January is typically a month for fresh starts, and Mercenaries have been living up to that with their numerous leadership adjustments thus far. After a now-deleted farewell announcement, every Mercenaries leader quit, leaving Midnight alone.
The Mercenaries have made a splash this month, featuring at least six leadership changes since the start of the year. A few days ago, Da Best announced to the army that Midnight, Mercenaries‘ founder, would retire. Less than a day later, Komodo would be joining the ranks. Although Da Best joked about Komodo retiring within two seconds, it’s unfortunate timing that only a few days later, that would become a reality. Further investigation led to the clarification that Midnight was not retiring but only going on a break.
Da Best announcing Midnight’s retirement and Komodo’s promotion to leader
In the late hours of January 20, Da Best posted his final announcement to the server, informing his army that every leader would be stepping down due to internal conflicts with the army’s creator, Midnight. According to the statement, Midnight saw his army going in a different direction than his fellow leaders, seemingly forcing them to vacate their positions.
Da Best announces the departure of Mercenaries’ leaders
Not long after, Da Best’s message was deleted, replaced by Midnight’s promise of a new direction. His short reply did not explain the disappearance of Komodo, Da Best, and Sachika.
Midnight redirected his troops after deleting Da Best’s announcement
Regarding the sudden departure, Komodo offered an exclusive statement.
We left Mercs because Midnight attempted to shadow lead while he was “retired.” Yeah, he wasn’t retired; he was just on leave. He told us he would be back by February. Midnight told the HCOM that when he came back, he’d remove “everything he considered stupid,” like the partnerships I managed to establish with other non-CPA servers or the demotions my fellow leaders gave to those who were inactive or broke the server rules. Midnight reversed the demotions.
As the leadership realized all our efforts to keep the army active would be pointless due to the reversals and the High Command becoming increasingly unstable each day, we decided to leave the army.
The only thing Midnight wanted to achieve was to reach 300-400 members on the Mercenaries Discord Server. He must understand that having more members on discord only sometimes means higher activity.
We weren’t taken seriously by Mid, and he would call us “stupid” when we would suggest almost any ideas. He would also threaten to demote us to LiT-2ic and say he would “solo lead” the army, then he’d dismiss all of that, saying, “it was just a thought.” MCP was already doomed when I joined, and everything was a mess. A mess we tried to fix but weren’t able to.
Club Penguin Armies reached out to Midnight for clarification and to see his plans for the Mercenaries’ future.
Can you clarify was Da Best was talking about in his now-deleted announcement?
We had disagreements. I didn’t like how the leaders were doing things.
Do you plan on reaching out to all of the leaders and reconciling, or are their tenures over for good?
No, seems like da best dislikes me so doubt he will ever return. I also do not want them back in Mercs because I don’t trust them and don’t think they would be good leaders.
You later mentioned that there would be a lot of changes coming soon, what are these changes?
Servers changes, staff changes, system changes
Following this interview, Midnight reminded everyone in the Mercenaries server not to join any armies sent by the former leaders. He instructed his members to notify him if they receive any invitations to Janitors, the new army of the expelled leaders.
Midnight reminding troops not to join any server promoted by the former leaders
With so many changes within the last month, what is in store for Mercenaries remains to be seen next. After so many accusations by Komodo and Da Best, underlying issues seem abundant in the Mercenaries’ leadership. Where will Mercenaries go from here, and how will they ultimately respond to their leadership turmoil?