Is the animal crossing hype...gone?

[polarpoppunk]

Hi all! I am not necessarily a new member, but I haven't been on since my New Leaf days (years ago) and figured since I'm just now building up my Island - might as well re-introduce! My Island is called "Little Bea" and is in the Northern Hemisphere! My villager/player name is 'Maizie'

I've noticed this site is a lot more dead/quiet than from when I was actively playing everyday/visiting the site years ago..is ACNH not as big as NL in terms of players? The Villagers/dreamies thread has super sparse postings and one thing I really missed about Animal Crossing was the community and trading on here lol. Anyways! If anyone ever wants to play to play together or chat ping me!

 

[Suguri]

Welcome back to The Bell Tree! I don’t see how the forums are “dead” because there’s still posts being made, like, every few minutes in general. See here! Also, I joined pretty late but New Horizons was crazy popular back when it was launched during the pandemic, so there were lots of NH players who joined the forums, I believe. Most of them aren’t active here anymore except for a plentiful few I see every day. Also, the community and trading aspects are still here; it’s just different, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, welcome back again. I hope you enjoy it here!

 

[Dunquixote]

Hi! Welcome back! It is nice to meet you! The forums are far from dead even in the animal crossing threads. There are still plenty of people posting about the games and playing it. Maybe some of the hype is gone because I don’t think it gets any more updates or new content (NH I mean), but there are still many that like it.

 

[skarmoury]

Welcome back!! In my opinion, game hype really does tend to taper off as the years go by as newer games get released, I was also part of TBT during the ACNL era and I did kinda feel the ACNL hype here was dwindling esp. 2017 onwards (my basis really is the TBT fair activity, lol). ACNH is on its 4th year running so I can kinda see why it's not as hyped as before!! But as others said, while the forums haven't been as active as when the game was released, there's still a considerable amout of people playing the game on here

 

[Croconaw]

Welcome back. This is one of the more active forums. Forums have generally died since social media took over, but this one still has decent amounts of activity. I'm also pretty sure activity in general will rise once TBTWC 2024 starts, which is less than one month away.

 

[SkyKnight03]

Welcome back!

This is such a thought invoking point too. With a series like Animal Crossing that spaces out its entries, there's bound to be that waiting period with the community.

As someone in the Dragon Quest fandom, it's not unfamiliar at all. But it's nice that Animal Crossing can be played long term and it's a bit easier to get through that holdover period.

 

[Halloqueen]

Welcome back!

There are definitely highs and low in terms of forum activity. New Horizons, launching in the early days of the pandemic when there was a lot of uncertainty, confusion and lockdowns, had a big boom period since everyone and their grandma bought it. It was very popular for a while, but as someone who was on the forums during the New Leaf era, it seems like the hype around New Horizons was considerably more short-lived. With the piecemeal content updates dripfeeding content to the game, a game which had less engaging things to do than New Leaf and not as much to do with friends online, it seems like forum activity had already dipped after the first year and I don't think even the 2.0 update and the Happy Home Paradise DLC affected much of anything from my vantage point. I don't know the numbers, but I didn't necessarily notice another wave of newcomers or anything, or at least I don't remember it. New Leaf, comparatively, seemed like it was a longer bleed of interest dropping off, whereas New Horizons seemed to pour out basically all at once. This is just speaking to this forum, though, as I only barely used Nookazon in the early days and don't know what sort of sustained levels of popularity there might be among the fandom at large.

Forum activity always bounces back with the release of new mainline games, but we haven't had one since New Horizons in 2020 and don't know when the next one will be announced, much less released. So yeah, compared to those periods, we're in a lull.

That said, there's still a solid community here. Some people are still interested in the game itself, whereas others aren't so much after all this time and prefer to hang out and discuss stuff in the other sections like Brewster's Café, Nintendo Treehouse and Gamers Lounge' or play forum games in The Basement. Some make friends and/or form friend groups. Some get into the forum collectible scene.

There's certainly still activity in the Animal Crossing sections, but whether it's sufficiently to your liking is another question. However, these forums still have plenty to offer in other areas. The forums have various events throughout the year to keep the community engaged, having fun and giving us things to look forward to. You can see what sort of forum events are on the horizon throughout the rest of this year here, in the February 27th Bell Tree Direct thread. There's currently a flower collectible breeding event that will unfortunately be ending tomorrow, but as you'll notice, there's plenty still to come throughout the rest of the year. The TBT World Championships, the next event, will be competitive gaming in things like Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart, Splatoon 3, etc. The Bell Tree Fair, starting in late July and running through to late August, is always a big, popular event with plenty to do. You ought to check out some of the events when they roll around. They're always posted in The Bulletin Board section up at the top.

 

[S.J.]

Welcome back to the forums!

I don't pay much attention to the changes in forum activity, but it's still very easy to trade on the forums, as well as chat about AC, get advice, etc. Hope you enjoy being back!

 

[Disneyfangirl23]

Welcome back to bell tree forums! Do you like Disney?

 

[-Blue-]

Welcome back to the forums!

Yes the hype has died down considerably, but that's to be expected as the game is now 4 years old. But also New Horizon was a very divisive game for long time players so many dropped the game sooner than they had New Leaf or previous titles. The dripfed content did not help matters, nor did timelocking everything. Lack of multiplayer when its predecessor had it didn't help. So it's understandable that activity dipped fast because of how Nintendo handled the game's release and withholding of its content. Why they did this or sit on the bulk of it for over a year and a half we will never know.

With that said, there are still a lot of members here and many conversations to be had. The staff also host a lot of interesting and fun forum events that anyone can join in on. So just hop on by and check it out.

 

[Mayor Anthony]

Recently came back to New Horizons from a 2 and half year hiatus. I did some considerable progress during the first few months of release. Now I’m redoing my island.
On another note, I remember I used to be very active in the forums during the New Leaf days. The fandom grew exponentially since then. Anyways, glad to be back.