Blizzard has announced plans to implement the new clan system that was announced recently by Production Director Chris Sigaty, in an upcoming beta patch for the StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm expansion. The system will be put into place come Beta Patch 2.0.1 this week, with testers being able to create and join Clans.

Anyone can create or join a Clan, and doing so gives you access to the Clan window. In the Clan window, you’ll find a completely private chat channel, a News tab where Clan affairs can be posted for all members to read, an Info tab where officers can post Clan information, and a Members roster.

When you create a Clan, both a Clan name and a Clan Tag designation are required. All of the members of your Clan will have their character name pre-pended with the Clan’s Tag. The Clan Leader is able to promote members to the rank of Officer in the Clan (and demote, when necessary).

Currently there are a few restrictions to making a clan, being that the name must be 3-24 character long, tags may only be 2-4 characters long and adhere to their standard name policy. The new system will hopefully "bring people together in ways that make sense for allowing players to organize into groups, communicate with each other, and recognize others in-game" says the Blizzard blog.

The new clan system isn't the only people-orientated system being looked at, with with work being done on a Groups system to allow players who want to associate casually the ability to do so. Obviously when the groups become more committed they can transfer into the Clans system, but the idea is to allow everyone the chance to interact with each other through social means. The group system will be available later in the beta.