There mere fact that the clan your in will limit yourself. For example, if you want to join a top 10 clan, you'll join TT/RSD/Vr - you wouldn't join DW or T0 for example. If you wanted to join a small matched base clan, you would join DW or T0 instead of TT/RSD/VR. Reason being people associate a name with a size, very few clans have ever risen from being matched based to top 10 because people join clans because they like the style of warring. Clans will tend to lose and gain members over time so they may look like they're heading for a top 10 status but will usually remain around the same because when people see the small matched ops clan is becoming top 10, they'll leave making the clan decline back to what it was. The only exception to this is re-made clans like RJ who were formed off DI - so everyone in visioned RJ as becoming a top 10 force - so it was true for a while. So in my opinion, reason why small clans don't grow and big clans don't massively decline is because people associate different clan names with a particular size and type of warring. Its very difficult to break that mold - DW will always be thought of a small-medium sized clan, TT will always be considered a top 10 clan. Then you obviously have to consider the smaller things, like rivalries, indavidual members, ability, activity etc. Quite an in depth view on it.