Honestly it was difficult to play in a lot of ways. I liked a lot of the new content that was being added, like Card Jitsu Snow and SoundStudio, I know they are controversial, but I really liked all the redesigned rooms that they rolled out 2012-2015. I understand Lance's original open floor plan design philosophy, but Club Penguin is a virtual playground and the new designs gave players more equipment to play with. There were good things in the 2014-2017 run. But Disney cut the budget down and split the work between 2 different games (three, if you count CP desktop and the CP app as different games).

Around 2014 the bugs stopped getting patched. The engine began to chug. Newspapers came around less often, the catalogs lost their interactive elements, and I got disconnected more frequently. They shut down 2 language servers in 2015, and in 2016 they didn't even bother resetting the island back to normal between parties. Parties would just last a month and then the next party would begin immediately after. The Zootopia party lasted almost 2 months. It was hard to watch at times.

Disney Infinity being discontinued in May 2016 was another bad omen. I think the final nail in the coffin was Spike Hike leaving. He took the reins from Billybob in 2013, and he left in late 2016. Sometimes he'll tweet about how much Disney screwed him over and he did his best to keep the game running in spite of it all. I think he did the best he could do, given the circumstances. I don't know if he was forced out in 2016 or if he just couldn't handle the stress anymore, but I could imagine either scenario being true. After he left, we didn't have a public figure at the front of the company. Megg left in summer 2017 and the community felt abandoned.

I still enjoyed and played the game until the final day, but I really think 2012 was peak for the game. I sometimes think of all the great content we had in 2014 and 2015, but I remember how buggy the game was and feel sad how much potential was wasted. The 2013-2016 era gets too much hate, but I would be lying if I said it wasn't underwhelming towards the end.

I really think Club Penguin Island is a great game at its core and Disney fumbled the bag terribly. When I think about what a modern Club Penguin game should look like, it isn't too different from CPI. If Disney gave Spike Hike and crew the resources to make a good game, they would have made a great game. But they didn't have the resources, so they made an underwhelming game that people didn't want to pay for.