When Nintendo released their Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection on Nov. 14, 2005 (the company’s first serious foray into the world of online gaming), they had no idea what kind of competitiveness would spawn from it. Players flocked to online forums systems, chat rooms, and other forms of online communication to schedule games with strangers all over the world. Before long, the players started to group together and created “clans”. The clans took on a name, had their own website made, and went to work recruiting and training their members in order to take on rival clans in what has commonly been referred to as “clan wars”.

Clan wars are matches between two rival clans in which a set number of members from each clan face off in the game of choice to see which clan has the better players. Clan wars have been hard to organize and usually occur only a few times a year. Fortunately, that is going to change.

On September 1, 2008, Exorcizer released Nintendo Wi-Fi Alliance v4, finally able to call itself a fully user-interactive website with its already bustling forums and chat rooms. The goal of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Alliance, or NWA, is to make the Nintendo Wi-Fi Clan world more accessible to everyone. Clans tend to get a bad rep from some people as if they’re plotting something, but in reality, they’re just groups of competitive gamers that share the same interests. We would love to see every kind of player, from hardcore to casual, cohabit on the Nintendo Wi-Fi Alliance and be at ease with the concept of clans.