Club Penguin Is Falling Apart, Nothing Is Being Done To Fix It, and I’m Getting Fed Up (Spike Hike Responds)

UPDATE: Spike Hike has left a response in the comments. Click here to read it. Feel free to reply to him!

Club Penguin is broken. For the last few years, little by little, the game has been falling apart. Nothing has been done to fix the broken pieces, and I’ve just about had it. The game is too large, too many features. This creates inconsistencies, abandoned features, and bugs – many that aren’t even fixed after years. It’s almost as if Club Penguin is pretending the flaws do not exist. There’s also the terrible chat filter, cheating, security breaches, and private servers. Club Penguin has so many problems now that I get irritated whenever I play the game…so I don’t play it unless I have to log on to blog about an update. It makes me question why I even bothered to renew my membership for another year. Club Penguin is no longer the fun game I grew up playing.

I’m sure part of it has to do with my age, and part of it being the nostalgic effect, as Polo Field calls it. However, it’s definitely not everything. I’m not sitting here longing for the old days, I’m just longing for Club Penguin to step their game up. I don’t expect the game to be bug free, but I expect them to make a bit more of an effort. For example, when Secrets of the Bamboo Forest was at the Stage last month, there was a bug where you could not get the background. They never fixed it. The EPF spy phone no longer shows who sent the message, a bug that’s been around for a few months. While it’s a minor issue, why hasn’t it been fixed? There’s also two bugs that happen semi frequently: a week after a new pin is released and Club Penguin updates, they’ll remove the pin even though it’s supposed to be there for another week. There have been a few cases where they never put it back. Luckily when it happened to the Glitterpants Pin last week they fixed it within a few days, but still. The other bug would be them putting the wrong script at the Stage a week or two after the stage play is released. The stage isn’t being updated, so why did they replace the script? It makes absolutely no sense. When I run into these things on Club Penguin it’s just like “Seriously, again? Come on…” Club Penguin has many bugs. They’ve been having broken images in some Club Penguin Blog posts for a couple years now and they still have that issue. Again, it’s minor, but they’ve had so long to fix it that it makes me question why they can’t take the time to fix these issues. Don’t even get me started on the buddy list bugs.

Now with the abandoned features. Club Penguin removed the Ninja Hideout nearly two years ago – May 23, 2013 to be exact. And yet, when you defeat Sensei in Card-Jitsu and earn your Ninja Mask, he mentions the Ninja Hideout and says to go there. At least once or twice a month I get a comment on my Ninja Hideout page from a confused penguin wondering where the Ninja Hideout is because Sensei mentioned it. I would think that if I get comments from penguins that Club Penguin Support would receive at least a few emails questioning where it is and alerting them about the error. The game’s so big that they forgot about some things, I guess…

Stamps are fun, I enjoy collecting them. However, they’re dead. I’m not asking for new stamps or anything (although it wouldn’t hurt), it’s just half the time Club Penguin doesn’t make the party stamps unlockable anymore, and you can’t even get the Club Penguin Game Day stamps anymore.

There’s also the EPF. I really enjoyed the story lines in the PSA missions. Story lines are something Club Penguin severely lacks nowadays, with anything. Perapin does a good job at explaining how poor the story lines in Club Penguin are. They’re so basic, random, make no sense, and do not add to the fun. With “old CP”, we didn’t need much of a story line, or if there was one, it was simple and fun. Take a look at how Club Penguin led up to the Medieval Party in May 2008. The following images are from Club Penguin Times Issue 134.

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Or for the Water Party in 2007, Club Penguin updated the Cave/Pool so the crab would tap on the glass and cause it to break and flood the underground. As a result, hoses were placed there to suck the water up and splash it around the island.

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Nowadays, I feel like Club Penguin does not give much of a clear “why”, especially with takeovers. I will admit they did a decent job with the SoundStudio Party announcement…

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…except they completely forgot about the Penguin Band and gave no explanation whatsoever for their no-show.

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I wouldn’t mind a simple party, but I think a lot of people would find it boring since Club Penguin has upped the ante with parties. They raised the bar so high by going all out in the past that now people are unhappy with Club Penguin shrinking parties in size due to mobile. Belly18’s memoir on the 2009 St. Patrick’s Day Party does a good job at summarising it:

[…] AND I’m just saying now, almost nobody would have this same thrill. This party was pretty simply put together – about 10 rooms decorated, 1 party room, and 2 free items. Nowadays, people would probably be like, “There isn’t anything to do. You just get your two free items and log off. That’s it.” That is true, but it’s just because that’s how we are used to Club Penguin now. Back then, there were no quests. There were no interfaces (besides the occasional scavenger hunt). There were no character greetings when you logged on to a server to explain something – because nothing needed to be explained back then. There were no meetable characters at every party, maybe perhaps 3-4 times a year, but not every party. There wasn’t about 10 items at every party that you had to do stupid things to earn it. There wasn’t 5 or more party rooms at each party. There wasn’t advertising parties – just very creative Club Penguin original ideas. You just had FUN on Club Penguin. No nonsense things to earn your free items or anything else I said. If a party like this came out tomorrow or something, people would say one thing – it’s boring. There’s nothing to do, wa wa wa. Well, really, because I remember playing Club Penguin during the St. Patrick’s Day Party 2009 and thought it was the best party ever. I stayed on Club Penguin for hours on end. I would have been on all day if I could.

Today, people are spoiled, basically.

Well said, Belly.

The filter is very strict now compared to what it used to be. I’m no Club Penguin moderator who monitors what children say in-game, but in all my years of playing I’ve never seen anything that bad. I’ve seen a few clever terms used to bypass the filter, but unless you’re a teenager, you’re not going to understand it, and even then you might not get it. Younger children make up the majority of Club Penguin’s demographics nowadays, so if they ran into that type of filter bypassing they would think nothing of it.

What I’m trying to say is this: yes, Club Penguin’s had a few minor filter issues in the past, maybe more than I’ve encountered, but it’s a little too tight. And by a little, I mean a lot. All of my tweets, if I were to say them on Club Penguin, would go through just fine without getting me banned. But a lot of them would not show for other players even though they are completely appropriate. I haven’t had a conversation with a friend on Club Penguin in a looooooong time. It’s too limiting. Sometimes I feel that Club Penguin’s filter is like an overprotective parent.

+ 989843058394058 other examples I’ve tweeted.

Last July when Club Penguin released SoundStudio I emailed them a list of naughty words you can use as track names and name your puffle with. They’re all still allowed. Good thing none of them are displayed to other players, eh? I have to give Club Penguin some credit, their filter is good at keeping kids safe…just way too safe at times.

That may be the main issues with Club Penguin in-game, but don’t think I’m done yet. They have many issues outside the game, too. Cheating has always been an issue Club Penguin faces since what, 2005 or 2006 with WPE Pro and CP Trainers? I’m sure some of you have heard of Mike92’s trainer or Microchip123’s Penguin Storm trainer.

Back then the most you could do was hack coins or do stuff only you saw, not others. Now people are able to cheat any item they please because of the rise in programming knowledge amongst current and former Club Penguin players. I know, items are just pixels, but it still takes away the fun of the game, especially when you log on Sleet and see 50 fake beta testers crowding a room. Club Penguin patches the vulnerabilities when they can, but only a while after they’re brought public. They need to be a step ahead of the game and identify vulnerabilities before the players do. We also can’t forget the time my penguin was hacked and information stolen right from Club Penguin’s systems, either. God forbid something like that happens again.

My final gripe with Club Penguin is private servers. I’ve written a lot about them before, and Spike Hike even said that Disney regularly goes after CPPS sites. I will be honest: I have never heard of a CPPS taken down by Disney. All the top private servers are still online. The only time I have ever seen a CPPS close is because the people behind it decided to shut it down, or in the case of Oasis, temporarily taken offline for Maintenance. When I took the following screenshot of CPPS.Me’s homepage, over 550 users were online. Some private servers have boasted having more than 5,000 users online at once. That’s a lot. Yup, Club Penguin sure is constantly taking down private servers and they’re doing an even more outstanding job at taking down the biggest offenders!

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It’s time to get your act together, Club Penguin. Please. Otherwise myself and other players don’t plan to stick around much longer. I’m actually quite surprised I’ve hung around this long, as August will mark nine years since I joined Club Penguin. That’s quite a long time. I still enjoy all the mini-games and missions on Club Penguin when we have them, even if “penguins” is deemed childish for a teenager to play. I still like the game, I just don’t like the current state of how many things are being handled.

That concludes my thoughts on the current downward state of Club Penguin. If you have anything to add, feel free to voice your opinions in the comments.



197 thoughts on “Club Penguin Is Falling Apart, Nothing Is Being Done To Fix It, and I’m Getting Fed Up (Spike Hike Responds)

  1. You know… Many players like me (or my friends) would like help with better CP. We report bugs (and we know which file is broken when is problem in animation or something so we know how fix it) but CP say “No, thx. We have our people for this.” But they haven’t so many peoples for fix everything. They fixed things which players don’t see. This is bad.

  2. I’m so glad finally said it!! Honestly, I’ve been pretty fed up to. I haven’t enjoyed a party on Club Penguin probably since the Holiday Party…in 2013. Belly was right with saying people these days are spoiled with parties. I attended the Water Party 2007 and St. Patrick’s Day Party 2009 and they were 2 of the greatest events of all time!! The story behind the Water Party is one of the reasons it was so successful. It may not seem like it, but what Club Penguin did with it was genius.

    Last year I got so bored with the parties that I pretty much gave up and started waiting for the Halloween Party in like May. Not only that, but I’m not enjoying new catalogs or items either. The new furniture and clothes Club Penguin puts out now is just weird, and I’m not even a member. And then there is the newspaper. I don’t even bother reading it anymore because the stories are so boring, especially Aunt Arctic. Club Penguin doesn’t fool me, the questions Aunt Arctic answers in her column are NOT user submitted.

    The only thing I have left to talk about is the Stage. When the Stage first came out, it was something new and interesting, and it was fun! But now, Club Penguin keeps bringing back the same plays. They haven’t made a new play since 2012! The Stage would probably be more popular if they made new plays. But Club Penguin hasn’t done anything with it in so long, they’ve pretty much ruined the Stage’s reputations. Odds are at this point, there is no saving it. They might as well either TRY or just remove it. Honestly, I don’t want to see them remove it. :/

  3. I remember when the CP team said that the newspaper would be “renewed” due to hard work in the game. Sure, they work hard in the game, but they are in the wrong way.

    The downs in CP are the end of PSA and the end of the Ninja Hideout, and consequently all elemental Dojos open for all players, that was so disgusting, i feel like CP don’t care about the players that losed time triying to get all the belts and becoming a Ninja, and after all becoming a Fire and Water Ninja.

    And the end of the PSA was another down in CP history. Well, in the beginning of the Field-Ops they are so much promising, but they repeat and repeat and repeat more and more turning this boring and boring. The same minigames without nothing new. Why CP Team can’t make new EPF missions like the old PSA’s?

    And another thing, the mobile. CP caring so much with mobile apps, launching a zillion of new puffles in Puffle Wilds and can’t adding the new puffles in Puffle Launch, Pufflescape, in the igloo care.
    Bugs, bugs, and more bugs in Desktop, crapped parties, etc, etc.

    The mobile is distracting the Team, when the Desktop left ace flies.

    • I agree about the PSA and the end of the Ninja Hideout, but I don’t see what the issue is with CP opening all Card-Jitsu games to free-to-play players.

      How is that disrespectful to members that previously become Fire, Water, and Snow Ninjas? Their hard work will still be recognized, and it lets more players become elemental ninjas, making it easier to change the weather.

      The only change is that being a elemental ninja would be less “exclusive”, but if someone has been playing CP long enough to have become a ninja before the change, they would certainly have other “exclusive” member-only clothes to wear.

      Look, I certainly agree that CP is going downhill, but I don’t think that opening Card-Jitsu to non-members was a bad thing–I actually think it was a really nice move on behalf of CP as they are only giving up their own revenue, frankly.

      • Im talking about the Elemental Card Jitsu opened for ALL NON NINJA PLAYERS! DO YOU UNDERSTAND? Now you can enter in any dojo haven’t any belt

        • I TOTALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE SAYING BUT I DON’T APPRECIATE THE ALL CAPS

          So what? If I want to start on Card Jitsu Snow, why shouldn’t I be able to? There is no “set” path for a ninja just because the dojos were released Fire, Water, Snow…again, more freedom and choice is not a negative thing in my opinion.

        • Look, just for the time component–even if I hadn’t become a ninja before this change, I would still have had to wait for the other Dojos to be released.

          I don’t see it as unfair as whether I am a Ninja or not, I still have to wait for the Dojos to be released.

          Plus, even if I can bypass being a Ninja, it is still a serious accomplishment.

  4. I agree completely. The parties got boring after a while, and i feel like I kind of did everything there was to do. There isn’t anything to explore on the island. Remember the parties from ’08 and ’09? I liked those the best because they had a really awesome plot to them, like the water and fire ninja parties. Snow was okay, but after that it just all… died. After being a ninja, there’s nothing left to do anymore with it. I loved playing online in epic card-jitsu battles but it got old. The “new” stuff was just the same as the parties before, just with new graphics.

    Club Penguin is dead. It’s boring. It’s buggy.

    I’m honestly surprised that it managed to last this long…

  5. The only party I can think of that would restore a small bit of my faith in Club Penguin is a party where you could go back and see what club penguin used to be, like the old club penguin.

  6. You are indeed SO right. The present day Club Penguin updates really sicken me and I wish they actually start fixing the mess they made… and, starting a few years ago, they reveal ALL the what-used-to-be secrets on the island. ALL. Among it are the iceberg and dojo. Heck, even the EPF is revealed. Completely. I don’t think EPF is even a secret agency anymore, like it used to be pre-Operation Blackout.

  7. Someone had to say it and you said it in full. Spike and the rest of the team need to get their hands out of their pockets and get to work, or they’ll just lose everyone and then shift the goal posts again like with the #SaveTheClubPenguin thing.

  8. Hello Trainman! I just wanted to share something that happened to me.

    I made a pretty long text about how Club Penguin is not how I used to play, almost 4 years ago (I joined CP in June 2011, right before Music Jam starts. By the way, THAT was a party).

    I talked about parties with few decorated rooms, recolored items, the old journal, old pins, parties with better storylines and with quests that make the player return to play the game in the following days, the chat filter and events (the mini-parties that only have 1 or 2 free items).

    They gave me this reply:

    “What a pleasure talk to you!

    Thank you for your opinion. Know what you really like (or not) in CP is very important for us!

    You’re a penguin full of ideas, right?

    We can’t guarantee that your idea will be used one day, but let’s cheer to see if this will happen, OK?”

    I thought that they would read my text and reply to every topic that I discussed.

    If you’re interested in see what I wrote to them and what I think about the current state of Club Penguin, I can show you.

  9. I would also like to mention “can you shut up” bypasses the filter and shows up on the screen, however if you just type in “shut up”, it won’t show up.

  10. And I also noticed Club Penguin doesn’t accumulate bans anymore for some reason. Like if you made one bad word, you would get 24 hours. If you did it another time, it would be 48, 72, etc.. Now it’s just 24 hours each time…not that i’m complaining or anything

    • I’ve got bans twice in CP, one before the update and one after. They were both typos lol, which was annoying, but I got 24 hours both times. I was expecting 48 hours the second time, but tbh, I’m not complaining about it either…

  11. I sent them a looong email last year in October all about the adders and private servers and provided a few examples I saw online with penguin names! They said they’d look into them further. When they said that, it basically meant they’re saying, “Oh not important, we’ll do it another day.” Then, they told me to change my login settings and I’m screaming at them hysterically in my head. I sent a long email about adders, penguins cheating, and private servers, and they think I did it, just tattling on myself. At the very end, they said feel free to report penguins like using adders, and I’ve done that several times, but the next few days after, they’re still on CP, hanging around, talking. And I’m just cussing in my head, like seriously?

    On a related note, they don’t even have an option for that in the cheating menu for reporting them. No adders, no hacking, no anything. Basically just blocking things, lying, etc.

    Oh bugs, bugs, bugs. Whenever I talk to friends about CP, they just say, “Don’t you mean Club Bug?”;”Oh that junk,”;”Why do you still play? I mean, it’s gone downhill ever 2012,”. My friend, the one who cried when she saw the pin, was the one who got me interested. I started on a non-member penguin, then got a new one with a membership in April last year. Now, I hate CP, yet I still kind of love it. After Billybob left, all these problems emerged, stronger than ever.

    And now CP is going bananas trying to stay up with the modern age, which is apps. I don’t use any of their apps, because I saw most of them as pointless. I used the Club Penguin app once, but stopped because it was so buggy and laggy.

    I get why CP merged with Disney, but most of our parties now are takeovers, promotions for apps. I can’t stand it anymore. I’m quite fed up, too.

  12. So I know that the game is lagging. Here are the main problems with CP

    Awful chat filter!
    Bugs galore!
    Not enough decorated rooms in parties!

    Now CP kinda gets away with this as they are working on new projects such as #ProjectSuperSecret and CPNext ( which will ruin cp all together ).
    But the chat filters are awful, just not allow curse words and we’ll all be fine.

    Now on too bugs the Soundstudio party had WAY too many bugs! Or probably scrapped content which made the party boring, they could’ve just had the party on for a week, and decorations were just recycled from the Hollywood party, and at the dock and forest they just went lazy with having the night sky and the day sky be halved. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE!

    On to hacking it’s gone out of hand, everyday I see bots running around the servers like mad.

    If CP fixed there awful filter, closed down private servers and Item adders and fixed there parties ( and fix them bugs ) then we can finally live in peace!

    But there are good things, the puffle party is coming up and it looks exiting, people are saying good things about the catalogs……..O…..Wait……this is a hate post……..

    Look CP just fix your game, fix the EPF bugs, make parties like in 2012/13 and make up to players about the Soundstudio party items, give us the Soundstudio hoodie and pins. And those filters gosh those filters!

  13. I strongly agree with you trainman sir, And I don’t mean to be offensive by any means, but I personally feel that since Club Penguin has had a decent rise in money for their company with all the paying members in the past years, they are starting to slack off and be careless, probably thinking that they don’t need/want us anymore. Then they start giving us cheesy content that’s partially useless, and bugs that they don’t even bother too approve of and fix.
    To prove this, All I can say is one thing: they don’t listen even though Club Penguin staff like “Spike Hile” says so.

    The solution would be to stop paying membership fees to CP, and quit the game.

    Rest assured that Club Penguin stays strong and alive bringing fun and enjoyable moments to those who are happy with the changes, and maintain and improve their game for those of us who aren’t

    Thank you for bringing light to this major situation and giving us the chance to voice our opinions trainman sir.

    As always, keep up the great work :)

  14. I think that Disney should sell Club Penguin to a computer company like Microsoft. That knows about software and a strong tech base that can fix bugs with then a few days. So then Club Penguin can be fun again and have a bug rate of 5% or less.

  15. I don’t understand why CP doesn’t try to do something. They often say they do things like this because some players like it this way (most recently they used this argument for pin size) but there is obvious correlation between quality of CP as described in the post and search trends. I know correlation doesn’t imply causation (http://www.xkcd.com/552/) and there could be other factors we don’t see (like there being so many mobile games and CP coming relatively late to mobile world). Or maybe CP is in fact doing well and search trends just aren’t the most accurate way of assessing business’s health. It would be interesting to see some financial report.

    As for Private Servers I see them only as a secondary problem. I think players seek to express themselves and CP doesn’t offer them enough options (the chat filter is nice example). Moreover CP isn’t falling apart because there are many CPPSs, it is probably the other way around. Also fighting them would only be waste of resources (remember the prohibition in twenties?) as they are an effect rather than a cause and when you remove one of Hydra’s heads, two new pop in its place (matter of demand and supply). CP should instead focus on fixing the root cause – whatever that is.

  16. Great post. I am actually working on a similar blog post. Once I am done with it, I’ll tweet it on Twitter and even link the finished blog post on your blog in this post.

    It mainly talks about CP’s priorities and mods.

  17. Another stupid bug Club Penguin never fixes is the friends list. Ever since that stupid thing was added in 2011 its been very buggy. 95% of the time it doesn’t work for me. Why couldn’t they just keep the old one…

  18. YES, YES!!! I’ve been waiting for a post like this for a very long time. It’s not the features and parties that bug me (pun intended) too much, it’s how Club Penguin’s handling their game. I find it terrible that they won’t fix their bugs and anything that’s keeping the game from being the best it can be. Now, I don’t expect them to be perfect, but it’s unacceptable that they leave bugs, hacks and CPPS’ alone, without touching them. The puffle digging bug, the Skatepark bench bug, the text bug at the Shack. THE LOGIN SCREEN BUGS. Those irritate me the most. Even some games on Club Penguin are practically UNPLAYABLE! Puffle Rescue for web and Card-Jitsu Water are the biggest examples. CJ Water loads and loads until you fall off that waterfall, and Puffle Rescue is so laggy, you end up moving in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hacks, they won’t get rid of them! Cloud Penguin is still running, and there are still loads of unpatched items, ready for hacking. CPPS’, they don’t bug me as much as those other things, but they should still be dealed with. But, knowing Club Penguin, they’ll let them all stay open as long as they want, and we’ll all be able to play Flippr, Oasis and other private servers peacefully! :) (sarcastic smiley face)
    They always say they’re listening, but I’m not so sure they are now. No bug fixes, no improvements on parties, no taking down CPPS’ (now, I know that may take a lot more work, but seriously, they haven’t even tried!). It’s really a shame where CP is now, in terms of how they hold their game together. Mark my words, Club Penguin, I’m disappointed.

  19. Another point worth thinking about: CPPSs still often contain CP in their name so it advertises Club Penguin and as they often have less bugs it can be positive advertisement. Or is it shaming CP, when copies are regarded as being better than original?

  20. CP raised their lvl too much last year that when they make a party now it’s boring compaired to 2012,2013 and 2014’s parties.
    And what about EPF? They were doing NOTHING but then they were like “oh we had an EPF! Let’s fix it! I totally forgot it!” and what about puffles? They are making ‘special puffles’ but they are just blue and red puffles’ copies with another color…
    CP will be like Panfu in a few years, remember what I said just now…

  21. Train, in the Ski Village, there is a hidden blue arrow sign behind the newly planted trees (where the tour booth used to be). It is probably a hint at the wilderness!

  22. I have to agree with you Train. Before, I was very excited about parties. I was always counting the days to them and would always wake up super early to play them!

    But that’s now history.

    Now, the parties are very boring and have no proper plot to them. I didn’t even bother to go to Pi Day and celebrate because it was undoubtedly boring as all you could do was throw pies ( pretty fun actually )and walk around.

    The catalogs are problems too. Back then, items were cool and nice. Now they’re WAY too flashy. Some items still make you look fat ( I could be wrong).

    Adders back then were like gold. People who wanted old ‘rare’ items got them. But now it’s darn annoying. People are thinking they are awesome and don’t realise the consequences. I went onto an adder ONCE and stopped after I cheated into an item. I know it’s illegal and should stop.

    Pookies are very big problems. They are people who are very bored and just dress up like babies and block the Petshop. Sound fine, right? No. Now it’s getting very inappropriate. Penguins think they are like people and ‘give birth’ ( I’m very serious ) to pookies. It is very disgusting and CP should remove them at once.Little kids are on CP and would learn very inappropriate stuff from what’s happening with pookies. CP actually knows about them (Watch WaddleOn for proof) and don’t do anything. That should stop immediately.

    The newspaper is a waste of time. The only advice you would get from it now is the bottom showing the hidden pin and upcoming events. It was fun of fun stuff back then and now is just trash.

    Thank you for reading. Please don’t shout if anything here is wrong, like, ”YOU ARE WRONG! GET OFF THIS SITE! ”. Just explain instead.

    BTW, I’m not some cranky person who cries about everything. I am just telling you my thoughts.

      • I do it when I’m boorrreeedd out of my mind. But yeah they’re quite annoying. I walk in wearing like the puffle party hoodies and all that stuff, and then they swarm around me crying out, “Woo pwetty!”;”Bwe mwy mumu!”;”WIll woo adopt mwe?” And what I was gonna do in the first place is undo-able without them like stalking me.

  23. TBH, l feel Cp ls not just lazy anymore, but Greedy as well. For Example, Polo tweet about takeovers bringing new players to the game, but it makes them loose players too. Plus, the thing Belly wrote, is right. at least most of it. The Problem is that back then, there weren’t so many rooms! Now, if a room changes, or appears,it’s left out forever. Puffle Park, Skate Park, Pufle hotel, EPF, School,etc. There are not even trying anymore. Also, bugs. Everywhere.Anywhere. The Never fix them.Cp’s Probably like:
    ”Oh, bug. they won’t notice. LUNCH BREAK!”
    l’m giving them 1 extra chance this year.

  24. They are using the same party rooms from 2012 2013 2014. I am more just logging on to post on my blog. If they don’t start making better parties, items, and start fixing bugs I might quit until they start doing better.
    -Pup2602

  25. Tbh Vlub Penguin cant take critasism. To Spike Hike the thousands of penguins who dont like the party are all haters, but the 2 people who like the party mean that the party was a sucsess. Cp would be better without Spike, I honestly believe that know. Polo and Megv understand but Spike does not. Any critasism given to Spike and his response is #StopGheDrama. Also what happened to CpNext and the Journey. I guesse like the fun in Club Penguin, they magically disapeared without a trace, and if you ask where they are the answer is clear your Cache.

  26. I feel the exact same club penguin is falling apart the partys are not like what they used, its like theyd ont even care anymore the sound studio party got me worried it was one of the worst parties I had ever experienced playing club penguin. Have you noticed how the fire at the PUFFLE lodge is not animated its ridiculous and with the number of employees they have at club penguin they shoud atleast TRY to make an effort. I feel that the EPF is dead, as with many other features of the game, I remember the last anniversary party where they had barely any decorations. Yet they are so many mysteries of club penguin I want answers to such as the elite puffles, the giant squid, Rory the construction penguin, the iceberg tipping, the puffle training room in the dojo, shadow ninjas, Rockhopper island, and one of my personal favorites is the box dimension just think about all those boxes in the background what dimensions could they hold? It is to bad to think club penguin could be coming to an end here If they screw up the Puffle party that is the last straw. In conclusion to my long speech is that Trainman when you start working at Club Penguin try to make some changes not just for me but the entire club penguin community.

  27. I don’t see why you would have a problem with OldCP, it’s just a recreation of Club Penguin’s “classic” era. Yes, you can get any item you want, but you can’t do very much on there besides chat anyway (or at least that’s how it was last time I checked). I honestly can’t see THAT taking away any of Club Penguin’s honest aside from teenagers who want to swear and make their penguins do inappropriate things, who don’t even belong in Club Penguin anyway. If Club Penguin is planning on taking it down though, it’s probably not very high on their list.

    • My problem with OldCP is that it’s still a private server, whether or not it’s a recreation. My problem isn’t with CPPS allowing swearing and being inappropriate, my problem is that they’re illegal.

      • They can probably get away with it by saying that they are using the content under fair use for educational purposes. If Club Penguin really cared, they would’ve done something by now.

      • I used to go on the OldCP, and I thought it was cool at first, but then I saw videos on how it was considered a private server, and they’re illegal. So, I quickly quit and deleted my account, My friend’s pretty mad at me, but I don’t care because I do what’s right now. And yeah, CP doesn’t seem to have it high on their list. Maybe their thinking, “Oh they’re just little kids, I doubt they know how to code, animate, etc.” Okay so I don’t know how that works, but they think we might be playing a prank on them.

  28. I would like them to stop treating us like kids in e-mails. Especially when I wanna rename my penguin, then they say “you need your parent”.

    I mean, adults play it! THEY LIVE AWAY FROM THEIR PARENTS!

    Second, they should respond to ideas with their opinion (if they’re not a kid) because saying stuff like “Oh, we’ll be sure to get to do that!” or “We’ll let the team know about this.” (yeah right) or “We’ll see in the future!”

    Third, the fanbase of this game makes it absolute garbage. (I think CP is trying to make it more kid-friendly, so that’s why the filter sucks, so I guess CPPS are worth it)

  29. Hey Trainman! Have you ever played Flippr CPPS? I’m not saying to play it but I’m saying that it 10x more good and better than the Club Penguin. Awesome Post!! I really liked how Parties had a story .But Nowadays, Parties doesn’t even have a story. :/ Newspaper is lame and so does parties. Everyone Hacking. I really miss old CP. :'(

  30. Completely agree. CP is in a downwards spiral right now. It needs sorting.

    Their biggest problem is that they don’t listen to the players. Sure, they may have listened slightly for Operation: Blackout, but that’s about it.

    I hate it when things aren’t consistent. As you said, there are too many unfinished stories and things that don’t make any sense currently.

    Let’s hope they get it sorted soon.

    *emails CP with link to blog post*

  31. I agree with you 100% Trainsy. I used to love it when Club Penguin was the old loveable nostalgic playground I go to everyday. I remember the parties. Almost all rooms are decorated. And now, there are only like 10 rooms decorated. Paint by letters, missions, and the old designs. I missed those. Club Penguin was actually fun before. Today, it’s just log in, get item… log out

  32. I’m glad you finally brought this up, increasing the chance of the Team on noticing what’s up with the game. Great post, I agree with everything that you brought up!

    Personally, I feel that it’d be worth-it if Club Penguin goes a month or two without a party and have an Improvement Project just like 2008, as you mentioned recently. This will give them “more time” to fix all existing bugs, e.g. Friends List, blue boxes, and also update everything around the island, such as the above mentioned Sensei dialogue, and also put the new puffles in Puffle Launch, Pufflescape and allow us to care for them “manually” instead of having us go to the Puffle Hotel or Puffle Park. If this is to make us visit those places more often, it’s not working.

    Another issue is mobile. Ever since Club Penguin developed a mobile app, you would think it’ll be a great run from there. Wrong. As mentioned by the Team themselves, they have to develop parties not only for desktop, but also mobile. And this has been restricting parties on desktop to a smaller scale, with the reason of “satisfying the demand of mobile users”. I personally think it wouldn’t matter if the Team only had the main part of the party on mobile, just like the Halloween Party 2014.

    Let’s be honest, that answer is actually pretty reasonable if you ask me. But if it’s deteriorating the parties “just” for mobile, I’m not buying it. You’re decorating heavily for a takeover party and merely in a confined space of the Plaza, Snow Forts and the Town during the SoundStudio Party. Besides that, minor things can make a party more enjoyable, but it’s also the minor things that can seriously impact a party. For example, anyone could participate in Lightsaber Duels during the Star Wars rebels Takeover 2015 with lightsabers from the Star Wars takeover 2013, before everyone else could. On the other side of the coin, minor decorations destroyed, literally, the Music Jam 2014. Seriously, that was “minor” for the team.

    Not to be offensive by any means but personally a short while from here, some moderator will probably comment here with answers like “We are listening. :)” and one year later people like you will have to make another post raising all the flaws that have been in the game going unfixed, and it will probably become a cycle.

    Those are among the things that have been “clouding” the game.

    Stop the mobile and puffle overwork, rework and polish the game instead. :)

  33. I am still waiting for club penguin to add the option to be able to play with your friends in card jitsu snow. It is baffling how all the card jitsu games you can play with your friends, except for snow. If it had that added, I am sure the replay value of that would increase. I am sure playing with friends won’t ever come though, seeing club penguins current priorities. What a missed opportunity.

  34. CP was better even on 2013. At least they made game ,scurvy, cool quest specially medieval party.But now stupid quest boring games. And they only make Head or Hand item for free players. Not a single body item even in codes.when i hacked i found there were many cool items for free players back then. But now there are cool items . And it is members only. They are only running after money. So they care about members only. NO CREATIVITY FOR FREE PLAYERS. Until now(2014-15) Only future party , Star wars Party,Halloween party, Operation Hot sauce and operation puffle was good.I just felt board and only played for items in other partys. But even though items were as boring and uncreative as the rest which were released since Feb 2014

  35. Ok, i’m gonna be honest, some of the issues you’ve listed are just plain dumb, i don’t see how they affect you or your gaming experience.

  36. I think they use mascots way to often, well I think I just came up with that theory right now I think, but its kind of true, think of one party that happened in the past year that occurred without a mascot or new tv star popping up on your screen, or in the newspaper. partys used to happen without mascots. and sometimes they would be in it but not always.

  37. There are two problems with Club Penguin’s downhill today, they are: Bugs or Glitches and CPPS’s! Why, i’ll explain here! When the very first CPPS (Club Penguin Private Server) was opened, Club Penguin started to get downhill that day, because the CPPS’s would bring back old Club Penguin Parties! Now, to the Bugs, Club Penguin has many older bugs that need more attention, like the EPF Message Bug, the Friend’s List Bug and many others that they need to fix! I have one last word to say, don’t blame The Journey, Disney, Spike Hike, Megg, Polo Field or any other Club Penguin Moderator, blame the CPPS’s! Here’s an example, you say that the CPPS’s must get closed all of them, okay but why doesn’t any of you make a petition about the closing of all CPPS’s! And one last thing, you’re all spoiled like Saraapril (no offense, but i’am speaking the truth here)! Here’s a question to all haters of the new Club Penguin: If you were in the place of Spike Hike right now, wouldn’t you do the same, change the room designs, bring new clothes! Just think one time about this question and then reply to this comment! And like I said in a Club Penguin Discussion Post, Club Penguin has to concentarte more on the online game than the apps!

  38. I think the reason why CP is falling apart is the main part of the team is focusing more on HyperHippo instead of CP.

    Also, I’m sure CP wants to get rid of the teenagers and preps and pookies so they make it more kid-friendly, so only 6-10 year olds would enjoy the party because they know less secrets and don’t care about the rooms.

    I have always loved CP, but after the Rebels Takeover, it died.

    • HyperHippo has nothing to do with CP, so I’m not sure why you think that. The only connection is some (all?) of the (few) employees of HyperHippo once worked at Club Penguin.

      Hyper Hippo: Only a few employees
      CP: Many, many employees

  39. Even though CP may be falling. I will NEVER leave the game, Even if they make bad parties I will still stay in the game. The main problem with CP is an awful Chat Filter, Hacking, and the more focus on mobile rather than the main game.

    So about the awful filter, I had this idea for CP which I named “Waddler” It’s bassicly CP’s version of Twitter were you can say pretty much anything on there, your posts will be called “Waddles” and your CP friends will be your in-game friends, there will be a mode to take pictures of your game ( kinda like Print Screen ) and share them to people. It’ll also make up for most CP employees closing there Twitter accounts, Reply on how you think of my idea :)

      • Thanks train! Did you see my link to a sneak peak of the Puffle lodge after the cake has been eaten?

        I posted it on your post about the ski lodge’s new look.

        I also asked Polo field to check out this blog post on his recent Ask Polo post on the blog.

  40. CP has gone way too far with their apps. And puffles.
    Seriously, do we even need them? If it was up to me, I`d delete all the puffle stuff from club penguin permanently.
    They say they make pins huge, so it wont be hard to find them. Are players blind or what? Back in the old days (2006-2008) we had small pins, yes, it was a bit of a challenge to find them, but it was fun, and no one had any problems finding them. The one who seeks finds.
    The new design of everything is very ugly too. Parties are awful. We have tons of stupid useless items each party. It would be perfect if CP could be like it was back then.
    Speaking of CPPS, you say that your problem is that they are illegal. Why would you even give a crap?

    • “The one who seeks finds.” I like that.

      Regarding your CPPS question: why shouldn’t I? I’m passionate about Club Penguin itself, not knockoffs.

  41. Great post, Train. Thoroughly explains the same frustrations I’ve had for the past few years with the game. But I think an overarching issue is that Club Penguin has simply become a cash cow. It was already widely popular and successful before Disney acquired it, and they have strategically changed the game to rake in as much profit as possible.

    Just look at what the parties are like nowadays. First of all, there’s a new party every month that lasts 2 weeks, so basically vanilla CP is only around for half of the year. These parties are always advertised on the membership page as a major selling point.

    Then, of course, we have all of these “takeover” parties shoehorned in, and these are essentially just double advertisements and promotions: One for the actual game (membership), and one for the theme of the takeover, which of course is always owned by Disney. For every party, a membership is required to get half of the items or access special party rooms. Nowadays we barely see Rockhopper or Gary anymore, and it’s because they can’t be used to advertise any other Disney products. The only reason they’re still part of the game is out of tradition.

    Why did the stamps get abandoned? Because Disney can’t make money from it.

    Why are there no more EPF missions? Because Disney can’t make money from it.

    The original creators of Club Penguin has a single vision in their minds: To make a safe, fun online environment for kids to play and chat on. Now with Disney, and more importantly, money in the picture, no one in their right mind can look at Club Penguin and say the intention is still the same.

  42. Hello Trainman1405!
    2 things:
    1) When I emailed Club Penguin Support about the crab lock pin being removed early, they said that it was a (and I quote), “special pin”.
    b) The Mounaineer Stamp has only ever been available once, and that was at the Great Snow Race in 2011.
    What do you think of this, Trainman1405?
    Waddle On!

    • 1) Lol, their response is garbage.
      2) That’s pretty lame. I wish CP put in more of an effort with stamps.

  43. Also the Club Penguin game day stamps weren’t unlockable anymore as Nintendo’s Wi-Fi services for Wii and Ds were closed down do to those systems being discontinued. Not CP’s fault

  44. Well first off, I just want to say thank you for sticking around on this MMO. As an archivist I enjoy throwback posts like this. But as I was reading the private server section of this, the concept became quite comical. CPPS’s like Oasis and Flippr are so much more advanced than the actual game itself….and they’re made by teenagers. Let’s throw this in perspective, I’ll use CPPS.me for example.

    Though not as advanced as other servers, CPPS.me holds the record for most registered users at a million. Let’s ask ourselves something, why does a private server have one million registered users in the first place? Seems quite unusual, maybe it has to do with unhappiness with the actual game. With what you said, about the teams ignorance to the bugs and CPPS’s, that is NO exaggeration. The last CPPS that I’ve seen that got torn down was in 2013, and the most vicious tear down was of course in 2011 with iCPv3. They just gave up.

    Happened with Toontown, might just happen with Club Penguin. Matter of fact, Club Penguin’s situation is so identical to Toontown’s in 2012 that it’s quite depressing. It’s been about 4 years total that I’ve discussed this topic but since you’ve witnessed Club Penguins downfall I might as well sum up my input. Disney’s ignorance was caused by excessive abuse of their rules to the point where they just don’t care anymore, honestly I’ll say that Club Penguin’s run was incredible but the end seems sooner than “generations” as said by screenhog, no hate intended. We should just continue to play the MMO like we’ve always done. Though a future “closing” may shock the community if things don’t pick up, the game is destined to reside in our memories, even if that memory is in the shape of a penguin.

    -Carphon

  45. They do listen. It just takes times for them to actually do it, i mean pins are getting smaller agian, because last night i visited for the first time the new ski lodge and i didnt even knew there was a pin i thought it was decoration :3

  46. Franchises get worse. Let’s use the TV Show “Teen Titans” as an example. In 2003-2007, it was a great show that balanced action and humor so it appealed to many audiences. People were obsessed with it.

    Unfortunately, some new producers who don’t have a good history got the rights to the show and destroyed it! “Teen Titans Go!” is a horrible COMEDY aimed at younger audiences and has horrible parody versions of the characters.

    Disney has also gotten worse. It used to be a respected animation studio, but it started having a reputation for the Disney Princess movie every 2-4 years. Not to mention it is more focused on money. However, Disney is a huge company, so things like PIXAR and Disney Channel don’t kill it.

    Franchises that get worse tend to usually end. If they don’t pull their act together, Club Penguin will end up just like all the other Disney Virtual Worlds. They end.

    I wasn’t always Bubsey Good. I used to have an account named “Slopperstick” I used to log on to CP every day just to look at igloos and waddle around, because I saw other penguins being creative and wanted to join in. Now the only reason I log on is same as you: To update my blog.

    Club Penguin is probably gonna end and everyone at CP is going to be ordered by Disney to make another Virtual world, this one with more takeovers.

    Club Penguin needs to pull it’s act together. It needs to get rid of private servers, reduce takeovers and give the players a bit more freedom. I know people who would make Star Wars igloos and it was pretty fun. We now have specifically themed Star Wars igloos. I haven’t seen an original Star Wars igloo in about 3 years.

    Unless you have an account started in 2005-2012, you are doomed to go along with this. No basic igloo items that could have endless possibilities. Take the snow walls for example. With that item, penguins have made airplanes, houses, schools, snow forts, ice castles, mosiacs, you name it. With items such as the death star it could only be the death star.

    In New Horizons it was mentioned the Club Penguin was supposed to have the concept of “We give you the tools, now we see what the player does with it” Now, I see a very specific tools used for only one job. Screwdrivers put in screws, but they also take them out. I think you should do an igloo decorating challenge where you can only use items released 2013-. It would prove or disprove if we have the freedom to create or own content.

    Thank you for reading.

    • I strongly find it hard to believe how CP will end.

      Currently, CP is the ONLY Virtual Website owned by Disney, and they’ve reached very far. They had released over 5 mobile apps (only 1 got discontinued – Puffle Launch). Big merchandise. Big events in several places from time to time like the Zoo thingy which occurred in Australia like in September 2014. CP even had a holiday TV Special.

      Personally, it would make NO sense for me after all the work they put onto CP, to suddenly close it. Even though CP is having a horrible reputation lately, it actually milks Disney a lot of money.

    • What’s sad is how spike has to hit a home run while fixing cp. Disney can close cp at any time with spike barely having a say in it, since Disney owns cp. so this is a wake up call to club penguin. You’re game can be shut down right now, stop doing what you’re doing. Cp is working hard, but nothing they work on is in demand. None of these party ideas were asked for, unless you count sound studio as music jam. No one really cares if you give rooms a face lift. Cp can’t focus on the quality of what meets the eye, they must focus on the things that trigger happiness inside our body.
      BUT HEY THATS JUST A THEORY
      A GAME THEORY THANKS FOR WATCHING

      • Disney owns CP, Spike is a high up Disney employee. He does have a say in it. They aren’t going to close Club Penguin on a whim.

  47. Today I was on club penguin and clicked the mod sign and it didn’t come up. I have to log off and log back on and then when I logged back on I had a puffle and I told it to dig by using the puffle tricks and nothing happened.

  48. Club Penguin, like other similar virtual world MMO games, is undoubtedly falling apart, and I’m afraid that after two years and going into three, it may be at a point that it is literally not fixable. Many other games similar to it have inevitably shut down, and Club Penguin, regardless of it being backed by Disney, may be going down the same path. Not only is the game getting less and less in quality, but the market itself is losing with many kids and teens moving to web-based/mobile-based social networks such as Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Vine, etc. (yes, little kids are on those too). It’s not as simple as blaming just Disney though, at least how I view it. You could partially blame parents for letting their young children on these more-matured social networks. You could blame modern-generation children for being more spoiled, which I suppose you could also blame parents on too. Some of this is just real-world issues that we face everyday in all kinds of matters, including social media.

    However, to focus more on the Club Penguin aspect, yes, it’s falling apart. Have you noticed a pattern in history? I have, especially in contemporary history: anytime a new person or persons take charge of something, whether it be a country, organization, company, game, or whatever it is, it goes through a large change. And sometimes, that change can be worse. This doesn’t always happen of course, but it is common. For example, Walt Disney’s Disney was definitely very magical. If Walt Disney was still alive today running Disney, I think it would still have the same magic. However, without him and his lead, I see Disney as another corporation in for the money – at least, the modern Disney. It’s almost completely different than how it was founded, in all but name. With the original Club Penguin leaders gone, radical change was definitely noticed, and as we can see, this change hasn’t been that great. These founders formed their organizations for what they wanted to do, and when someone else takes it over, they really only inherit name and success; it can be completely redone. Club Penguin is being redone in many, many ways.

    Club Penguin needs to do multiple things in order to succeed. First, they really need to go back to their original values while also integrating modern values. They’re not going to be able to really bring huge world change that easily in terms of the whole “kids being spoiled” thing, so they will have to make it more balanced – sorry, that’s something that society has to change. I may be saying these because I’m now a grumpy old… teenager… but I do not like these takeovers or repetitious parties either. Clearly, the money-maker (see what I did there? trolololololol) Disney is using Club Penguin for their own personal gains. It’s no longer a fun game to play, in fact it’s very boring to me now. I think I would actually enjoy playing it even at my older age if it was similar to the olden days but also how it needs to be now (again, balance!). Secondly, Club Penguin needs to market… like, actually market. Virtual world MMO’s are dying out, like I mentioned earlier. Lots of people just find them boring, and prefer the other social networks. I think virtual world MMO’s could make a comeback, with the right factors. What I’ve observed is that Club Penguin used to focus on being a “virtual playground” (New Horizons reference), in the sense that it was both a kids’ social network and online game. Now, Club Penguin seems to be getting rid of that social network feeling and just focusing on the game aspect (change with new leaders!), which, in all honesty, is very boring. I think most of us found the game aspect enjoyable before not only because it was better in some ways and because it’s nostalgic, but because it was also combined with a social network factor. With the ridiculously strict filters, I’d much rather go on Twitter or Snapchat to talk with my friends than Club Penguin (well, if I was much younger, lol). And being a gamer, there are a lot other games I’d rather play than Club Penguin, because without the virtual playground style, it’s now just throwing a bunch of snowballs at objects while staring at a screen doing very little. Not that fun when you think about it, sorry. I got over playing this game a while back. I still support it though.

    Disney’s Club Penguin definitely needs to pull it’s act together… if it even literally cares for the community anymore. It is severely decreasing in active players, and I honestly would not be super surprised if it pulled the plug, though I would be shocked. Parents should help their kids be less spoiled and moderate how much time they spend online, and kids need to accept that, so in a way, we all play a role. However, I would say that lots of it is up to Disney and Club Penguin.

    Lots of my way-too-long comment was some deep-life thinking, integrating some “political” or otherwise real-world issues with what we see on Club Penguin just to create a larger image, but I did try to throw in some specific things since – don’t get me wrong – this is, of course, a Club Penguin issue for the most part.

    tl;dr – Club Penguin needs to market and balance between olden days and newer days to keep their values while appealing to modern-generation kids, parents need to moderate time spent online and help their kids be less spoiled, kids need to accept it, Disney needs to stop being a money-maker (but that won’t be happening anytime soon, sorry).

    (It’s 2am so I might have forgotten some things or misstated some things.)

    – Red Apollo
    @redapollocp (shameless advertising)

    • We definitely care for the Club Penguin community — it’s the heart of what we do. Club Penguin is still the same virtual playground that it’s been since 2005. While we have changed a few things, the core game is still the same. You can still waddle around and meet new friends, chat, customize your avatar… There are even more mini-games than before, and the world is available on multiple devices now, too.

      The community asked for Android, so we brought CP to Android. That was a huge project that we did because the community asked! And the community asked for parties on the app — so we did that, too.

      Appreciate the feedback!

  49. It breaks my heart to see what it’s become, I had so many great years on Club Penguin, but I went to secondary school and I eventually just forgot about it. Kudos to you, Trainman for keeping up the high quality posts here even if the quality of the game itself has gone down. I feel it started declining when they started introducing the new room designs… But anyway, nice to see you again Trainman! :)

    – King Hazard

  50. This is a sad but good read and I have sent it to the team. We are honestly struggling with the same thing you guys are – and I think you nailed it Train when you said that CP is too big with too many features and maintaining all of that and trying to keep everyone happy all of the time has become really difficult, especially when you factor in that we are now trying to do it across web and mobile and those are totally different technologies. I will be honest that something has to give here and we could use the community’s help in figuring out what that is.

    What I totally agree with is the focus on the fundamentals like chat as opposed to one-offs like parties. That’s part of the reason the parties are getting smaller is that we have to put a ton of effort there that could be going into improving the core game but we have not been able to do that as much as we would like because it takes so much to feed the party beast.

    I would love to hear some thoughts here on where you think we should focus, keeping in mind that CP is primarily for kids so nostalgic ideas like going back to 2008 is probably not the direction to go.

    On CPPS, we are going after these and take them down regularly. They often re-emerge somewhere else and it becomes a game of “whack a mole”. I can’t really go into the specifics of our security efforts but we have really stepped it up here in the last year. We are also constantly closing exploits when they are found. You will also notice that a lot of the more vocal hackers on Twitter have gone silent and there is a reason for that.

    In fact, these kids that try hacking are really doing everyone a disservice. Not only can they get in serious trouble, but we have to spend lots of time dealing with them and it takes away from the game. I see a lot of them justify their efforts as trying to somehow improve CP, but that is a completely misguided viewpoint. They are not making anything better and in fact they are making it harder for us to spend our time on the game itself.

        • Dear spike hike you say going back to 2008 isnt the way to go…. Well instead of over detailed party graphics with no features most of the time GO back to the old cp but combine that with the new technology? Also we would love it if we could have exclusive cp app only parties, and even small one week events like April fools please bring it back ( the same party just with a new good old flying propeller hat and rookie with a new background! That cant be that much work? ) thx for reading trainman his blog, i hope cp changes in a good way this year.

    • That’s a great comment Spike. I wouldn’t say “going back to 2008” is exactly what anyone wants, but the idea of a “history” party would be something I fully support. Something which tells the newer penguins what CP was like back then. Not like yearbooks, something slightly bigger, but not too over the top.

      Personally I think the CP team should focus on eradicating all the bugs on the game before making any random changes like the puffle lodge, for example. There are many, as Train has pointed out, which are just niggly and frustrating for the player. I’ve been playing since 2007 and the game has never been as buggy as it is now, which you wouldn’t expect since the backing of Disney.

      Also, I think the last few years have been too puffle orientated. Something big just for penguins would be good, i.e maybe a new and easier to use inventory or something like that.

      As for the something that “has to give”, that is anyone’s guess. I really can’t think of anything big you can remove or focus on that would improve things overall.

      Still, even though I’m older now, I’m looking forward to seeing what you guys can come up with in the future.

    • Thanks for taking the time to read and respond. I’m glad you’re willing to admit that Club Penguin is struggling. It’s not necessarily a good thing to hear being said, but it still takes guts to be open and say such a thing to the public.

      I haven’t really got an idea on what can be axed in order to shrink the size of the game, since it’s not like something can suddenly be removed. A lot of/all of Club Penguin’s features are important, so removing one or ignoring one would be quite weird. I don’t expect an idea to come to me instantly, but I did just waddle around Club Penguin to see if anything would come to me, and I’ve still got nothing.

      I’ll give you the benefit of doubt (if you want to call it that) regarding private servers and exploits. I believe you when you say the team does actively work on it on shutting them down, but like I’ve said, it’s quite hard to see progress from the public’s perspective! I’m happy to hear that the team has stepped up their efforts in the past year. That’s really good. Hopefully there will be a day where all of the private servers are gone.

    • After reading your comment, I would like to leave some opinions.

      First off, I believe right now, one of the major problem that I feel its contributing to the cause of this tense environment is the fact that the connections between the community and the game development team is very shattered and disconnected. I will abstain from making any comments or “guesses” as to why this is, but I believe it’s for security reasons due to the target audience of the game, which is also a debatable topic we can go into later. Yet, I would suggest that some way-around this is needed, even if it’s just an occasional guest blog post on another site or a comment here. Yes, the news blog exists, but it’s a very straight-forward mean of communication that eventually makes all the comments look like a big snowball of un-realistic ideas.

      There’s a lot of noise of what the people in the community want, there are a lot of different groups and mind-sets, but I believe there’s always some reality on these dispersion. I for once, have gotten various opinions from various different people that the team is focusing to much on the puffle focused stuff meanwhile they should also focus on other topics that the game surround around such as the ninjas, the “villans” of the game and other myths that there still are to uncover. I must be honest, the puffle updates seem just like an excuse to “fill players with updates”. It feels like there is more focus put into the kids creating connections between “virtual pets” than the original concept of kids crating connections between kids. It feels like you are doing a goal just to achieve yet another virtual pet.

      About the technology gap you mentioned, I feel that there is where one of the biggest problems of the game (and the team, honestly) resides. I believe that the team should take a break from their update-forcing schedules and try to think outside of the box. I believe the first the step that should be taken towards this is to actually study a new technology, since the current engine used by the game is quickly getting outdated and making the game’s features seem just like something you could do in pretty much another game. Building a common technology between the two platforms would probably ease the pain between updating both the game’s content as well the team. I believe this step would probably take a while, but would probably allow for a bigger development, and probably allow the game to hold firm for more time, as well as being less exploitable.

      This also brings on to the next topic, and I am going to comment on this completely blindly, and I believe this is a point a lot of people will disagree with me, but it’s a reality. The business model is getting outdated and that is something you can feel with the insurgence of the mobile market – memberships are getting out of the market, and the decision to stick with them as been the death of various games (while not being a kid-friendly example, one good example would be the Elder Scrolls Online game). I believe a re planing of the financial goals of the company would also benefit the team and the userbase. I don’t know what financial platform would be the best for the game, but I think a good option would be to study the freemium model.

      Finally, I would probably add more comment in case of request, but I have to disagree partly with the last points. While some things such as Private Servers really damage the financial and user outcome of the game, there are some “manipulations” which that I am almost certain that don’t hurt the game as much. I have seen various uses of the game assets in order for users to create something they would like to actually see in the game, such is the case of items and rooms, all of them almost fully functional, and I believe some contact with these would actually be a good idea, since they can help you, and I am pretty sure that even some of the “most vocal” of those groups can help you a lot more than they can hurt (the so called gray-hats).

      This is my opinion, and in case you end up reading or replying to it, I thank you in advance.

    • I completely disagree with the last paragraph. When hackers (the real ones, not the skript-kiddies with trainers etc.) try to find bugs they do the job of your testers and for free. These security holes should not get to production in the first place, and if they get there (as a software developer myself, I understand it is not always possible to squash them all) they should be fixed ASAP.

      Of course when they discover some vulnerability, the sane thing to do is to alert you but some of the hackers tried this and you didn’t fix the bug anyway. The only way to make you fix something is to publish the vulnerability otherwise there is no pressure and you carry out as if there weren’t any problems. Pretending the problems do not exist instead of fixing them isn’t solution, it only opens the door for 0-day exploits which someone will abuse eventually. This is BAD security policy.

      You will still have to fix the 0-day exploits and remember one of the basic rules of IT security: “The sooner you fix the bug the easier (thus less costly) it will be.” Less bugs or bugs fixed promptly also might raise public opinion. Some people even nicknamed CP “Bug Penguin” which can’t be very good PR.

      As for solution, you should make your pre-deployment testing more thorough (lot of [those bugs](http://clubpenguinbugs.com/) make me wonder whether you even do any testing) and also rework your security policy (do you have any?).

      Club Penguin still has a way to go and the apps could make it shine again (personally I don’t like mobile gaming but I see the future there too) but not if it disgusts all its players first. From what I’ve seen of Puffle Party it looks like the game is getting better but let’s not jump to conclusions.

    • Just a little thought. It’s not going to solve all of the game’s problems, but might decrease the team’s workload a little bit. What if the Club Penguin Times was removed in lieu of the unreleased community center that ended up never seeing the light of day? http://clubpenguinmemories.com/files/2015/03/communityroom.jpg (Thanks to Travis/Pengumile for sending me the pic!)

      The Book Room would need to be changed again, but maybe if CP spent less time on the newspaper and instead had a simple bulletin board with announcements on upcoming events that was updated semi-frequently, they could instead put their “free time” on working on other important features. That way players know what is coming up in-game with events and updates, so they’d still be in the loop, and meanwhile the team can work on more important things. It’d be win-win. It was said a long time ago that the original newspaper design took ~100 hours a week to do, but no figure was given for the current one. Maybe the current one is done pretty quick, idk. But I would imagine that a simple bulletin board with announcements (and maybe a few other misc things, like a Question of the Week hosted by Aunt Arctic) would work well both on the desktop and mobile. No scrolling or multiple pages either, like the current paper. Just a board filled with announcements and other relevant information. The only question would be, how do you notify players when the bulletin/announcement board has been updated? With the newspaper there’s the “New!” text on it. I guess you could always have the newspaper icon open said bulletin when clicked.

    • I think the first thing you should do is fix the chat filters. My friend and I used to record videos all the time on Club Penguin but we don’t do it anymore because the filter barely lets anything through, even though it’s perfectly fine. I really wouldn’t mind if the parties were dialed down for a while just to fix this.

      Also, when you bring back old parties (Music Jam 2014), don’t be afraid to recycle old rooms! I’m sure a lot of people will agree with me when I say a lot of returning parties have just been “meh” due to lack of content. The Music Jam was barely decorated which could’ve been easily fixed by using the many rooms already supplied to you guys by the old team for years.

      I also like Trainman’s idea for removing the newspaper and replace it with a billboard, making updates when there NEED to be updates.

    • Well, Spike, thank you for admitting Club Penguin is falling. It gives me some new respect for you and the team, how you’re willing to admit your mistakes. But I’m not here to gloat, I want to give you some ideas to help!
      First off, before you do random changes like the Puffle Lodge (good update, but still), fix all of the bugs you can find, and close off EVERY exploit. It might take a while, but it will be worth it to waddle around without a bunch of random blue boxes popping up whenever I try to play (seriously, try playing on Chrome, at least. Very annoying, please fix!). Then, after you’ve eliminated anything wrong with the code you can find (and continue to do so), you can focus on these other things.
      Parties, that’s a largely controversial topic today. They’re getting smaller, we all know that. They’re also getting largely repetitive. I know you have mobile to deal with now, but it can still be solved. First off, decorate a variety of rooms. Instead of always decorating the core rooms on the south part of the island, you could change it up sometimes. Now that the Ski Village and Lodge are on the app, you could decorate them again! Also, I’d like to see interior rooms decorated more often. You’ve been doing it a bit more over the past few months, but still. For the activities at the party, it’s simple: just do what you did for the Halloween Party 2014. A nice variety of tasks was available on each floor of the Hotel. Sure, they were a little easy, but kids do play this game. However, it might be easy to THEM, too. At least make the tasks two times harder? Add some more “puzzles” that require some brainpower? Also, crack down on the takeovers. I don’t mind them, but lots of other people do. One or two a year max, spaced out, would be fine!
      Mobile. It’s a big thing for CP now. And it might be causing lots of the problems with it. First off, don’t spend all of your precious time making new apps. Now we’ve got four perfectly good ones. You can update them for parties and bug fixes and stuff, but please, take a break from the new ones at least. There’s still so many things that need to come to the regular app! Games, rooms, books, catalogs, stuff like that.
      CPPS’, I will be honest, I don’t see them being taken down much at all. But if you really say you’re taking them down, just keep doing that, I guess? I don’t think CPPS’ are as big of a problem as some of them with the actual game.
      Some assorted details I’d like to put in. Please spend more time designing the covers of the catalogs, because they look very boring now with a simple picture in the middle of an otherwise entirely blue cover! Please improve the filters for the game, and SoundStudio. They’re awful. I’d like to see more items brought back. You spend time making lots of new items when there’s some great old ones that haven’t seen the catalogs for years! Last month’s Furniture and Igloo Catalog is a perfect representation of what I’d like to see. I’d love to see more old items released through Puffle Digging! One more little tidbit, you’ve been really taking a shine to fan art lately. Will you please start updating the Book Room with it again? Maybe you could put that month’s monthly fan art video up there? That would be awesome!
      There are so many ways CP could be improved, and they’re such simple resolutions! All you need to do is listen to us, and take some of our ideas into consideration! I really feel like players and the team need more interaction. I hope #projectsupersecret is a forum, or something similar!

    • I think CP needs to take a long break from developing parties or weekly updates and just perhaps have a couple of weeks where it’s just plain old CP being updated with big bug fixes that are tried and tested by players before being released, sort of like the CPIP project of yore.

    • There’s a lot that you guys to do make CP what it is. But I say, make a poll on a blog post on the CP blog asking the community weather or not you should still make parties for mobile anymore. If you do this, be sure to explain that if the mobile parties go away, the parties for CP on the web version will increase in quality.

      Like you said Spike, Train got it perfectly right. Club Penguin is just too big anymore. When you take away a room, the community gets disappointed. If you add a new room, it’ll be abandoned after a week of it’s creation. The solution is simple. Cut down on the number of servers. By having everyone expanded out all over the island, get rid of some servers for a way to compact everyone and still have a great community. Like I say, the community is what makes Club Penguin what it is and you can’t have a community if they’re all spread out by themselves.

      For the parties, no more advertising. I know by having these parties, you get a bigger span of a audience. The problem is that for the people who have been playing for a long time gets bombarded with parties that we don’t like. So much effort is put into the parties and that’s great. The problem is that it can’t be advertising for any Disney thing, even the Club Penguin apps. If you basically “make” everyone be together by taking away some servers and take away parties on mobile, you may have something.

      Now lets say you’re not fully satisfied with my ideas of taking away parties completely on mobile. I get it. The people using the app would decrease. So, why not have certain “exclusive” app parties every now and then. That’d be solving a lot of problems and, making the community as a whole, a much better and friendlier place.

      There is still a opportunity to make everyone happy and we need to take that step as a community. But, it has to start somewhere.

    • Okay, can I say my honest opinions to this? The issue here is mobile. The Club Penguin app is what is ruining Club Penguin if you ask me. As soon as you brought the parties on, with the exception of Halloween 2014, they haven’t been good at all.

      My main issue with the parties is not the lack of quests, its the timing and decoration amounts. Do parties really need to be two weeks long? personally, I think even a week is enough. There is not enough content at parties to let them last a week. The second issue is the imbalance of decorations. I know you said that going back to 2008 is not the way to go, however, if I can take one thing out of 2008 that I really liked more than anything was the decorations at parties. I like the new art style and all, my only issue is I miss just random decorations. For example, at the Penguin Cup 2014, it was a really fun party. The decorations were amazing, but would it have hurt to even put some soccer balls in the Ski Village or put a TV and facepaint in the Pizza Parlour? For SoundStudio Party, would it hurt just to put some balloons and musical notes everywhere? No major decorations, just something for players to look for (and look forward to in that matter)

      Back to SoundStudio Party, it was a great idea. But why did all the stages take place in that one room? Why couldn’t the stages have been at the Beach, Dock, Forest and Cove, and then have Cadence and the Penguin Band perform somewhere? It’s little details like that that are making the game feel… meh. We like to explore. We don’t want every single room to get an overhaul. Just a few DECORATIONS here and there. Balloons, little cardboard cutouts, like, DECORATIONS! :P

      As for the chat filter, I am no game coder, but can’t you make it so the filter just doesn’t allow swear words or words to do with drugs, alcohol or sexual references? Other than those words, I don’t see why other words need to be censored. That’s why there is the Report a Player feature in Club Penguin as well as moderators.

      CPPSes I don’t see as a big deal at all. As long as they are not charging money for game content, they are being perfectly legal with their doings. They are just showing off their creative side, not trying to dis CP. Why does the focus have to be on those when it could be on game content?

      All in all, I feel like parties should get taken off mobile. That would be the biggest improvement in my opinion.

      • My thoughts on the filter: they do, of course, block words relating to alcohol and sexual references. However, people can be very clever with how they word stuff, plus there is the issue of innuendos – phrases that look innocent but have a hidden inappropriate meaning. Plus, there’s also the issue of pedophiles trying to ask personal information. So in short, blocking just a set list of inappropriate words isn’t enough. Does it fix a lot the main words? Yes. Would many inappropriate phrases that don’t contain a popular/main inappropriate word still be able to pass the filters? Yes.

        Hopefully that makes sense to you. Chat is a complex thing and it’s unfortunately not as simple as blocking specific words when you want to keep kids as safe as possible.

        We may be able to report players, but CP doesn’t want us to have to do that. They’d much rather make it so whatever phrase is being said doesn’t pass the filters to begin with.

        And regarding private servers, just because they don’t make money doesn’t make them legal. That’s the equivalent of saying that I went to the movie theatre, recorded the latest movie, and uploaded it online free of charge, it’s legal. Spoiler alert: it’s not legal, and it comes with a hefty fine. It has nothing to do with private servers being creative. It has to do with copyright laws. They’re reusing parts of Club Penguin without permission.

      • now I am no programmer or coder but if I was at CPHQ I would block the bad words and block the phrases that have the bad meaning but look normal AND I would block the bad igloos

    • Spike I really like your response. You clearly are trying your hardest and I agree that the team is making progress. The one thing about modern parties is that they are more about the quests and less about the rooms. Now that might sound like a good thing… but the quests only last about 15 minutes per month. Then other than that you are left with few rooms to enjoy. Maybe there could be a workaround where there’d be the best of both worlds.

    • Heyo! Cool to see you here.

      I’m most curious about one thing, and that’s if Club Penguin will ever do something about the Game Day stamps. They are gone forever? That’s bound to annoy new members who can never finish the stamp book.. Including me, a long time player who recently returned :c

      • The game day stamps aren’t unlockable anymore because Nintendo closed down the wifi server for the Wii. I’d like it for them to remove the game day section to those people who don’t have those stamps.

    • I personally think you should just have a period of time with no parties, no updates or anything, and just have a time of improvement to fix all the bugs, and missing details in Club Penguin. That, as a whole would make the day so much better and I’m sure that all the players would understand. Just have a time where all you do is fix broken parts and missing links to the game.

    • Why do not you fix a bug with my friends, who two years? When I was able to open the normal list of friends?

    • Why not do something similar to CPIP to test out improvements to the game, I.e chat and major bug squashing? It could be an island-wide thing, and include a small-scale ‘party’ allowing players to vote on what they want the most at various poll stations.

      In terms of decor, a few construction boxes etc would be fine. I’m sure pretty much everyone would accept a few mini-parties over the course of a few months, allowing the team to spend more time fixing the game.

      CPIP was effective and honestly I’m surprised something like it hasn’t returned since. Regardless, we believe you’ll do what’s needed to fix this.

    • As a reader of many Club Penguin blogs, I am so happy that the team at CP reads posts like this. I think of it as the CP community, even though it is not part of the game, and you guys who work for CP prove your willingness to reach out to your players for advice. It’s what makes the game so special. That said, I think that the game accelerated in development, to the point where too much is happening. In my opinion, CP features could be utilized so much more. I think that something as simple as dialing down puffle intake, if that’s what you want to call it, and decreasing the amount of decorating that goes into the party saves effort for other aspects. For example, the artwork on CP is truly amazing, and in a game like CP, all you need to is spread that out further. New rooms, the skatepark comes to mind, could be prime location for this exercise. I’m no tech genius, but if you added balloons, a free item stand, and some party color I would enjoy a party so much more. Maybe one room is heavily decorated and the rest is lighter, more simply decorated; that’s all that players need to satisfy our hunger for a party. Maybe a new puffle is introduced; rather than throw an entire party circulating that puffle, make it more like a fun addition to an awesome, simple party (I think that the puffles at the Merry Walrus Party- not my favorite party, but headed in the right direction- was well played). I just hope that you guys are optimistic towards the possibilities that surround CP.

    • I agree, Club Penguin tries hard already, on top of that, you all have to deal with hackers who constantly try to hack into Club Penguin, as well as designing rooms every month, which keeps you busy every day.

      For CPPSes, some of them are hosted by themselves so you cannot do anything about taking them down, and if you do, they just come right back up a week later and it gets frustrating, It’s hard taking a CPPS down, it’s not as easy as everyone thinks.

      Club Penguin fixes bugs as much as they can, Club Penguin constantly fixes bugs, updates Club Penguin with new designs, items, etc and also has to deal with hackers, it isn’t easy and on top of that their players say they only do it for the money, etc and only care for that when I know for a fact Club Penguin uses the funding for donating millions a year, possibly billions a year for Coins for Change, as well as funding for the server(s) which is literally 155 servers, it isn’t easy to do any of that and keeping them all updated, etc.

      Club Penguin is a wonderful Virtual World, every game has bugs and I believe everyone should stop with hating on Club Penguin because they don’t like what is updated, new, etc.. Every game releases something new to keep it fresh, every single game and I don’t think it’s right when people say it’s Polo Field, Spike Hike or Disney’s fault just because it isn’t like it was in 2006-2007.

      And yes, it isn’t like it was in 2007-2006, it’s better than before, Club Penguin has grown since then and I think it’s a good thing because as far as I can see, all the things Club Penguin has done, is for the players.. There are millions of players that email Club Penguin ideas, etc, Club Penguin can’t do every idea they receive in the mail.

      Club Penguin is doing a wonderful job and I am proud of all the workers there and I thank each and every one of them for the wonderful game they have created.

      • yes every game updates but unlike CP other games (like Animal Jam) actually make new stuff that ppl like and they don’t completely change everything ppl like in a day and they actually listen to players unlike CP. and btw they only fix the party bugs and yes it is Spikes fault cause he is the boss of CP and nobody likes new CP. they could just be using the coins from Coins for Change to do the projects to give them a good name and a good image so everyone will think “aww they help the less fortunate their so nice! :)” and how on Earth is new CP better?

    • I beg you my pardon Spike Hike, but you have repeated the same story and tripped on the same rock twice and absolutely nothing is being done to help the game. I am not saying you are a bad person or anything, but why are you only listening to mostly Trainman’s ideas? Why don’t you reply to Saraapril or other visionary penguins? I completely understand some Penguin Players will want to go back to 2008, and others to have old CP back, but if you began doing mini parties, why is it hard to just bring back a small mini event on a party back from 2006-2010? Small events, not take overs. As Trainman explained very well A LOT of CP players including me only log in to collect, 1) Pins 2) Sometimes read the news paper 3) Pets and that is basically it. So many more questions pop up to my mind, why has the EPF been forgotten? Why don’t mascots give out Backgrounds anymore? Why do events in parties have to be divided in days, to make the players log in? (As mentioned by Trainman) Stamps? Herbert? Was destruction of the old Ski Lodge worth it?

      My personal opinion is CP is downhill to, not economically, but socially. I applaud the closure of “CPPS”, also with closing exploits and banning all law breakers. Lastly promising and promising will not get CP any better, nor it will make many lost players to return. Nor the CP has bathered to read my emails, or maybe others who knows, but like they say keep your eyes peeled.

      If we all want a change, we must begin now, you must begin it now Spike Hike. Thank you.
      **CP player not CELEBI 555

    • Spike, CP began as a virtual world for kids to interact in. I think that the focus on parties recently has taken away that ability to interact.

      I think you should focus on the aspects of the community–namely, games people can all play in (Card-Jitsu), the friends list, mail, chat. If these aspects are improved, they will last for the lifetime of the game, rather than a “great” party which is over in 2 weeks.

      The best part of Club Penguin has always been the ability to interact with others in igloos, on the island, etc. This has been the focus in the past, and it should be in the future.

      I would love to see some new features with interacting with penguins, maybe something like a profile page for your penguin? Something where you can put your penguin in an outfit, your favorite game, etc. Maybe penguins could also be able to send messages to each other even when offline.

      Server jumping to join your friend (like on mobile) would be a great feature for the computer.

    • Bring the old CP of 2008 is not a path to be followed. But could continue giving stories to CP, emotions, and no takeover!

    • how about u actually start listening to US and focusing on wat WE want and not making everything half done and just wanting money
      -we hate takeovers
      -u make some of the worst outfits ever
      -ur graphics are awful
      -u make takeovers huge and original parties small which is just rude
      -u make every party the same
      -no one likes the new stuff (except new players who don’t know wat good CP is)
      -u can claim that old graphics don’t work but then explain why u make new puffles with old graphics if the old graphics don’t work?
      CP has gone into a hole sense u became boss and u can easily see that when u type “club penguin” into Google Trends. If u actually listened to us instead of throwing our thoughts and ideas into the trash can u might find that CP will get better u have completely made 95% of old players made and at least 50% of them quit u even made Monchocho quit and shut down his website because u ruined Club Penguin ppl can blame Disney because they own CP but Disney basically shoves CP into the back corner and ur in charge of CP so its your fault because u won’t fix it u won’t do anything about takeovers, u won’t do anything about the horrible clothes anymore, u won’t do anything about the prep problem u just throw gas on the fire, u just don’t do anything ad ya know wat every time someone throws a “old vs new” igloo party old ALWAYS wins but does CP listen? NO! and I would actually like straight answers from your “support” team and not excuses u make them say

      omg I so wanted to tell u how I felt and it would actually be nice if u listened once in a while :P

      I joined in late 2011 and started playing in 2012 and I can honestly say I am glad I got at least some of old CP and ya know wat I actually use old items for my house and clothes more then new stuff but ya know wat is one of the saddest things of all? is that u can great things and make them bad n takeovers like Frozen I am one of the biggest fans and I did not like the Frozen takeover one little bit Elsa didn’t even sing Anna didn’t do anything really and not even all the charaters were used

      whew that was a lot but yea I agree with trainman Club Penguin is falling apart its sinking faster then the Titanic and unless u actually say “I’m going to start making Club Penguin about the players again and not money” that ship is gonna sink completely even Animal Jam gets higher ratings then CP on Google Trends and its only been online for 4 years and it doesn’t get as much ads as CP and it doesn’t throw any ad parties for more players and it isn’t owned by Disney aka the worlds leading company. do u even know that Disney closed all its other virtual worlds for u and repay them by making players quit? the fire in the new lodge doesn’t even move its cardboard! u need to actually do wat makes CP better not wat will drag it down

      that’s all have a nice day!

      • I am srry everyone if I sounded childish or immature in my last comment I have not been able to truly say how I feel for the last 2 years about Club Penguin and sense the boss is right here I just wrote down all my thoughts at once (and if u want to know how I see Spike as u can read my series called Resistant Rebels on CPfanfics.webs.com) :)

  51. Joge, thanks for the comments and I think this is exactly spot on: “I believe that the team should take a break from their update-forcing schedules and try to think outside of the box. I believe the first the step that should be taken towards this is to actually study a new technology, since the current engine used by the game is quickly getting outdated and making the game’s features seem just like something you could do in pretty much another game.”

    • In order to add to my last comment, I have to give some last opinions and feedback.

      First off all, we agree on one point, a new technology needs to be developed. It’s true that you already have plans for it, and it’s called CPNext, but you can’t just give it a name and call it a day like you currently seem too, the technology needs to be there and needs to be felt, not just promising a couple of unique new features. It really needs to be a “next step” like you are building a entire new game from the ground up, and that is exactly what your goal and vision should be.

      I don’t know nothing about how the team organization works other than guessing that the departments are somewhat similar to the rest of the game industry, but I would suggest one of two, if not even either, things in order to try to bring a costumer satisfaction to a good step. The first one is to hire a Game Designer, not a content manager, not a programming lead, but an actual Game Designer, some one to stay there, pick up a document and write everything under a solid construction that makes sense, even if its just for the base game and you can build upon it later. The second would be (and might sound ridiculous) to trust your community to help do that job. A ridiculous approach would even be to create a tracker where some chosen people could help giving suggestions, preferably people who have knowledge of both the game, industry and community, but this suggestion might be to farfetche’d and there’s probably a better way to reach that goal.

      But one thing is true, there needs to be more focus on the community. Every game relies a lot on community speech and connection, as one player will most likely spreed the word if they have enjoyed a game/product, and that is something that has started to die slowly over the years. I believe the older approach to the community was a good point to this, but eventually died out. People need to feel inclined to speak about the game, to create their content around the game (blogs, sites, fan-games, art) and this has to be done together with that people, make them feel special for this. Trust other blogs by giving them exclusives, feature art more often, mention players more often. Trying to spread the word of a game alone is not a good idea.

      Lastly, but not least, I have to disagree with the comment that private servers would die with the discard of flash. That will not happen for a various of reasons, as the sources of the current private servers will keep existing, as well as nothing grants that the new technology will not eventually be force broken. One example is Unity which is currently unbreakable, but nothing guarantees that this will eventually not happen. As I said, a good idea would actually to be on the side of this people and help understand your own’s team flaws.

      Well then. I now rest my opinion one last time. Thank you for your mention.

    • Hey Spike!
      I’d assume you read my post on Energezer.com at the start of this year on hacking and my very strong feelings about it and how it could affect Disney Interactive severely as a business. I certainly agree with what you quoted above, but I also understand that you can’t let your audience go just to focus on getting a new engine out.
      Someone dropped a link here of what I’d imagine is an extract from the Club Penguin app, built in Unity, optimized for web. My only problem with Unity is that I don’t see it being as big a name as Flash in online gaming, no matter how widely big names pick up this emerging engine. There will always be Flash games and I’ll always use Flash lots.
      Waddle on!

    • Spike, the game should be changed back to the old version and when I say that I mean switch the dock back to normal and the town, mail etc. and I am here to provide reasons backing up your facts and my facts. First, I agree/disagree with you when you say it’s not to bring back nostalgia it’s a kids game. I would disagree with that comment because the old version was much more adventurous and fun with friends and when I say that I mean that the game was fine. I see where you are going with the idea to improve the game but Club Penguin went a bit too far. I understand that people may have quit because they out grew the game. Most quit because you simply ruined the game. you see people like the old parties such as the April fools party and meeting mascots. Let me tell you an opinion on my end and I can ensure you that this is why sooo many people stopped playing Club Penguin. One word “Minecraft” Lot’s of people in the community quit Club Penguin to play Minecraft. I have seen too many tweets/comments saying that the game was ruined and even a video that showed the old Club Penguin got like 500,000 views. haha like why is it so hard for you to understand that more people will come back to the game and Club Penguin will get so many hits the day you even decide to change it back. It might even be on the news because it would be such a big deal. Club Penguin is not fun, exciting anymore and exciting is a big word for Club Penguin. I enjoyed meeting Rockhopper and hanging out with people and playing games and such. I know that the games are still there but the island was just more cool to hang out on and play games. Classic is fun, old is fun. I hope that you understand what I am trying to say here. Tweet this out and I bet you most will say yes. http://strawpoll.me/3935457

      • Fun fact, the April Fools Day party was Club Penguin’s least attended party.

        People quit CP to play Minecraft because they grow out of CP and Minecraft is the hip new game to play, so they turn to that.

        • I see the change.Yesterday, when I was watching some of the CP videos on Youtube, I saw that old videos had one million views at least but the new video of CP,”The Puffle Party 2015 Sneak Peek” had 13 thousand views. :/ This means many people are not interested in CP anymore. :/

    • Anyway you are the managers that the people fence in of the game to private servers since the parties are bored and the articles are a horrible :P have a lot of problems with the creativity …
      Also you the mods no longer play as before with the boys :v especially you since it does not realise but his weekly parties calls “spike saturday” the only well that taenia cp until then already lost and force to the other mods to withdraw of twitter .________.

      It buys tea a chatta and situate you BB :v

      bay bay

    • Hi Spike you probably wont be reading here anymore, but I wondering, would it possible to have a server or two with all the old room designs? I think it’d be quite nice to see what Club Penguin used to look like, and it would make a lot of older players happy too… Just a thought! :)

  52. The Club Penguin team could save time by:

    1) Adding a non-waddling around mascot to a normal room ever so often. For example, Cadence at the Dance Club or Rookie at the Pizza Parlor. No need for a team member to constantly come on during an event and control a mascot.

    2) Less focus on the newspaper. As Train said, CP needs a “simple bulletin board”.

    3) Shorter parties (maybe a week long). More time to focus on other things.

    4) Shorter mini-parties (maybe a day long) with what the players want. E.g) CP History day.

    5) Less rooms. (Maybe merge things together like the Puffle Hotel with the Pet Shop, the Stage with the School, etc.).

    6) Less overhauled rooms at parties. Too many flash items are being used (Mobile images). They need to be simple decorations. Why not just decorate the original building form? A good example would be the town at the Hollywood Party and the SoundStudio Party.

    The Club Penguin Team needs to be focusing more on the friends and interactivity aspect of the game such as the friends list, the chat filter, multiplayer games, getting the community together (working together), etc.

    There’s just a few of my ideas.

    Thanks.

  53. Honestly, I don’t think CP will be up for another 10 years.

    Its better to end something than to put very few work into it. Your players are leaving and your employees are failing big time – its better to end the business than waste money on employees that do absolutely nothing, amirite? Your also not gaining any money due to the loss of customers.

    How about they make parties like the ones in 2011 – fun parties with not much features but still well enjoyed! Remember the Music Jam and the Medieval Party that year? That was over enough for me! Every room was decorated with few decorations. Not even the sky changed. THOSE are the parties *I* want.

  54. I actually started to play CP in 2009 and I most say that everything changes but if you´re going to change try to go up not downhill.
    In this moment CP is drowning a lot of penguins are quitting because of the bugs or the lack of creativity of the parties, or takeovers. I remember the Operation Blackout THAT WAS A REAL PARTY, I watched a LOT of penguins trying to stop Herbert and that felt awesome but now is like they don´t even mind just beacuse they want the app to progress and that´s just dumb.
    Also the Xmas party 2014 was awfull and it suck it, it was the first time ever on CP that Xmas didn´t felt like it they even care to put night time on it.
    What I´m trying to say is that 2015 they want to get out of that pit but with the forgotten features like you say,the bugs that made the game unplayable, the nonsense party/takeover quest that you finish in 20 minutes and then you leave until the party/Takeover is over, I really wont see them back in their glory days just saying but like in soccer “Anything is possible”

    • Hopefully nobody makes an even better best blog post of the year between now and December! :P

      Thanks, it means a lot. :)

  55. I’m agree with all of this, Train. Exactly with the storyline. Old CP does a great job in parties and storylines. I want to comment about the Club Penguin Times. Now, they are only two pages. The stories were boring and the comics were not funny. For comparison, the old newspaper is much,much,much better. When to announce a party, they make it like a story. They also put some stories based on the month theme. For the bugs, I’ve a question: WHY DIDN’T YOU FIX THE BUGS????!11! In addition, Train, did you realise the “Waddle around and meet new friends” was replaced with “Disney’s #1 Virtual World For Kids”? So, that’s it. See ya, Train.

  56. maybe after thy fix the bugs, or before they should be a party or epf mission where the blue square things are holes in space and time and you have to stop them. its weird, but it would be cool it think. sorry

  57. To start with, I want to state “I love Club Penguin!”
    It’s a good place to play with my cousins.
    The youngest are 4 year old twins, I’m the oldest at 14.
    There are many things that are great about it, they do a good job making it not too kid-ish not too old, but there are bugs… most of them I can deal with, after all nothing is perfect.
    And I must admit – I LIKE some of the glitches.

    A few things bother me A LOT :
    I was in a friendly race with my brother and cousin for igloo LIKES and lost 16,000 of them overnight and never got them back. My friends are helping me catch up, but it’s going to take YEARS to get back those 16,000 LIKES.

    My grandmother sent in some screen captures of the igloos with the numbers in the corner from my blog, but they don’t know what happened or I guess how to give them back.
    Kind of ruined the race.
    I wish they could give them back.

    My other cousin wasn’t able to log in for 6 days on any computer or operating system we have.
    We tried working with support by changing her password, trying all 3 PCs, 1 Mac, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Mozilla. ack!
    Nothing worked, but after a week it popped back and she is able to play again, but they don’t know what happened.

    Oh –
    I thought the pie throwing wasn’t that fun itself, but we did have fun with the mops trying to clean it up while being pelted with pies!
    For some reason we seem to really like finding places to use the mops and buckets. :D

  58. Remember those videos where we saw a former employee, Happy77, jump into a box and switch servers? We’re still waiting for the server jumping feature. They’re distracting us with apps :|

  59. Pingback: The State of Club Penguin – Loki Terry's Personal Blog

  60. I am playing CP since 2008. I am not member anymore because CP isn’t interesting like it used to be. Previously I used to play CP almost every day. Now I play it 1-2 times a month.

    Club Penguin team started lauching new features, but they forget about the old things. For example, EPF. Previously there were PSA ands missions. I remember times when I waited for new missions to come… PSA missions were so exciting! Now there is EPF. We only get new EPF messages and there is nothing interesting EPF agents can do. And so what? I liked Operation: Blackout but after that there weren’t nothing interesting with EPF. System Defend – why they can’t create new levels for it?

    I have more than 300 stamps (I can’t earn more because now I am not member). There are some games like Bean Counters which don’t have stamps to earn. Why CP can’t add stamps for other games for years?

    It’s not hard to add a new flag to buy in Penguin Style. I have been waiting for years for Lithuanian flag. I contacted CP several times about that, they replied that in future I will be able to buy Lithuanian flag but I still can’t. Why?

    I used to play the game in small screen. Now I can’t, because they removed this feature.

    The other problem is Stage. I liked it a lot but now I don’t, because all stage plays are old and they can’t create new.

    It’s so sad that CP can’t create new things that would be so interesting like stamps, Card Jitsu or PSA were. I don’t say that CP isn’t interesting at all. There are a lot of nice things in CP, but it’s not enough. Anyway, it’s only mo opininion.

  61. I would totally agree with everyone’s comments over here. Especially, I would like to thank @Trainman for taking the initiative of showcasing the problems of common penguins to the Club Penguin Team (as they read your blog).

    As for the minor bugs that have been a problem at enjoying the game, I am pretty sure and have full faith that Club Penguin will take care of it, after reading your post. But discriminating, I am sure that’s not Club Penguin’s cup of tea.

    I am even astonished that people haven’t commented regarding that. As Trainman said, saying “I’m watching Disney” passes the filter while “I’m watching Nick” doesn’t. This is extremely shameful, if you would take my opinion. Filters have been a little overprotective, as Train said. Though, sometimes it is too irritating. Reducing the filter rate would actually help.

    As for the, CPPS, they are not at all Club Penguin’s fault. And I think I might disagree on that Trainman (don’t take it offensively). Kids think ‘hacking’ is the new cool segment, which will help them get fame. They are the ones who are totally mistaken in my point of view, not Club Penguin. Yes, Club Penguin can tighten up their database. In fact, the kids have gone to such an extent of creating a CPPS that they have started building videos. These people have to understand ‘THEY’ are the ones who are ruining the game and if you ask them, they blame it on Club Penguin saying ‘They’re database is not good enough, easily accessible. Moreover, the memberships are high in price, we are just helping’. Well, clearly, they are not.

    Not only do you feel like quitting, so do I, @Monchocho, @Pen50gi, and thousands of other penguins. As for the filters, I would also like to add that Club Penguin doesn’t actually block the abusive words. While I won a game at Card Jitsu, the opponent penguin literally abused me by adding space between every letter. For example, say if ‘Club’ is an abusive word. Writing it like “C L U B” actually passes the filter. :P

    As SpikeHike said, we cannot simply ‘jump’ back into the year 2008. Yes, I am on this side with Train that they were much fun (Though I joined in early 2009), they were quite simple. Having simple parties won’t harm anyone. Also, adding a ‘History’ party, like we have a ‘Future’ party would be extremely fun. You see, living in the past is not that bad! :)

    I would like to hear Train’s response on this, and his next stand-up will be the voice of thousands of penguins. :D

    -@iPensubyCP

      • Trainman, I want to say that your post projected two things: Maturity, and Reasonability. Rather than going on saying that every inch of Club Penguin is shard, you approached it very well, explaining the old and the new. The references to the 2008 parties nearly made me feel all teary inside. I loved how you factored in the age as well because I feel thats the upbringing reason why some of us are feeling “left out” and how our crowd (the older one) isn’t feeling catered to.

        It doesn’t say anywhere that Club Penguin is for age X to Y or anything right? So why should our audience be leeched off? I understand that its a clean game, and no matter what the age, profanity and obscenity should always be left out. But as your aforementioned reasons^ that is obviously not working the way it should.

        I guess what I really want your elaborated opinion on, is the age conflict. I want to blame Club Penguin, but I can’t can I? Or can I? Or should I dust off this 8 year journey with them and move one? Change is hard, no doubt, but is it needed?
        Out of my 24 hour day, I go on the game for twenty minutes, just to keep my penguin updated, my pins collected, and my puffles groomed.

        Is that too much to ask for? Is that too harsh? I want to say I’m getting annoyed because of the bugs and the unfair “beta hats” , but is it really just my age?

        Memories are the most painful things because they inflict nostalgia, the most harsh feeling. And you are the one who has acknowledged that the most I believe. And even now, in my dorm room, the second year at my university, I sit here staring at the screen reading about your reviving of the Water Party and feeling choked up. My friend looks at my computer covered in Penguins and he’s like “huh? My sister plays that thing.”
        You wont get it. You just wont.

        ————————————————————————–

        There. Got it. I pinpointed my question on which I want your opinion I guess:

        Will my roommates sister, currently playing Club Penguin at age 7, grow up and feel nostalgic about this game? Can Club Penguin instil that emotion in the new generation the same way it did to us?

        And is change important?

        -Rishabh

        P.S Brilliant post. Absolutely absorbing.

  62. I know this post is old, but I was revisiting here out of nostalgia and wanted to comment. If you don’t remember Train, I’m Sadas – an old member who used to visit here from 2011-2013. I haven’t been here anymore because the truth is, I pretty much fell out of Club Penguin last year. I think I finally figured out why I lost interest after this post, and I hope so, because I’ve tried to wonder why I lost interest least 5 times already.

    The problem with CP is that it’s no longer fun. I think you said it best: “Club Penguin is no longer the fun game I grew up playing.” (NOTE: I have no idea if it has improved since this, as I haven’t played any 2015 parties)

    I’m 18 years old now, and I thought maybe the reason I lost interest was because I grew out of the site. It happens. But then I thought about it, and even when I was a teenager, I was still having fun with the site. By the end of 2013, the site became really boring and repetitive. What happened was, I just stopped playing the game in 2014. I thought maybe I played so much that I just sort of went “blah” and didn’t feel like logging in anymore, but I truthfully lost interest. I only played two parties in 2014, and neither of them made me really want to come back. Both had quite a lot of problems. The two parties I played were the Future Party and Frozen Party.

    The Future Party was a good idea in theory, not so much in execution. The whole story was just the same as Operation: Blackout, except replace Herbert with Protobot. I’m kind of disappointed in CP re-using ideas like that, when they’re known for their creative party ideas. Even ignoring that, the whole party just wasn’t really fun or exciting. The future CP wasn’t really that impressive. I get it was supposed to look like a downer, but why couldn’t they show us what happened to some future rooms? Even then, Protobot’s battle game or whatever it was, was also pretty anti-climatic (I know the site is for kids, but still). As soon as I defeated him, I kind of felt like my time was kind of wasted.

    Then the other party I bothered with was the Frozen Party. It was another takeover party, which I was getting really sick of in 2013, but I wanted to give it a chance. But the party just bored me. I didn’t dislike it because it was a takeover. The party just didn’t have anything to draw me in, and wasn’t fun. That was almost a year ago, and I haven’t played in a party since.

    I know it’s probably not fair to judge the site currently by two parties from 2014, but the thing is, I haven’t kept out of touch with what is going on. I’ve read the reviews, and it doesn’t sound like I’ve missed much in 2015 (I will admit it is pretty cool they brought the Festival of Snow back though). It kind of upsets me to abandon a site that I grew up with into my early teenage years, but I’ve just lost interest. No, I don’t think the site is terrible, I just can’t get anything out of it anymore. I know it sounds like I’m whining, but the thing is, I still had fun as a teen back in 2011/2012 on CP. I haven’t entirely quit though. 2015 is CP’s 10th anniversary, which is impressive, so of course I’ll login for the 10th anniversary party out of nostalgia, and I’ll still check out this site from time to time, because I still think Train is a great blogger. Maybe I’ll even check out a few parties in the future if they interest me. But regularly logging into CP again? Those days are long gone. Who knows, though. Maybe the site will find a balance with fun and its new features again, and I hope so, because I REALLY want to enjoy playing it again. But for now, I just wanted to give an update where I’ve been. Sorry if this post just sort of sounds like a downer, but I feel it fit with the main theme of this article.

  63. This may be old, but I thought I’d leave my view as someone who grew up playing the game and, when I got older, reverse engineered it and replicated it (programming bots and servers).

    I agree that the game is becoming too feature rich, to the point where it is bloated and complicated. It used to be a simple game, but now it seems complicated both for users and, I imagine, the programmers. That’s why I helped run and played CPPSes; it took me back to the simple Club Penguin.

    I agree with you on some of the hacking. There are some exploits that just shouldn’t exist. I mean, the old item purchasing? That exploit happened in the old testing servers (CPiP) a long time ago, you’re telling me the programmers didn’t consider it after that? It’s a basic rule: don’t trust user input. The programmers in the cheating community know how to reverse engineer and replicate the software to behave how they want it to, there should be checks on the server side in consideration of this (it’s literally a few lines of code on the server side!). Having said this, some cheats just cannot be stopped, mainly bots (that includes money makers, but Club Penguin has made them slower). I must say that Club Penguin did well to stop trainers for a long time, though.

    I think Disney has to be careful when dealing with CPPSes. Most of them are run by kids (really) and how do you think “Disney takes kid to court” would sound in the newspapers? I’m sure they’re trying hard because it’s potentially lost revenue for them, but it is because of this that they have to hold back somewhat. The best way to beat CPPSes is to be better than them, if I’m honest.

    I’ve toyed with the game and I’ve programmed bots, trainers and servers for it but I did this solely to teach myself programming. I have not harmed the game in ways you state above (running public CPPSes, fake betas, etc). This has lead me to my career path, I’m now at University doing a computer science degree, so I’ve really got to thank Club Penguin.

    Lastly, I’m here because I’m interested in Club Penguin’s reaction to the private servers. Spike Hike is one of their best ideas and I wish he were around when I was a blogger, I always wanted to see the voice of Club Penguin on blogs!

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