That leaves lots of room for people to still exclude players from positions and only give to clan members by making up excuses on why those nobles deserved those positions. I believe OOC clans in any shape or form in unfair play. You have a large group of friends that can coordinate outside of battlemaster and be much more efficient then normal players in the game.
Might as well take off the IRC then... after all it can help some people do just that. Then there is IM services like MSN and Yahoo Messenger (anyone actually still use that?) or Skype or Ventrilo.... not to mention email, phone, text, physically talking....
