Good evening, good people of The Bell Tree! Welcome to our sixth edition of Bell Tree Direct. A year ago, the illustrious Justin posted our first Direct, so this marks the one year anniversary of the series! He hosted many wonderful Directs over the past year! However, this brings me to some very sad news. Some of you may have already asked yourselves, "Respectable self, why is this Direct posted at the crack of 1 AM? No less, why is Jeremy speaking to us; where is Justin?" It gives me great pain to announce to you all that our beloved administrator Justin, has gone completely missing.
Upon hearing the news, I rushed to the nearest Bell Tree Bell Tower and I rang that bell with a great vim. "Ding ding ding," it rang. But aside from the echoing dings, there was no response. An eerie silence clung to the wind like a TBTer clings to a collectible. So I ran to the nearest Bell Tree Horn Tower and I blew that horn with a mighty gust of breath. "Booowwaaaaaaaahmm," it resonated. Again, there was nothing but an eerie silence. "To the people, they must know!" I yelled as I ran down the stairs of the horn tower. And here I am now, coming to you, the people, in this dark hour with a message of grief, but a word of hope and encouragement! For I know, in my heart of hearts, that our beloved admin Justin is out there somewhere alive and waiting for all of us to rescue him from the pits of despair!
The Bulletin Board Returns
A few years ago we had an announcement board called The Bulletin Board, which was merged with Bell Tree HQ. Due to the amount of stickied threads in Bell Tree HQ, we've decided to bring it back. This board will contain useful threads like the Rules & Guidelines, as well as announcements. It will also be the new home of our Directs!
Some forums that have announcement boards allow members to post in the threads, while others create separate discussion threads. For now, we will keep posting enabled in the board, but may change it in the future once we see how it works. Let us know what you think.
Loungers Build Treehouse, Tear Down Watercooler
We have another board change, but this one is far more drastic! We have completely redone our gaming boards. The Nintendo board has been promoted to a main board and has been renamed to Nintendo Treehouse.
Within the Treehouse are game franchise sub-boards, for TBT's most popular non-AC games: Pokemon and Smash Bros. Of course, time will tell if Smash Bros can remain active. So we'll decide at a later date if the board is only temporary. We hope these changes will encourage everyone to discuss more of Nintendo's great games.
Gamers' Lounge as a board will now be the place for general and other gaming discussions. We've deleted the XBox, Playstation, and PC Gaming boards since they were less active than others, but their discussions will live on in Gamers' Lounge. Please be patient as we move everything around. And if you find any Pokemon or Smash threads that should be moved to their respective boards, please report them, thanks!
Coming Soon, The Bell Tree Fair 2014: Celebrating Ten Years of The Bell Tree
I'm pleased to announce the fourth Bell Tree Fair coming later this year! This year marks an extra special occasion, because it's the year that TBT turns ten years old! For those who are new and may not know, The Bell Tree Fair is an event that takes place around The Bell Tree's birthday. It contains many contests, events, and prizes. Last year's fair was a great success, and we hope this year's can be just as memorable. Mark your calendars for November 22 - December 30th (tentative) and be on the look out for more information about the festivities soon.
Multi-Shop
Multi-Shop is the name of a new feature that we'll be unveiling over the next couple of Bell Tree Directs. We will be splitting up the shop into several specialized shops. But it's more than just splitting it up, because most of these new shops will have new items. We've added the first one today, so go check it out! In the next Direct we'll have another new shop with brand new items, so you'll have to wait and see what we have in... store!
New AC Avatars
Thunder has created three more avatars for our AC Villagers collection! We have Butch, Biskit and Wolfgang.
And with that, this is what I found among what Justin was working on.
The Bell Tree Podcast Episode Two
With ABD interest rates plummeting at an all time record, the TBT staff got together to hatch a grand scheme to distract the people. How? SETTLE IT IN SMASH!
Listen to the second episode of The Bell Tree Podcast below to hear us discuss Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS, upcoming releases in October and November, and a special TBT announcement from Jeremy! PLUS we answer some of your Ask the Staff: Podcast Edition questions on air.
Stream it on YouTube here:
You can also download the podcast MP3 directly for listening on your phone or other music player by clicking here.
Cast:
Justin, Jeremy, Prof Gallows (Curtis), Kaiaa, Gandalf (Ben), Tina, [REDACTED SURPRISE GUEST]
Topics & Timestamps:
0:48 - Introduction
2:18 - Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS
20:30 - Nintendo 3DS Home Menu Themes
27:05 - CAPTAIN TOAD: Treasure Tracker
31:30 - Surprise Disruption
33:00 - Fantasy Life
34:18 - Bayonetta 2
34:40 - Civilization: Beyond Earth (CIV IN SPACE!)
36:05 - The Sims 4: Bell Tree Edition
37:37 - Pokemon Omega Ruby / Pokemon Alpha Sapphire
41:15 - Canadian Black Friday / Thanksgiving
42:28 - Jeremy's Special Announcement
47:25 - Ask the Staff: Podcast Edition
48:00 - Why are you doing another one?
48:53 - What made you want to be part of the staff?
55:25 - Who would win in a fight: Kaiaa or Tina?
57:15 - Flop's Disney Interrogation
1:02:55 - When did you start playing Animal Crossing? How did you find the series?
1:05:00 - What was your first video game ever?
1:07:25 - Did you join any other Animal Crossing forums before TBT and if so, what?
1:11:10 - How did you find TBT?
1:15:02 - Favorite collectible?
1:25:10 - Goodbye
Editor's Note: This episode was recorded on the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend.
Kaiaa asked me to include the following image as it is relevant to the Smash Bros. conversation:
Please leave any feedback on the show in its separate thread located here:
http://www.belltreeforums.com/showt...st-Episode-Two-October-Smash-Bros-3DS-Special
We're also accepting Ask the Staff questions for future episodes in this thread located here:
http://www.belltreeforums.com/showthread.php?222885-Ask-the-Staff-Podcast-Edition
We're on Twitter... again!
Long ago we used to have a Twitter for the forums. It's been a few years, but we're bringing it back today! We'll be tweeting forum announcements and updates among other things periodically, so give us a follow if you use Twitter. There might even be exclusives for our Twitter followers! You can find us @thebelltree or by clicking here. Hope to see you there!
Restock
Hello! Thank you for skipping the entire direct to go straight to the restock section! Today we are restocking 1,000 cake collectibles! That is all for today. Thank you for your time.
Just kidding. The usual assortment of restocks in the Collectible section of the store are available. Cheers and good luck!!
2spooky4me
Can you feel it? There's something weird in the air... Maybe I'll go have a look and investigate after I finish writing up this announcement. Be on the lookout near the Shops in the coming days because I've been hearing rumblings from The Woods of some incoming stock.
Sunday, October 19th: Yellow Candy
Thursday, October 23rd: Red Candy
Sunday, October 26th: Green Candy
Thursday, October 30th: Blue Candy
We also have another candy in our testing labs, but it is very experimental and...
That's All
Well thanks for joining today's Bell Tree Direct! That's all I have from Justin and I'm not really sure what he meant in that last part. I hope he's okay! As you help us search for him, tell us: what did you think of today's announcements? Until next time, this has been Jeremy. Godspeed.
