Hello, everyone!
A year ago, today, Club Penguin Island officially released on iOS and Android devices!
The year has gone so quick! I still keep thinking Club Penguin Island is a new game, but now that it is one year old, I think it’s fair to say that it is well into its development. In my opinion, so much has happened to Club Penguin Island since it launched on 29th March 2017.
The day of launch was quite a frustrating one, indeed. If you weren’t in the loop back then, Club Penguin Island was published several hours before the shutdown of Club Penguin. Even today, people still complain about the team’s decision to have done this. Fortunately, I don’t think it detracted the community away from Club Penguin: a 12-year old game. On the other hand, it detracted people from playing Club Penguin Island immediately after its release. And, surely, you can see why.
As a result, the new game didn’t have the best beginning at all. It received many negative reviews due to lack of content, big bugs and its “lack of respect” to its predecessor game. Besides, it wasn’t a big deal for the people who tested the game during its geo beta (mid-December). The divide between members and non-members was pretty significant. Non-members were not even allowed to sit down. Let me say that again. Non-members weren’t allowed to sit down. It was that bad.
Of course, the team acknowledged there ought to be a “hook” to persuade players to buy a membership. But, at the time, the game was almost like “pay to play”, despite being a free app. As you can expect – across the board – there were minimal features. Some players were patient. Others were not. Before the long, the community started to crack and divide into separate factions. Club Penguin Private Servers (CPPS) started to evolve and steal the spotlight, and this was declining the audience of Club Penguin Island. Many disputes occurred throughout the days of its launch. Even skipping forward a couple of months later, the community was still unhappy (overall). Nonetheless, new features began to shed some light on the game. Chapter 2 of Aunt Arctic’s adventures was a much-needed addition to surge more life into the game.
Club Penguin Summit 