Hello and welcome to another long-awaited The Bell Tree Direct. This is the first Direct of 2016 and it's filled with all sorts of different announcements. We have collectibles, board changes, staff applications, and more, so be sure you read it from start to finish!
Contact the Staff Board
We now have a Contact the Staff board in The Bell Tree HQ, which will allow you to privately contact the staff when you can't post your question or concern in The Bell Tree HQ. This will be a faster version of the Contact Us form and will also allow you to send a message to all staff at once, instead of sending a private message to one moderator.
This form will also be replacing the Booker's Corrections shop. Instead of purchasing a collectible, you may request your correction directly through the Contact the Staff form. The bell fee will be subtracted from your bells when the correction is made. If you currently have a correction item and haven't used it yet, please PM Jeremy for a bell refund.
Expanded Collectible Lineup
After popular demand, we are pleased to announce that the collectible lineup will be expanded to two rows of six!
We understand that a few of you may have your 2x5 lineups messed up. Although there's nothing we can do about it now, we will be announcing a new collectible reordering feature under a premium service in a future TBT Direct.
Staff Reorganization
The TBT staff will now be organized into three different groups: Administrator, Moderator, and Project Staff. This new project staff group will consist of staff who help with events, graphics, collectibles, and other forum projects, but are not forum moderators. This change will allow us to add users to the staff who can contribute to site projects, while implementing a higher standard for our moderator applicants.
The project staff group will initially consist of Jas0n, LaBelleFleur, and Thunder, who will be making a return to the staff after previously retiring as a moderator. We also hope to add additional users to this new staff group through our application process, as described below.
Staff Applications
We are now accepting applications for moderators and project staff. You may apply for both positions, but please note that we have raised the minimum age requirement for moderators from 15 to 18. We ask that you do not apply for the moderator position if you are under the age of 18 or under the age of 15 for project staff. The moderator position takes a great deal of time and effort, so unless you're willing to put a lot of work into The Bell Tree, the project staff group may be a better fit for you. Please keep this in mind when submitting your application(s).
For the project staff position, we are primarily looking for creative and artistic members. While this isn't a requirement, we will be more likely to choose artistically-inclined people to help with site graphics.
Leif moves into town!
One of the collectible requests we've been hearing consistently for years and years now has been a new series of flower collectibles. We're pleased to share that this is finally happening beginning today with the introduction of three new Cosmos flower collectibles available now in the TBT Shop!
Similar to our previous fruit series, we will be releasing flower collectibles in batches over the next year. Since there are so many and as a way of keeping them more exciting, they will be cycled in and out of the Shop throughout the year. The table below is a preview of our schedule for the year and the release of future flowers will be announced in other Bell Tree Directs as we approach their release.
| Flowers | Availability |
| May 7th - June 31st |
| TBA | July 1st - August 31st |
| TBA | September 1st - October 31st |
| TBA | November 1st - December 31st |
For the first rounds, we are only releasing basic flowers found in shops, which will be in unlimited quantity and reasonably priced. This will expand the amount of common collectibles available in the Shop for newer and poorer users who have trouble obtaining many as they are either absurdly expensive or rare. For our more seasoned collectible hunters though, we will release special hybrid flowers at a later date which will be rare, expensive, and harder to obtain!
Trading Board Reorganization
In a TBT Direct last year we mentioned reorganizing the trading boards to group all Animal Crossing transactions together. This change will start taking effect now and go even further to organize the trading boards by category instead of by currency. The Museum Shop will also be moved under the Museum to keep all art threads together. To summarize the Animal Crossing changes, all item trading should now take place in Re-Tail and all villager trading should take place in the Villager Trading Plaza regardless of currency. The TBT Marketplace will continue to be used for collectible and miscellaneous trading with TBT bells.
New Member Currency
Back in October last year, we made the unfortunate decision to discontinue the beginner welcome bells for new users due to constant abuse by some. This has left our newest users in a frustrating place regrading the high prices of forum add-ons in the Shop, which were set high originally with welcome bells in mind. To combat this, we're introducing a new currency called Seashells today!
New users will now receive 10 Seashells upon registration which may be spent in a new shop titled Kapp'n's Seaside Shack. In this new Shop, our newest members can purchase some select forum add-ons for free using Seashells without spending hard to earn bells. These add-ons include a username change, bonus avatar features, PM mailboxes, and title color changes.
Finally, we plan to reimburse these seashells retroactively to users who never received welcome bells after they were disabled. This should be automatic in the coming days, but it's possible you'll be missed if you joined close to either the change now or the change back in October 2015. Please PM a staff member if you don't receive seashells within a few days, but are certain you never received welcome bells in the past.
UPDATE 6/5: Seashells are now distributed! Sorry for the lengthy delay. - Justin
Gender Profile Option
You can now specify your gender in your profile. To edit this option go to Settings > Edit Profile > Additional Information section.
The field will default to "undisclosed" for all users and can be changed to "Male," "Female," or "Other."
My Nintendo & Download Codes Update
Nintendo recently launched a new rewards program last month replacing Club Nintendo which offers download codes for select games and themes. As many of you know, our rules have long prohibited the trading of download codes on TBT as they are Representative of real-world money, so we felt we should clear up our view on the new My Nintendo rewards.
To keep it short and sweet:
- Download codes obtainable through redemption of Platinum Points may be traded on TBT freely while they are available and up to one month afterwards. This is okay as Plat Points have no relation to purchases.
- Download codes obtainable through redemption of Gold Points may not be traded and will be treated the same as other codes we consider to already be banned.
- We will maintain a list in the TBT Marketplace regarding permitted My Nintendo download codes, please refer to that thread for more details and as confirmation of what is okay to trade.
Of course, these rules are subject to future change as My Nintendo is a very new service and we may change our views on some of this depending on how My Nintendo plays out.
The End
Due to the amount of features we are releasing it may take a bit to implement everything, so please sit tight as we add it all. Thanks to Justin for writing and implementing the flower, seashell, and rules sections. Note that we will not be having a shop restock immediately, but will be announcing one later in the week. We hope you enjoyed this announcement-packed TBT Direct. See you next time!
