On this day in Club Penguin: Penguin Chat 3

This is where Club Penguin began to take shape. This is Penguin Chat 3, one of the most influential things of Club Penguin! It launched March 31, 2005. It had the Town, Coffee Shop, Nightclub, and the Boiler Room (Which looked very different than Club Penguin’s boiler room), and had the Construction Site and the Snow Hill.

There was no Gift Shop. The Gift Shop in the Town actually redirected users to an online store in which players could buy real merchandise. This store has been closed down since.

Penguin Chat 3 was not just an update. It had an important point: It was used to test the servers that would later be used in Club Penguin.

Penguin Chat 3 introduced colors, ninjas, and even more! Since shutting down 4 days after Club Penguin’s launch, many people have attempted to remake it, and even asked Rocketsnail to bring it back.

Penguin Chat 3 will be remembered forever for it’s important contribution to the launch of Club Penguin!

On this day in Club Penguin: Penguin Chat

The legend of Club Penguin continues! On January 4, 2003, the next version came to be Penguin Chat 2! It was Rocketsnail’s second experiment to create an online multiplayer game. Penguin Chat 2 introduced some new features, including, but not limited to, emotes, chat balloons, depth sorting (you could walk behind objects), and the ability to throw snowballs. Since it’s launch, Penguin Chat 2 has consistently been Rocketsnail’s most popular game.

During it’s existence, Rocketsnail started working on yet another game concept called Snow Blasters. Unfortunetly, Snow Blasters never did become a thing, however, the logo concept would later be used for Club Penguin’s logo, while the game concept itself would later turn into a game called Mech Mice.

Penguin Chat 2 was a very big influence to Club Penguin, as a lot of it’s concepts were used in Penguin Chat 3, and later on, Club Penguin.

On this day in Club Penguin: I join the fun!

December 23, 2010. This was when I first joined in on the fun that is Club Penguin! I could pick up this day thanks to the fact that Club Penguin measures your age in days rather than years, and there are plenty of online tools to take that number and determine when you joined!

I joined the game during the Holiday Party of 2010. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into… I never saw myself becoming a part of the community as a whole. But then I did.

I found out about Club Penguin blogs, which I used to pick up on news. I seen Club Penguin videos, and decided to make some myself. I particularly found out about “Disney Ruined Club Penguin” videos, which actually changed my life.

You see, when I found these videos, it eventually led me to discover the history behind Club Penguin. I found out about Rocketsnail and what he’s done, and found myself inspired. Today, I am learning to build games myself, and have started producing plans for a massive game to be released in the far future. (All I can tell you about it now is that my future plans have a major involvement with Virtual Reality)

Club Penguin has really changed my life. As I am sad for it to be gone, I am happy to finally present to you… Penguin Chat 5!!! Jokes aside, I can’t wait for the future of Club Penguin Island!

-Waddle On!
(Now to see what other blogs I involve myself with in the future)

On this day in Club Penguin: Chistmas Party 2005

Club Penguin’s first Christmas Party (not Holiday Party, believe it or not) happened December 22, 2005. There were 2 items given away, and would be the first to have special music during the party.

At the time, this would be Club Penguin’s biggest party, with a total of 12,900 players celebrating it, and 3,500 new players joining! The items given away were the Christmas Scarf at the Ice Rink, and the Santa Hat at the Ski Lodge.

The Christmas Party ended on December 25, 2005, and would be the last party of 2005.

On this day in Club Penguin: Server Testing 2005

It only took 2 months after the game’s release for Club Penguin’s servers to become overwhelmed. Yes, the Server Testing started December 5, 2005, and was done in order to test the brand new servers that were going to be used. Throughout this event, there were many items given away. The Black Toque (Ice Rink), The Pink Toque (Dock), The Blue Sunglasses (Mountain), The Black Bowtie (Dance Lounge), and The Red Sunglasses (Ski Village).

Other than new servers and item giveaways, however, the game didn’t change that much for this event. Every item given away was later given in various catalogs, and there were other testing events later on. The event can be considered to be pretty insignificant, however very important.

The server testing ended February 13, 2006.

On this day in Club Penguin: Halloween Party 2005

This is the first party to happen during Club Penguin’s official lifetime! The first Halloween Party happened October 27, 2005, since of course Halloween was pretty close by. During this party, Billybob held a little contest. He would give 500 coins to the first penguin to determine the correct amount of changes made for this party.

The winner of this contest was Carze. There were 25 changes made.

Pretty much every change made was a cosmetic one, nothing more. The only artist that designed this party was Screenhog

This was the only Halloween Party to have a normal sky.

The Halloween Party ended October 31, 2005.

On this day in Club Penguin: The Official Launch!!!

Happy Birthday Club Penguin! This game officially launched on October 24, 2005! At the time of this post, that would make the game 12 years old!!! Wow it’s been a long time! I wonder what the hat would have looked like if the game was out now… we will never know. However, this is a very important day for many, many penguins! For some, it means the anniversary of the game that made their childhood! For others, it meant a new party hat! Whatever this day means to you, just know that July 30, 2000 was the real beginning of this legend!

On this day in Club Penguin: Beta Test Party

This was the very first party to happen in Club Penguin, and the only party to have happened before Club Penguin even launched. The party was very simple: There was a sign on the Coffee Shop that read “Beta Test Party”, and 2 boxes filled with pink and yellow party hats, similar to the party hats given during Club Penguin Island’s beta test, however different.

The party happened twice on September 21, 2005. The first happened 3:00pm GMT and the second happened 3:00pm PST. Both lasted a mere 2 hours. This party had a very significant purpose: It was to get as many penguins online as possible by throwing a party and promising a free, rare item. And indeed it worked, during the party the game peaked at 155 players online simultaneously. The reason they needed to do this is so they can find out if the servers can hold a large amount of users at once.

There were only 12 rooms at this time: the Book Room, Coffee Shop, Dance Lounge, Dock, Dojo, Gift Shop, PSA HQ, Ice Rink, Night Club, Ski Village, Snow Forts, and Town.

Might I mention this is 4x the amount of rooms Club Penguin Island had during it’s beta test. It had the Beacon Boardwalk, Coconut Cove, and Sea Caves.

On this day in Club Penguin: Beta Testing

Beta Testing in Club Penguin started August 22, 2005, 2 months before it’s official release. For those of you who don’t know, when it comes to programming, even the most experienced programmers make mistakes. Even when you have tools to make it easy, you still make mistakes. When it comes to making normal games, you can easily just test the game through and through yourself to catch all the bugs. When it comes to online games, however, things change.

How do you test features that requires multiple players yourself? You can’t. That’s literally impossible. This is why online games tend to run beta tests. In fact, this is why Club Penguin Island had a beta test. Yes, even Disney can make major game-breaking mistakes in a game like this.

However, when it came to Club Penguin, bugs were not the biggest problem. Growth was. Too many players wanted to play this game, and by the end of beta testing, there were over 15,000 players! They were not prepared for the game to get this popular!

This was why they had the beta test party, a post that’s coming later.

After the beta test, testers received 2,000 free coins, 1 month free membership after launch, and they got to keep the beta hat from the beta test party.

On this day in Club Penguin: Experimental Penguins

July 30, 2000 was the beginning of a legend. It’s where Club Penguin began it’s history. This is a game called Experimental Penguins, and without it , we would never have had Club Penguin, or even Club Penguin Island.

The game is very simple. You entered a name and click next. There were 3 rooms: The Snow Room, The North Pole, and The Crash Site. All 3 rooms were very simple. You were a penguin who could walk around and chat. Admins would ride around in a snow trekker.

And that’s about it. Experimental Penguins, despite being so simple, was very, very popular, and won many awards. During it’s existence, the game had over 2,000 penguins active every single day!

Experimental Penguins was shut down in December 2000, with a note that they would be returning.

Rocketsnail has wrote an entire post explaining how he experimented with penguins. Click Here to check it out!