April 23rd, 2022 saw the release of Club Penguin Army Battleground, created by resident coder Superhero123. This came ten days after the unfortunate closure of Club Penguin Rewritten and ushered in a new era for Club Penguin Private Server armies. The switch faced quite a few hiccups. However, I believe I speak for all of our community when I say how thankful I am to Super for taking the time to create an amazing resource for our communities.
Designed by Master DS
The Beginning
The Discord server for CPAB was released on April 9, 2021, originally called “Untitled Army Game.” After a series of polls, it became Club Penguin Army Battleground, and a flurry of graphics were soon created to reflect the new name. There was a lull in announcements until January 27, 2022, when Super announced that CPAB was back in full development, followed by a request for developers in February. Private Beta Testing began on March 22, with army leaders (and their staff teams) gaining initial access to provide feedback. After taking down CPAB due to the DMCA takedown of CPR, Super released it to the community on April 23, and armies began to log on daily.
The first days of CPAB also included a small beta party, with players being able to pick up two exclusive items that are no longer attainable. The influx of users forced devs to create three additional servers, also creating bugs and forcing restarts. The process of creating an account changed as well; moderators were now in charge of activating new users by hand. A brief bug had to be squashed and the community logged on for the first time.
Summer 2022
June 2022 saw the second annual CPA Pride Parade, and designers created amazing custom rooms to help our community celebrate, as pictured above. Exclusive items, such as a CPA Pride shirt and Pride Party Pin, became available. June also saw the 1500th account registered, an amazing achievement for a CPPS that opened its doors just two months ago. Summers are peak times for CPA since many new troops join due to having more free time.
July 2022 saw the merge of CPAHQ and CPAN into the unified league we have now, Club Penguin Armies, and CPAB officially partnered with CPAB. This allowed CPA Admins to handle multilogging investigations. Later in the month, Super announced that CPAB was hiring, which would be helpful in the coming months as CPAB faced a multitude of bugs, including the “infinite loading glitch.”
Inside Mine room was released in July too, customised and modified to better support battles. Super upgraded the CPAB server at the end of July as well, believing it would significantly improve the performance of the CPPS. This unfortunately did not work, and the CPAB Developers, especially Super, were on the receiving end of the unfair backlash, caused by the controversy surrounding Beach Brawl II. Regardless, Super continued to plug forward and continue to improve CPAB to make it more stable during battles. His CPPS was essentially still in the experimental phase, as armies were still trying to cope with the death of Adobe Flash, the program that ran the original Club Penguin back in the day, and many CPPS’s before its demise.
In August a few bugs popped up (and quickly squashed) such as account activations not working, word tactics being blocked, and users not being able to enter their igloos. Pizzatron 3000 game released this month too, and while we don’t have a Pizza Parlour yet, troops can join the game using the “join room” command. The end of August signaled the end of summer season for CPAB, and a celebratory Scavenger Hunt began. Before the end of summer, however, developers redesigned the Forest similar to inside the Mine, allowing more space for armies to do formations and tactics.
From Fall to Now
September saw the announcement of the 12th annual Legends Cup. Usually held in the summer, it was delayed to allow Super and the CPAB Developers more time to flesh out bugs and other issues. The extra time allowed designers to create new “legendary” room designs for the Town, Plaza, Iceberg, and others. At the conclusion of the Legends Cup, the Templars had their own custom emote added as a reward for winning this prestigious tournament.
On the first day of December, an announcement went out from Super asking folks to contribute to CPAB’s Patreon due to rising server costs. Donors would receive a special pink name colour as thanks. This month also saw a wave of Christmas rooms be released in preparation for Christmas Chaos XII, and applications open up for more Mods, Devs, and Graphic Designers. Army backgrounds also returned, similar to what CPATG and CPA.net had, and registered armies are encouraged to send their designs to Super to be added in-game.
The 20,000th account logged on on January 27th, along with a (late) addition of a custom Legends Cup hoodie. A joke competition for CPAB’s in-game joke command began in February, allowing all community members to submit army-specific jokes to be added to the game. With the announcement of the March Madness tournament, CPAB released four custom rooms to celebrate, and the tournament was a success. Super mentioned that this was his favourite tournament so far:
When asked about the future of CPAB, Super mentioned a few things:
The plan is to continue to throw events every now and then as we already do (for tournaments etc). In addition, a few more rooms will be added in-game in the near future. Outside of those, I have a bunch of feature ideas that I will code into the game when I find the time (so most likely on the summer).
Super described one of the new rooms coming to CPAB as, “a truly delicious place!” and one can guess that the Pizza Parlour will be making its return. Maybe we will see the revival of the Pizza Federation as well.
The best way for the Army Community to involve themselves in the future of CPA and continue to support our beloved server is supporting his Patreon. Super requests that you only donate if you have the funds and means to do so. Here is the link for interested folks: https://www.patreon.com/geotsak. Super currently still needs thirty more euros per month to fully cover costs.
It’s been one year of using Club Penguin Army Battleground as the main CPPS for our community. Here’s to another year, two years, or as long as this community continues to persevere.