.I Saw i cut On a girls face. I Sorta Stared At it. ” Beat it Kid” Yep That was Foxtails. She always usually Called Me kid. I got a Text message From My parents. I red It. WTH Are you?” I didnt Text back Im gonna Be in ALOT Of Trouble.ome gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.”
The first and probably last time I quote Bob Dylan, but I felt it to be relevant for what I am about to say.
What happened to war? It was what Club Penguin armies were founded upon, the lack of which caused the Dark Ages of Club Penguin armies, and what everyone seemed to want as recent as last week. So why has it become so tedious and downright boring to some? Recently, I have been hearing that people are getting tired of this war. So I ask, “What happened?”
When I joined ACP, the era of major wars was already nearing an end. All armies were at peace (most of the time), though not to say that we were all allies.
The ACP had tense relations with both UMA and the Nachos, both of them enemies of the past. ACP and UMA’s rivalry went way back to when they were the two largest armies in Club Penguin. ACP hated UMA, and UMA hated ACP, and both Oagalthorp and Pink Mafias were fine with that. When a group of rebels were tired of how things were done in UMA, the Rebel Penguin Federation was created, founded by ex-UMA soldiers all the way up the ranks ladder. Their leader, Commando717 went with war with UMA, and ACP sided with RPF. Since that point, ACP was close allies with RPF, but tension with UMA only grew.
Like I said, by the time I joined, there really were not any wars. However, every day when I came home from school, there was a battle. Same server, same room, same armies. ACP, UMA, Nachos, and RPF, every single day in the Dojo on Mammoth. Back then, Mammoth belonged to ACP, and it had quickly become the center for nearly all army activity. Despite the fact that there were no official declarations of war, there was always fighting. UMA would invade Mammoth on a regular basis, along with the Nachos, to the point where all major armies were using the server in some way.
Back then, wars were fun. You would pick a side of the Dojo, stand there, and fire snowballs. Occasional chants of “ACP ACP ACP” would break out, along with similar ones from the other armies. Back then, I am not even sure if “charges” had been invented yet, and if they had, they were almost never used. At the time, Oagalthorp had pretty much written the book on army tactics, being that they seem outdated now, they are still the fundamentals of army fighting.
- Stay out in the open. Make sure the enemy sees you.
- Look as big as possible. Stay in a group, but don’t over-lap each other. Stand shoulder-to shoulder to create a giant, solid mass of soldiers.
- Make the enemy look as small as possible. When charging or standing near the other army, hold the “Tab” key and click right below the enemies’ feet. You should cover them up and make them appear smaller.
- Attack from below. This way the other army can’t cover you with their chat bubbles or emotes, but you can cover them with yours.
If you have never heard about the “Tab” and click method, it is probably because Club Penguin fixed the glitch, so it is now obsolete. As for more modern tactics, I give most of the credit to Dialga80, the former leader of the Watex Warriors, whom I served under for about 5 months. He is credited with the invention of the “Emote Bomb”, along with many other spam-related charges. Though not often used in major battles, a glitch called “nubbing” was used to give your army the advantage of being lower on the battle field by hiding under the chat bar, thus enabling you to cove up your opponent. This tactic was made popular by Mazachster, the former leader of SSACP. Though he did invent this tactic, he, along with SSACP, made this a common method of fighting for small armies. This glitch was also fixed by Club Penguin during their improvement project.
Battles back then, however, were much less about tactics, or even the size of your army. Battles were won through dedication of perseverance. The army with the most patience won the most often, and although size helped, the army that stood there and threw snowballs the longest, won. I remember battles between two armies, neither topping 15 soldiers, that lasted for 3 or more hours. The only advantage you could gain other than having the most endurance was size, which was utilized through recruiting (making sure that your army picked up the most soldiers who were just stopping by to join the battle). Battles were always manageable because you could have a 4-way war in which none of the armies topped 15 soldiers. That meant you could have 40 soldiers from 4 armies in one room at the same time.
As I recall fondly my memories from my early days, I wonder “What happened?” The difference maker now is quite obvious to me. The size of the armies has grown significantly, at least among ACP and the Nachos. Each army can fill a room almost single-handedly. This makes having allies obsolete, because you cannot even squeeze them into the room with you. It pretty much makes fighting at all obsolete, because Club Penguin has room limits of 80 people, and ACP and the Nachos can easily combine for 120. This means one of the two armies is only going to be able to get about a quarter of their army into a room with the other army, in which case that side is destroyed.
How did ACP and the Nachos get so big? You could attribute it to two intelligent leaders with above average senses of work ethic, always striving to be the best. Though I cannot speak for Person, I can speak for myself when I say I was never satisfied with being good, or even being the best army. I have always striven to make ACP the best it can be. It may sound the same, but it is quite different. ACP has been arguably the best (or at least the largest) army in Club Penguin since around December, and even during our period of rebellions, we had been considered the strongest for so long before that, it was as if we were still at the top despite a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Mammoth in November 2008. After winning the Christmas Tournament, I could have said, “cool, we’re the best” and been satisfied. Instead, I chose to continue to lead as if we had something left to prove. My philosophy was always to strive for perfection. Even if you don’t make it, you’ll still be the best you can be, which is all you can ask for.
So what is the lesson here? Could you say that Person and I are responsible for this because we are just too good as leaders? Flattering, yes, but inaccurate as well. I believe that what has happened was caused in part by one major event. It has become a scapegoat for just about every Club Penguin problem you can think of, but in this case, it is undeniable the effect that it has caused.
When Disney bought Club Penguin, they introduced millions of kids to Club Penguin that would have probably never come across it. The number of people using Club Penguin grew so much, that in mid-2008, Club Penguin had to develop better servers to hold them all, in order to prevent the constant crashing. When I joined Club Penguin in March 2007, there were, in reflection, much fewer people using the game than there are now. The servers were neatly organized by country, and almost everyone had a server that they used daily. There, you would find your friends, and just hang out. If you happened to come across a snowball fight, it was just that, a snowball fight. You did not know the armies, the politics, the connections behind everything, it was just for fun. For those who happened to come across true “armies”, you were almost assuredly on Mammoth, the center of all army activity. Battles happened there daily, and everyone who used Mammoth regularly knew all the armies. The majority of those who fought in the biggest battles did not even know that armies had sites outside of the game, they were just there for the battle. They would come on after school and go to the Dojo, and just get a battle going. Think of a warm, summer day, and you and your friends felt like having a pickup game on the sandlot. That is what I always thought of it as.
What Club Penguin did by allowing themselves to be bought out by Disney, was introduce tons of new users. Shortly after, they overhauled all the servers, breaking up the “nations”, so that each time you logged on, you had 5 random servers to choose from. This nearly eliminated the “home” server situation. Club Penguin users stopped using just one server, and switched to using whatever server they had friends on, or just picking a random server from the list. Because of this, armies took a big hit. They lost their “nations”, their way of organizing their servers based on country. In addition to that, it was much harder to get your name out there, because those who knew who you were were no longer on your home server or your “capital”. The new Club Penguin users, affectionately dubbed “n00bs” by the veterans, bounced from server to server. If you came across an army, it was nothing special. It may be a rare occurrence, and chances are, you will not see them again any time soon. Back when armies all used Mammoth, everyone knew the armies. They were used to them being there every day, and they were all raised in the “army” culture.
Back then, the term “citizen” was thrown around, used to mean someone who used your server. This word has been rendered meaningless since the server reconstruction period. You can spend a month trying to convince your citizens of something, then come back the next day to find that still no one knows who you are or what your purpose is. The only server left that still holds on to the army culture is Mammoth. Other armies were always jealous that ACP owned the server that personified the Club Penguin armies, as observed through countless invasions. The moment that the other army leaders decided to make Mammoth neutral, everything went downhill…
Since ACP lost Mammoth to neutrality, it has been taken over by small armies, who have no knowledge of any of the major armies that used to reside there. Mammoth has, in essence, become the Iraq of Club Penguin. It has been taking over by gangs, ninjas, n00b armies, you name it. No one invades it, because you might as well take on all the annoying little armies who think they rock in a never-ending fight for what Mammoth used to mean. Just like Iraq, it is an unwinnable fight for even less of a purpose (if that is even possible). Now that Club Penguin armies’ greatest server has fallen victim to the n00b invasion (just like everything else), there is really nothing left for us. All we can do is recruit like crazy, building up our armies like nuclear stockpiles between the U.S. and Russia during the Cold War, hold meaningless battles with ourselves, attempt to create “fun” battles, and fight wars with no end.
Enough with the generalities, it is time to focus on the situation at hand. The ACP and the Nachos are locked in a battle of the super-powers. The term “major army” has pretty much become irrelavant, because everyone knows only two armies really matter at this point. A quarter of ACP could conquer the entire USRPF, and the Nachos’ Air Force could take out IW and UMA at the same time. I have been pondering the question of why Club Penguin armies are in a “Dark Age” when ACP and the Nachos are the biggest armies Club Penguin has ever seen. Why do ACP and the Nachos grow while everyone else falls? The answer started out simple: you need to keep your army active to be successful, and Person and I were the best at doing that. When Commando came back, RPF made a huge comeback. Since his retirement, they have fallen to the level they were trapped at months before. Everyone else just dug themselves a hole, and ACP and the Nachos ran away with it. Since then, it has become more extreme. The strategy behind recruiting is that the more recruits you get, the more recruits you get, which sounds really pointless and repetitive. When you think about it though, it makes sense. If you have a 5-man army, and you get them to do some recruiting, and each recruits a soldier, you now have 10. Your 10-man army recruits another 10. Now you have 20, and they recruit another 20. Now your 40-man army keeps with that pace, and suddenly you have 80. Etcetera, etcetera…
I saw an interesting statement by Furbur of RPF saying that this war would be good because it will make ACPsmall enough so that people can fight us. Because of that, Club Penguin armies will be saved. The problem with that is that a war makes your army more active than they can be at any other time. Although you are competing with your opponent for the recruits, you are still getting more recruits than you did before. Because this is a game, and unlike real war, you cannot die, you will not lose any soldiers, instead, you will gain them. Think of this war as a black hole, because that is what I would compare it too. It is dark and infinite, and everything is sucked into it. For a soldier in either the ACP or the Nachos, it may be sucking the fun out of fighting. For a crumbling major army, it may be your worst nightmare and you have not even realized it yet. The problem with this war, is that it is contrary to what many people believed would happen. Instead of making Club Penguin armies more active, thus making everyone grow, it has only made the decent of these armies more severe. Soldiers of these major armies in decline are sitting around watching this war and saying, “When are we going to see some action?” The majority of the major armies have chosen to remain neutral. Although it seems boring, it is the best decision. Instead of entering a war in which they have no chance of recruiting anyone, due to the fact that ACP and the Nachos and their black hole of a war, are stealing all the recruits from the other armies. By remaining neutral, they have allowed themselves the chance to recruit away from this war, giving them the opportunity to gain soldiers without being overshadowed by the two super-powers. The problem is, while they pick up new recruits, their veterans are gravitating towards either the ACP or the Nachos. If this war continues much longer, ACP and the Nachos will likely smother all the other major armies. Then we come to the tragic end, because how much fun is it for there to be only two armies with any significance?
To tie this back together, times have really changed. We cannot look at war the same way anymore. Everything else about Club Penguin armies has changed, so something has to give. Has war really become pointless? How much fun is it to come home from school every day to yet another battle, a battle that you know will last as many as 4 hours, in which neither side will accomplish anything?
“Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown”
No matter what army you are in, you cannot deny that ACP and the Nachos have grown to a dangerous size. Yes, our waters have grown. Never has anyone had more soldiers. Pretty soon, we will all drown under the sheer numbers of our armies.
“And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone”
See, both ACP and the Nachos have enough soldiers to fight endlessly for hours. The way you win a battle is when you have eliminated the other side from server, essentially, they have given up, or just run out of soldiers. The problem is, we are both too large. We will never run out of soldiers, nor will we give in. I know Person is the same way. I play to win. There may be no shame in defeat, but if you give up, you might as well get out. Thus, each day is ended with a cease fire. Because no one wants to surrender, but no one is mentally able to fight any longer. We are trapped in an endless cycle, a meaningless existence, an infinite black hole. You know, black holes have enough gravitational pull that even light cannot escape. I cannot find the light, and thus, I do not see a way out.
“If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.”
Are Club Penguin armies worth saving? If they are, we need to do something fast, or we are all going under. Times have changed. Now we must change too.
~Boomer
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