and he doesn't like.

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Lack of loyalty is one of the major causes of failure in every walk of life

 

True story that.

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We choose to go...not because [it is] easy, but because [it is] hard, because that goal will serve to measure and organize the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win. ~ Blasphemien Way

 

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Keystone members are the pillar's on which a clan stands. I would give example from my point of view.

 

DV is the first official clan I joined and Nikhil71993 along with Guddurulz were the guys we looked up too, for practically everything.

But for some reason Guddurulz left DV and all of a sudden Nikhil71993 had everything to look after.

He did a excellent job but there was something that was bothering him, his real life was taking a heavy toll on him and he was not able to give the necessary time to the clan.

Seeing the hindsight he started promoting people he thought could handle the clan and slowly there was a shift in preferences, the clan looked up to different people for answer's to there queries / problems, and slowly he took himself off the matter's of clan.

During the transition phase there was a bumpy period when we lost a lot of our regulars to various clans but now slowly the tide is changing, the CORE member's of DV (the guy's who were there when DV was started) along with new applicants are joining / re-joining which is a positive sign for us.

 

Loyalty and Dedication to the clan are an important factor for the survival of a clan.

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