Code of Honour

The Code of Honour (or Honour Code) is a subset of the rules of the Wilderness Guardians, which pertains to the clan's PvP events in Old-School RuneScape. It currently contains the following provisions, which members are required to abide by:

• Guardians must not verbally abuse another player
• This clan will never crash a planned fight
• We do not spy on other clans
• Guardians must adhere to the agreed rules of a planned fight
• Guardians must not flee a battle
• All members must wear appropriate PKing equipment

There are also two optional provisions, which members are not required to abide by:

• We do not kill non-PKers in the wilderness.
• Share loot from your kills

History

The 1st Code of Honour of WG was combined with the clan rules, in The Rules and Beliefs of the Wilderness Guardians (shortened to Adopted Clan Rules & Beliefs). It was published on the clan's AvidGamers website, and contained 7 provisions:

• Rule 1 on ARPK, which prohibited members killing unskulled players.
• Rule 2 which prohibited multiclanning, with the exception of Clan Representatives.
• Rule 3 which prohibited disobeying orders from members of a higher rank.
• Rule 4 which prohibited scamming.
• Rule 5 which outlined the right to voice opinions, but prohibited swearing, racism, sexism, discrimination, insulting individual(s), irrelevant content, advertising and adult material.
• Rule 6 which prohibited hacking RuneScape-related websites.
• Rule 7 which prohibited breaking the RuneScape rules.

The document was later split to separate rules from additional beliefs, with an 8th rule added prohibiting spamming of the forums. With the release of the clan's Flash website the Code of Honour continued to be combined with general clan rules, but updated accordingly with modern stipulations such as prohibiting the hacking of player accounts. An interesting development was the decision to allow luring - a highly controversial and much debated aspect within the wider RuneScape community. His Lordship deemed it acceptable to lure a solo player from within a single-combat zone into multi.

WG's Code of Honour in 2011

Controversy over ARPKing arose after 10 December 2007 and WG's ARPKing code would change multiple times, occasionally falling out of use entirely. Following The Reckoning in 2011, the Honour Code of WG was finally distinguished from the other clan rules and given its own separate topic on the forums. This was split into three sections: the code during clan PK trips and other PKing events, when PKing with another clan, and when PKing solo or with a team of friends. Provisions included:

• Prohibiting breaking the ARPK policy.
• Prohibiting crashing.
• Prohibiting welfaring, but allowing 1-iteming while solo PKing against enemies of the clan.
• Allowing reteating from a clan which is clearly overpowering WG.
• Allowing the use of a Ring of Life on PKing trips.
• Allowing luring but prohibiting backstabbing.
• Allowing tagging if the opponents are also tagging.
• Prohibiting PJing.
• Allowing retreating/teleporting/running/logging when solo PKing.

In October of 2011 two additions were made by Vio which stipulated prohibiting both breaking the Terms of War and "hugging" single-combat zones, and clarifications were made in regards to retreating and teleporting which were prohibited in fights unless ordered by an official. The ARPK policy also recieved a rework, increasing the criteria for acceptable targets to include players with combat weapons, with a clan or team, who attacked a WG member first, who requested to be killed, or was clearly using botting software.

The Code of Honour continued to undergo various updates over the years, including multiple instances of revoking and reimplementing the ARPK policy, until it was finally declared "optional". A second optional provision on splitting (sharing loot from kills) was added during the IPB4 forums era. The most recent revision was on 5 June 2019, which added a clarification to the rule on multiclanning and teams.^{[citation needed]}