Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the third installment of our Bell Tree Direct series! For those new to the forum, or who missed the first and second installments, Bell Tree Direct is our series to announce and release new items, features, boards, and anything else new on The Bell Tree.
So with that out of the way, let's talk about what's new on The Bell Tree today!
2,500,000 Posts!
Just a couple days ago, we passed the 2,500,000 posts milestone on The Bell Tree! To celebrate reaching this milestone and the other additions in today's Direct, we're offering 50 free TBT Bells to the first 200 members to click this link! Thanks for being a part of our community and helping us reach so many posts over the years. We only just hit 2 million posts back in late November, so here's to hitting 3 million by the summer!
Modern Villager and Special Character AC Avatars
We have a fantastic set of default Modern Animal Crossing Villager and Special Character avatars currently available in the avatar gallery for newcomers, and it's growing even more today! Thunder has crafted 5 more avatars today, featuring a mix of Villagers and Special Characters. Check a preview of them below and head to the Edit Avatar page in your Settings to use one yourself!
Self-Serve Thread Closing in More Boards
Back in October, we added self-serve thread closing in Re-Tail and Villager Trading Plaza. We have heard requests to expand it to other boards so starting today, you can now close your own threads in the TBT Marketplace and Train Station boards as well. Use this feature to close your thread from further posts after you've finished a transaction in the Marketplace or online play session in the Train Station!
Here are two ways you can close your own threads:
Method A
Method B
March Birthstone (Finally!)
Some members may not know, but since September we've been running a monthly birthstone collectible series in the TBT Shop. This month's birthstone, the March Aquamarine, is now available in the TBT Shop for 299 Bells! We apologize for the previous delay.
Remember that once a Monthly Birthstone leaves the Shop, it won't be back until at least the next year or never. We haven't quite finalized yet if they'll come back the next year or not.
Here's a fun history of the previous birthstones up until now! From left to right:
The Third Fruit Collectible (Cherry)
The third installment in our Fruit Collectible series, the Cherry fruit, is on sale today in the TBT Shop for just 119 Bells. The Cherry will be slightly more rare than the others. It opens with 50 stock today, but we'll be restocking it weekly (I promise!), so everyone can get one eventually.
And don't forget, the previous Pear and Orange fruits are still available in the TBT Shop for just 79 and 39 Bells respectively with unlimited stock. Stay tuned for the remaining fruits in future Bell Tree Directs.
Prefixes in TBT Marketplace
Are you familiar with our prefixes feature in the Re-Tail, Villager Trading Plaza, and Able Sister's boards? Due to popular request, we've added prefixes to the TBT Marketplace board. You can choose from the following prefixes when creating a thread: Buying, Selling, Trading, Auction, Giveaway, Shop
This addition should keep the TBT Marketplace a little more organized than before. It's a bit of a mess in there right now, so we encourage you to edit your existing threads to use the prefixes.
Please note that using the [Buying] prefix for Animal Crossing Villagers is forbidden just as it is in the VTP board. This is not a loophole to use.
Rules Update
Every so often, we make some changes to The Bell Tree Rules & Guidelines. Today is one of those days with some updates made. They will go into effect as of today.
Here's a summary of the changes, but we encourage you to review the entire rules to see everything changed:
- Selling or trading virtual goods/services, including Animal Crossing items and villagers, for real world currency is now prohibited in both posts AND signatures. We've come to the conclusion that this is not the environment that we want to encourage on TBT. Selling in-game villagers for real world currency (for an example) doesn't seem right to us.
- Signatures in violation of our signature rules will now be enclosed in a spoiler with a notice below requesting an edit be made. Users who do not edit their signature after to comply may receive an infraction. We actually started doing this a few weeks ago, so this is more of a formal change.
- Forum suspensions and bans will commonly cross over to the IRC (Chat) and Mumble now instead of being separate as they have been in the past. However in most cases bans from the IRC and Mumble will still remain separate and not cross over to the forum.
- Abusing the Report system can now earn you an infraction. We define abuse as spamming reports or abusing our moderation team with disrespectful comments in reports.
Reporting
- If another user violates a rule, report the post instead of posting a response to it. To report, click the
button at the bottom of the post.
- You can also report a thread to request it to be closed or moved to another board. Please note that this is only a request. A staff member will decide at their discretion whether it should happen or not.
- Do not use the report system to make demands, sarcastic remarks, or unnecessary reports. This is considered Report Abuse and can earn you an infraction alongside removal of the report feature for your account.
Separately, we're also updating our Guidelines for Animal Crossing Online rules slightly to be more clear on what is considered a valid use of negative Wi-Fi feedback, especially regarding auctions.
The bolded part of this section is new:
The entirety of this section is new:
We hope this will make the purpose of Wi-Fi Ratings and their place in auctions more clear to everyone. Jeremy is still working on some more changes at the moment and they will be updated further later this week.
Big Summer Blowout!
Ok guys, we've heard the requests lately. As of this posting, the stock of all regularly available collectibles in the TBT Shop have been refreshed. This includes the Chocolate Cake and all Japanese Letters. Head to the TBT Shop before they're gone!
Additionally, since not everyone will have been able to make this time, we're having a second restock at 2am PDT this Friday. (March 14th) Generally the same amount of items will be restocked then as today.
Retiring Staff
AndyB and Miranda are both retiring from TBT Staff as moderators today to make way for new moderators soon. We'd like to thank them for their hard work and dedication to the forums over the years. They will live on as Sages and haunt The Bell Tree Ruins until the end of time. We are not currently accepting new staff applications at this time, but we will in the near future. Stay posted for that.
That's all folks!
Thanks for joining us on today's Bell Tree Direct! That's about all we have to share for today, but rest assured we're always working on future projects.
As always, be sure to let us know what you think about the additions and changes today by posting below.
