I want to preface this by saying that I do not believe the community is dying. But everyone knows that all good things must meet their end. There is no certainty that Club Penguin Armies are good, but they will meet their end regardless. It has been wondered for years what would finally make this community die. Some people even argue that this community will never die. But those people are too optimistic. The points I make in this post are from a realist perspective of what I believe is likely to happen.
Designed by Gabi
Near-Death Experiences
The most significant things that caused our community to die were:
- The closure of Disney’s Club Penguin
- The transfer from Xat to Discord
- The doxxing of 2021
March 30th, 2017 marks a massively known incident that almost caused the community to die. This was the day when Disney’s Club Penguin shut down and most of the essential members of this community took their leave. Many did not see a future for our community without the most crucial part of it, the game. However, it did not take long for Club Penguin Private Servers to become popular. This luckily saved us from certain death. A huge shoutout and thank you to the CPPS developers, even if they weren’t attempting to rescue our godforsaken community.
In early 2021, the whole community hit the pause button on its activities. Only a few armies kept having events, and that too on an infrequent basis. Club Penguin Army Hub, the dominant league of the time, ceased operations. Several people disabled or even deleted their accounts to ensure their safety. This event became known as the infamous doxing threat of 2021. A group of people who wanted Club Penguin armies to end entirely nearly succeeded in their goal by threatening our community members’ safety. People were afraid; this was almost like our version of the covid pandemic, with everything shut down and people fearful for their safety.
Another event that could have caused the community to die was the transition from Xat to Discord in 2017. Nowadays, Discord may seem like the obvious choice but Xat and CPA were the same at the time. For the newer generation of members, imagine completely switching from Discord to another platform. Leaving behind everything you have ever known for a new service, when you could stay here and keep going as you have been is not an easy decision. Going into the unknown is always scary, especially as a leader. Will this kill my army? What about all of my memories here? What new struggles will we face? These questions must have flooded our 2017 leaders’ minds, yet they jumped and changed our community forever, seemingly for the better so far.
Notable Struggles
A time that did cause trouble for the community was the shutdown of Club Penguin Online. However, we already knew several well tested alternatives like Club Penguin Rewritten and later on, Club Penguin Armies: The Game. Thanks to those, the shutdown of Club Penguin Online never became serious enough to fit into the near-death category.
At the end of 2020, we witnessed the death of Adobe Flash. Some may say that the death of Flash was a time the community was close to death, but I would disagree. We had too many safety nets for it to be a real threat. CPR administration had already announced its plans to move to HTML, which gave us hope to hold on to despite the release taking some time. Slowly, the community made it through this incident.
A less expected struggle that hit us was the death of CPR on April 13th, 2022. There was no actual warning of the closure, caused by legal issues and real world police intervention. CPR had existed since 2017, only a month before the closure of Disney’s Club Penguin. Its age ensured that it was a well known and highly popular game in our community. People often used the site for recruiting, so losing it was a significant hit for many armies.
A more recent struggle is Discord’s increased measures to limit DM/bot advertising. For years we used recruiting alts and DMed recruits at a slow and steady pace. Lately, these methods have proved ineffective for any army attempting to recruit. We can see the attempts aren’t working because our highest-maxing armies have been hitting a max of around 50 if they are lucky, even for important events. I don’t believe this will kill us off, but it is another challenge we, as a community, must overcome.
How Do I Think Armies Will Die?
With all the remarkable things our community has survived, it is not a shock that some wonder if we are immortal. But, as I said in my intro, nothing last forever. So I would like to play a guessing game on what will make us meet our ultimate demise.
First, let’s look at the near-death stuff like doxing, the death of our game, and transitioning to other platforms. It is not unreasonable to believe that we could die because of a combination of these things.
As I mentioned in the last part of Notable Struggles, Discord is starting to show signs of being an unsustainable source of recruits. At the same time, we have around five more years left before we need to head off Discord, depending on how the developers decide to update the app. When this happens, we will be vulnerable and may join a less secure site leading to our next deadly horseman, doxing.
Whether it be for petty drama, or just for the fun of being a bad person, people have always been the only terrors of the internet. Sometimes this is even worse in our community, leading to people doxing other members. If someone were to hit us during our transition to a new website/platform, we would likely go into shutdown like in 2021. A pause during a massive move like that would negatively affect the community, and I imagine we would be leaving Discord in an already poor state of existence. To make matters worse, let us say a third horseman arrives, Disney.
Our incredible game founders have been hunting us like bloodhounds since CPPSes were created and it always increases when we are smearing mud on their name. Disney would not enjoy their property becoming associated with doxing. If they were to catch wind of this, they’d quickly pull the plug on whatever CPPS we use. If, by some luck, we had a sustainable CPPS to switch to, it would be next to impossible to successfully switch over while dealing with doxing and a platform transfer.
Ultimately, it does not matter when or how the community dies, and until then, we should enjoy the moment. But it doesn’t hurt to guess how it will end if you do not let it stress you out. I want to hear your thoughts. What do you think will kill armies? Do you think we are immortal?
Tell us in the comments below!
More Information
Mchappy is interning at Club Penguin Armies as the Chief Executive Producer. Max held him at gunpoint to finish his biography.
I think the actions of Discord will be the final nail in the coffin if we can’t adapt and find other ways to recruit. I always thought armies would die after Club Penguin closed, and boy was I wrong, so maybe there’s a chance we are immortal.