Nacho Army of Club Penguin

Hola everyone, Aka here.

So a sentiment that has been going around a lot recently is that armies aren’t fun anymore.

Why is that?

The Death of Committed Leadership

At one point in armies, you worked your way up from the lowest soldier, making friends, connections, and attending events. Months, even years would pass by, but then you would get to become a leader of the army you worked so hard in, with everyone listening to you, and you would have to ability to negotiate with other leaders in the community. That is no longer the case. What happens now is that when a leader gets overthrown or retires from his army, he never leaves the community. That leader takes refuge in another leader’s army that he was friends with, gets a high rank in it, and eventually becomes leader over the soldier whom had been working at it for months. No one can predict when that person will leave, so it may be even more months and years before that spot is open again and a native soldier gets to become the leader of the army he was in. Also, sometimes legends never leave. If an army dips after a legend leaves the army to pursue other things, the legend sees it as the army cannot live without him and comes back, to overthrow the “weak” leadership through abusing admin on the wp site. There can be many excuses used, but it all boils down to a legend not wanting to leave his army in the hands of someone else whom could potentially bring harm to it, as if the army is their kid. How can new legends be formed if we never allow them to rise above and beyond being a regular soldier? Between foreign leaders coming in and legends never leaving, there is also less dedication to even stay in your own home army. We’ve begun to treat armies like a job market than an actual army. Why bother sticking around in an army that is smaller than the others and eventually leading it to the top of the charts when your friends are in an army that is ranked 4 or 3, and you’ll get generally the same rank for joining that army? Whomever gives the highest ranks gets the “best” troops; thats how things are now. All these factors working together keeps people from even wanting to become leader and some 2ic’s that I know have opted to stay Co-Leader their entire lives just to avoid all the stress that comes along with these factors. Its pathetic.

The Frustration of a Stagnant Community

The leadership situation would be one thing if it was limited to one army, but that isn’t the case. Leaders hop from one army to the next in desperate bids to keep their power, high ranks multi-log and bot to increase their numbers without holding recruiting sessions and involving their troops with gaining more soldiers, chats are filled with moderator/owner ranks consisting of former leaders and soldiers waiting for their turn at leader, and members are treated and herded around like cattle. Those members are later abused and ignored by those same leaders, eroding the want to participate in that army, which in turn fuels the next wave of people hopping to the next army by extension. News sites host multiple, extensive articles on tournaments and contests, but actual wars get a couple pictures, copied and pasted speeches from sites, and maybe a three question interview if an owner is online at the time. Armies have turned into clubs, dedicated to ass-kissing the leader at the time for the eventual chance at being a leader themselves rather than proving they have what it takes to lead. News organizations have turned into “Whom have we confirmed multi-logs today?”, to “Which two people out of twenty get to be legends?”, and to “How many times will SWAT or DCP use proxies to thumb up their own comments in the comment section?” No one makes any effort to try to expand beyond their army, until it is time for that leader to army hop into the next one. Nobody does anything exciting or attempts to take risks that will set themselves apart from their peers, and with everybody doing relatively the same thing every day, it has made 2015 the most boring year for armies in the history of CP armies.

Club Penguin Has Lost Its Fun

Club Penguin was released back in 2005, which is over 10 years ago. It was later sold to Disney, and its just been downhill since then. Recruiting is a joke now with all the censorship and moderators actively banning people for suggesting that they search for an army. Most armies don’t even see a point anymore in going on to recruit as a group, and delegate the entire responsibility to bot-recruiting and auto-typing. Going on Club Penguin has become a chore that has to be done daily, where it once was the proving ground to the world that your army was the strongest. Even the battles against enemy armies are a joke now, with two armies running around the map and never directly confronting each other during what might be an hour long event. The longer Club Penguin is around, the less people sign-up to make an account, the less words that can be used to recruit these people into armies, and the less people want to join armies that just bot recruit instead of showing genuine people participating in recruiting.

The Solution?

With such a huge myriad of problems, there needs to be an extensive repair of the system at the very least, or an entirely new system at the most. Many of these issues could be addressed at once by CPAC alone, with the reporters deducting points for confirmed armies that multi-log, giving increases in points to armies that actually fight each other in wars, and extensive reporting that goes beyond a couple pictures and reports that are under 300 words. However, CPAC would rather keep a dead, multi-logging army in the Top 10, another army which was confirmed to multi-log in the Top 10 (with a 10 point deduction that only kept them from getting first), and refusing to take any further action because they don’t want to be a government for armies whilst ignoring the creation of a new government entirely. I can’t say that they aren’t trying entirely, but when you are shelling out 300 xats to every member whom works there every three months, you’d think the staff there would be more upfront about fixing the issues that plague the community in whatever small way they can without enforcing their own government.

However, if CPAC refuses to take part in the community, then it is evident we will have to work without them for the time being. Community-wide meetings will be held every month to discuss the issues in our community with community leaders to enact punishment on armies without using CPAC as the medium to enforce it. Soon, a government will be going up as well to record all of the issues that have been voted on, to include a new server map which will be updated weekly, and if it comes to it we will have to make our own Top 10 and Legends page to preserve the history we want to leave behind if CPNext ever shows up. Things will be solved, but the community will have to peel off the band-aids that CPAC and the Top 10 have put on these issues and directly cauterize the bleeding wound, or at the very least CPAC needs to man up and finally get involved or stay out of it entirely.

-Aka

,

Filed under: The Nacho Army |