I joined the game around it's Tootsville II stage, and the first toot I ever met was Otiekinz (I hope I remembered that right). I signed up without the ability to chat at first, yet Otie was nice enough to take me to this burger shop and simply introduce me to the world. I can only imagine what his/her reaction was to showing a new player, who only spoke in emotes, was. Eventually, I managed to be able to start typing after creating my own email and approve my own "parental agreement." Definitely a rebel moment for young me.
When the biggest Christmas event hit and Shade attacked all the Toots in the main square, my old model of a fusion of a Google/Yahoo PC (trust me, I swear this was real) couldn't handle all the other players within one server, along with the crazy animations at the time, I eventually was forced to stop playing. Plus, Club Penguin ended up running better on that old PC, so I inevitably switched over to the Disney overlords for my convenience. Getting a new pc at the time wasn't an option for me either since I was young and my parent didn't believe owning a pc was beneficial at the time (man, times were different back then).
After about a few years of that Christmas event, and I honestly can't remember exactly what year that happened on, I finally got my very own laptop. Literally the FIRST thing I did was ask myself, "I wonder if this thing can run Tootsville well."
Well, I went online and surprisingly I did meet a few familiar faces. Among those were pohatcong, med, shader, Mayor Louis (at the time that was exciting because I remember everyone said spotting him was rare way back when, plus he gave me free peanuts which was cool), Otiekinz still actively went online too despite seeming more mature, and a few others I may have forgotten. Except something felt off.
They were pretty much the only players left as exploring the Tootsville IV edition left an empty wasteland. Nobody new was coming online, no events, no new games, nothing new was being implemented. A few blogs were still active, I was one of those blogs, but it was obvious that this experience wouldn't offer anything new. That's when I found out through "word of mouth" by a few players that when the update hit and Tootsville IV went live, the entire site got glitched. I don't remember exactly what they said, but the gist of it is that players eventually stopped coming online due to the behind the scenes team being unable to fix what was broken. Which is a shame because I was super excited to go back to an online world that I wish I was able to experience but couldn't due to my limitations at the time.
To be honest, despite being mature now, the idea of Tootsville and what it had to offer is still like nothing else today. That Christmas event I attended had Shade attacking the town, and a special effect passed by the screen to represent the chaos which was impressive at the time. Plus, the fact that the 8 Toots and even villains could come online at anytime, not just during special events, is still something that no other online game really attempts to do. There was a link between the creators and the players which is something you never see anywhere else.
Well, thanks for reading. I really am excited to see this new revival of Tootsville. This may sound childish, but my child-self always wanted to become a Magical Toot of some kind who could spread joy and happiness to other players. Possibly by granting free peanuts and maybe even free items from time to time to those worthy of being an amazing toot. That may never happen, but for now I'll definitely consider donating to the project once I get this new job I got going.
Thanks for reading my post! I know nobody will ever see this, and it'll be lost in the sands of digital time, but thanks nonetheless. Oh, and thanks Otiekinz for introducing me to the best burger restaurant in Tootsville. I know you won't read this either, but thanks.
