Good afternoon and welcome to our latest Bell Tree Direct. Today's Direct is a smaller one, but we have a few TBT teasers on this special day, the one year anniversary of New Horizons' release.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons Turns One
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is now a year old! Has it really been that long? While the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted so many of our lives, New Horizons released at the perfect time to an offer an escape from the real world. Hopefully you've all found some peace on your new islands.
New Horizons quickly became the best selling game of the Animal Crossing series, which started about two decades ago. Some of us have been here from the beginning when the game was far less mainstream. A lot has changed since then. To those who have have joined with this New Horizons wave, welcome! We hope you've been liking the game and the forum so far!
For more 1-year anniversary discussions, check out the threads created by the community in the New Horizons board, such as the "share your fondest memories thread" and "your map: then vs. now."
Expressing Your Opinions as Passionate Fans
From before New Horizons was released and with each announced update, there have been some very passionate opinions expressed about the game. People are expressing their passion for Animal Crossing in different ways and sometimes this can clash. We would like to remind everyone to not get too carried away and remember that we all love Animal Crossing and want it to succeed!
While New Horizons still seems to be missing some content, it's a very polished and well-made game in other ways. It may not be a perfect game to all of us, but it has added huge features and the biggest graphics improvements of the series, while reaching the largest audience by far. Some players may be very defensive about their love for the game and are sick of criticism after each update. Others may see the criticism as a chance for Nintendo to notice and make the changes they'd like to see. These are very different approaches, but we are all fans and should all try our hardest to understand where other people are coming from. Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a great game, but we'd all still like to see Nintendo add some of these missing features! (I want gyroids.)
The Bell Tree Forums Survey March 2021
Last May we posted a survey about the game, trading in the game, and online communities. One of the questions asked how important you thought some of the features in the game would be to you in 2021. We are here with our follow-up survey, which will also ask about your overall opinions on how New Horizons has turned out after a year of updates.
Click here to go to the survey!
You'll get 30 bells for completing it, but please put only your username exactly as it's spelled at the end of the survey to be sure that the bells get to you. Thanks!
TBT's Theme Update: Coming Soon
For those of you who remember the previous version of the forum we moved from last year, we had a theme that constantly changed with the seasons and time of day. While a few other Animal Crossing websites cycle their look between the four seasons, we went to the next level by also changing from light to dark with day and night. As promised, season and time changing is coming back to our current version of TBT soon. However, this time we decided to go even further than before! Instead of four cycled seasons, we'll have twenty-four.
In addition, day and night will slowly transition, so you may not even notice as it gets darker until you start to see the sun setting or the stars in the sky. We often like to go a little crazy with these projects at The Bell Tree, so we hope you'll enjoy it when it goes live... soon
.TBT's Easter 2021: Coming Soon
He's back! Zipper T. Bunny, one of TBT's greatest nightmare-inducing heroes/villains, unexpectedly visited us last Halloween and held another one of his (in)famous egg hunts on the forum after skipping it last Easter. Now the egg hunt is coming back to its original Easter date, so get ready for this two-day event on Saturday April 3rd and Sunday April 4th. We'll also be hosting a side event for Easter that will be starting a week from now on March 27th.
Good luck!
St. Patrick's Day Raffle Winners
This past Wednesday we held a special collectible raffle for St. Patrick's Day. We're giving away 10 Spring Shamrock and 5 Kaleidoclover collectibles! As promised, the winners will now be announced!
Spring Shamrock Winners
_Donut_, Equity, Emolga59, piske, Bluelady, jadetine, kiwikenobi, onionboy98, mayor_christin, Ganucci
Kaleidoclover Winners
Jhine7, SarahSays, Aurita, sushicatlikesart, Oldcatlady
Congrats to our 15 winners and better luck next time to the other 200+ participants! Winners, check your inventories later tonight for the new collectibles. I'll also post an update in this thread once they are distributed.
Other Small Changes and Future Updates
An unwritten rule of the forum has now been made official. The following line has been added to the types of posts that aren't allowed under the post quality section: "Text that contains entirely non-English languages without translation." This is an English language forum and users and moderators may not know other languages, which is why we ask that all posts are written in English.
This Direct is just about wrapped up, but while we're talking about things coming soon to TBT, there are a couple of other updates on the horizon that we'll announce more details about in the future. First, we'll have a few staff changes to announce including open applications for new staff members and the replacement of our old "sages" group for retired staff. Our retired staff have been waiting for several months while this has been delayed for other projects like the upcoming theme updates we announced above. Thanks for being patient!
Another change in the coming months is that we'll be updating the forum software to XenForo 2.2 (from the current 2.1). This will change a few of the everyday forum tools you use like the text editor and it will also allow us to add a few new features. We'll post more information about this in the future, including the planned date since there will be some downtime while the update happens.
Shop Restock
Some of our regular, but rarer shop collectibles have been restocked! Check the Shop for freshly stocked fruit, flowers, the New Leaf "house" rune collectibles, and more. We will continue stocking a few more over the next day or two.
Free Bells!
Our TBT Direct forum bell giveaway is back! Click the link below to receive 50 bells for free. Feel free to use them towards anything you'd like, but the giveaway link will expire after one week.
Click here to receive your 50 Bells!
We're glad you're all still here after a full year of New Horizons and we hope you'll enjoy these new features and events coming to The Bell Tree soon!
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. also i’m literally shaking at the thought of another egg hunt LMAO but i’m still excited and can’t wait to see what’ll be starting on the 27th, too!
