Well, I have a feeling 90% of the people who view this won't bother reading it, so I'm not going to waste the effort of writing a gigantic post. So for those of you who don't care to read past here, here is your tl;dr: we've been around for a year. Happy birthday to us. - After the Shadow Elves closed, The Man O decided he wanted to make a new clan. With the help of Hios, Athena1512, Ggohanss77 and Killdogg9pp8, and a couple of close friends that TMO asked to join, Solace was formed on October 1st, 2009. Immediately, everybody had marked us as one of 2 things: a Shadow Elves remake or a horrible spin-off of The Titans. Solace started off small, with 15-20 members in the first month. Solace were a bunch of friends who enjoyed CWA matched option fights with other small and newer clans. Over time, friends recruited friends, who in turn, recruited more friends, and Solace began to build up in size, to the point where we hit the 80 member mark. Peaking at 59 as our highest pull, we began to turn around; the typical glory-seekers left the clan (6-8 of them), as well as a good 20+ of our older members, who retired from RuneScape altogether. We went through a particularly rough phase where most people thought we would close, but we are not the type of people who are willing to lay down and die. We've stayed strong and proven to the clan world that even if we aren't in the top 10 rankings (which seems to be the only thing that is relevant in the 2010 clan world), we are still a force to be reckoned with, especially man-for-man. There's always going to be haters; we've had our fair share of people who wanted to see us die off, just like every other clan. To those of you who belong to that group: I'm sorry. You'll never be satisfied. Solace will be here until RuneScape is gone, as long as I can help it. - Enough of the history and crap, though. If there's one thing I have learned from being in Solace for 11 months (and the Shadow Elves for 5 years, give or take when I was a moron), it would have to be that this is more than just a game. This is a social network. I've met some unbelievably amazing people in my time of being in Solace. These amazing people work with us at fights and outside of fights; these members, officials and leaders are exactly what this game is all about. I would never trade our community for anything else; not 100 more members, not the #1 rank on Zybez forums, not a billion dollars (and the Solace members will quote me and say that I'm lying through my teeth on this one). I'm proud to say that I enjoy getting on the computer, and it's because I love Solace. I hope that we can spend another year together before the clan world implodes.
