A big perk of playing on certain banners is the use of their armoury. Many clans have old, retired nerds that gathered a lot of masterwork gear, and have since quit the game. You get access to this armoury if you "join" their clan, which doesn't really entail actually joining anything in many cases. Plenty of clans are perfectly content with you simply playing on their banner and most likely sticking with them in the battle server. You don't have to go into their teamspeaks in all cases, you don't have to post anything on the forums or participate with them in any way.
Of course, you could also legitimately join a group if that's your thing.
Feel free to apply to our clan and make use of our armoury. If something is currently taken out and you wish to use it, just holler at me and I'll free it up as long as someone isn't using it right that second.
http://c-rpg.net/index.php?page=ladderoverviewclans#!?page=claninfodetail&id=2025The above link will allow you to apply to our ladder. We don't all play nearly as much as we used to, but we're a relatively calm group in teamspeak made up mostly of adults, and when we play we try to have some sort of a plan and carry our team to a multiplier.
ALSO A PROTIP: you can "bannerstack" with many different clans at once by doing the following: make a level 1 character with a descriptive name such as "frisian_banner_mallet" or something like that. Apply to the ladder, and get accepted. Now, if you want to play on any alt or your main on that banner for a short period of time, choose the "SUPPORT A CLAN" option under the clan tab on the site. You can freely switch between supported clans at will. Tons of people do this, that's how you see people like Apollo, Sp1n, Canuck, Sparvico, and others fluidly swap between banners more than once a day or even once an hour.
Hope that helped.