The "Wanderers", "Black Dragon Knights", "Malicious Intent". Those clans are often brought up when discussing the "greatest clans" of Runescape. Recently "DarkSlayers" closed down this closing shocked the RuneScape community very greatly. Known as indisputably one of those clans that were considered great in 2006 and 2007, but where do they rank in the annals of RuneScape history? Many users wonder why they suddenly closed.

I had the opportunity to sit down in MSN with Metal Rock and Kidefence512 leaders of this respected and known clan and asked them some questions about DarkSlayers. The first and most important question I asked was why did DarkSlayers shut down their clan doors in the prime of their dominance, and this is what was said:

"With college, work, and life coming on hard over the next few months for all of us, we didn’t have a lot longer to play a game that took as much time and effort like RS." -Kidefence512

"It wasn’t a question of how much longer we could be a dominant clan, but how much longer could we be able to contribute 100% to DS. We knew even if we could put a few more months into DS, the inevitable was going to happen sooner or later. We decided to go out on our own terms rather than being completely forced to by real life, so a few months ago we decided it'd be today, March 14, 2007, a full 2 years since we had reopened and a complete year of being unrivaled in the RS clan world." - Metal Rock.

Now that we know why they closed their doors, the question remains how will the wilderness and clan world take this massive surprise, and how this clan ranks in the all time annals of RuneScape history. When I asked Metal Rock And Kidefence512 "How do you feel DarkSlayers closing will impact the wilderness" they replied:

“Well, I don't have to say it really, since we were a F2P based clan, P2P wouldn’t really change, I just didn't see anything in P2P that I had to achieve in or excel in. clans will rise, just not be able to show the level of dominance we had over the f2p wilderness " -Metal Rock

While Kidefence512 said:

“clans will start pking normally in eastern based times again”

One question that pressed on my mind is where do the leaders of DarkSlayers personally feel they rank in the terms of all time great clans in RuneScape history. Sadly I was only able to get a comment from Metal Rock.

“Well, DS dominated; Went undefeated in the wilderness on f2p for over a year straight. We beat down DI, not once, but 15 times in a row on F2P. We were the first clan to knock off Di from their throne Sept 25 2005, the DS vs DI war. We were the first clan to have 50+ Level 126s.”

DarkSlayers had rivals, and their rivalry with Damage Incorporated was perhaps one of the most heated rivalries in the Runescape clan scene in the past few years. I had the chance to talk Ghjjf of Damage Incorporated about their rivals closing , and this is what he had to say.

Das: How do you think the closing of the wilderness will change after the closing of DarkSlayers

Ghjjf: well i don’t think it'll really make much changes to the wilderness, it has no effects on p2p what so ever, and it seems most of DarkSlayers just went to one clan, Divine Forces, which really means the only change was that Divine Forces got a lot stronger

Das : Asides DF, what other clans do you think will generate a lot of publicity for upcoming wars and run ins?

Ghjjf: well this summer anyway I think the top players will probably be, di, df, eh, corr and vr .

Das: And Lastly, Do you feel DS will be remembered as an All time great? Or not…

Ghjjf: well it will and it won't, among anyone whos played rs for more then two years or so they wont think DarkSlayers was an all time great, although they were good for a short period of time, they never managed what other clans which would of been considered all time greats did, but i guess for the newer generation of rs player, they could consider DarkSlayers that.

So there you have it. While the leaders of DarkSlayers feel their clan is one of the best and most dominating clans the game has seen in the last few years, the leader of their rival leaves a seed of doubt that it is not an "All Time Great". How you do feel?

Consider that DarkSlayers Closed with 176 total members with an average combat of 124.25 combat with an average skill total of 1,642. They were able to gather mass options for some big wars, and here are some of those statistics:

• (330 DS opts vs 640 The Alliance opts - DS wins)
  
• (154 Ds opts vs 340 The Alliance opts - DS wins)
  
• (180 DS opts vs 270 RSD opts - DS wins)
  
• They beat "the" in what was arguably the shortest war on Runescape, where 180 people died in around 15 minutes to 150, proving organization over numbers.
  
• The closing thread posting on a certain fan site generated 104 pages of replies.
  

Please comment and let us know what you think.