TBT's Lunar New Year 2024: Closing Ceremony

[Chris]

Lunar New Year 2024

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After two weeks, The Bell Tree's Lunar New Year 2024 celebrations have come to an end! For those of you who celebrate, we hope you had a wonderful time and that you enjoyed the opportunity to share the holiday with your TBT friends. It was important to us to bring attention to a holiday we know many of our users (and staff) celebrate and we were glad to see such a positive response to the concept. For those of you who don't celebrate, we hope that you were also able to enjoy the event and that you learned more about this holiday from your fellow forum members.

Today we are announcing the winners of our Bright Beginnings, Draconic Designs, and Flicker & Fortunes events. But first let's get the boring housekeeping stuff out of the way.


Housekeeping

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After our 2023 Stole-iday (winter holiday) event, we decided that we needed to re-evaluate how we award event prizes on TBT. So, after a team discussion, we decided to trial a new approach during this event. Each of our four event hosts—Chris, LadyDestani, Mairmalade, and Mistreil—selected one entry per event to award a staff favourite to. We worked together to avoid duplicates to ensure that we presented four unique winners per event. We also coordinated to ensure there were no duplicates across events. This means that it is only possible for a person to win one event and therefore there is no overlap in event winners. Let us know what you think of this new format.

As previously announced, our staff favourite winners may request the date and time changed on their animated Shooting Star collectible. You can do so using the Contact the Staff board. Please note that if you request a specific date on your collectible before it goes out, you may still initially receive the collectible without the custom time stamp. This will be manually amended later and it does not require you to make a further post.

No further prizes are coming, so please spend your Dragon Tokens as soon as possible. There is no benefit in holding onto them. We are not running a raffle nor offering a way to convert them to bells. If they are not spent by the end of Sunday March 3rd 2024 then you risk losing them altogether. We may not give any further warning before removing the Lunar New Year collectibles from the Shop.

As a reminder, The Bell Tree will be going down for maintenance on Monday March 4th 2024. This is expected to take a significant portion of the day. This maintenance is for updates and backend work, so when we come back online there won't be any noticeable changes. Feel free to come and chat in our Discord channel while the site is undergoing maintenance.

Finally, as promised, the Fortune Cookie will be made tradable shortly.

The Winners!

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And finally we reach the main attraction. Here are our twelve Lunar New Year 2024 winners! Each of our twelve winners will win an animated Shooting Star collectible.

Bright Beginnings
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Aquilla​	digimon​
Holla​	JellyLu​

Draconic Designs ​

Firesquids​	k o i​
Muna​	wrenbow​

Flicker & Fortune ​

himekirako​	lieryl​
Mokuren​	Saylor​

Congratulations to our winners! Your prizes will go out either sometime this evening or tomorrow.

Thank you to everyone who participated in our first ever Lunar New Year event!

 

[Alolan_Apples]

Congratulations Aquilla, digimon, Holla, JelluLu, Firesquids, k o i, Muna, wrenbow, himekirako, lieryl, Mokuren, and Saylor for winning the Shooting Star! You’ll have a star or two to wish upon as the site lives on!

 

[LambdaDelta]

gorgeous winners all round. big grats to all of you

 

[ShinyDungeoneer]

congrats all around to the winners of the shooting stars! you deserved to win them, your entries were amazing and more than worthy of being a staff favorite (well, everyone's entries were lol)

 

[oak]

Good job everyone! Everything was lovely especially those fancy lanterns. I was impressed by how intricate they were.

 

[duckykate]

congrats everyone! I really like the new system for unique winners, I think it's a great opportunity for more people to get collectibles!

 

[Aerith]

Congratulations to the winners! Beautiful work you guys

 

[Mokuren]

Congrats to all the winners! All the entries I saw during the event are so amazing - I wouldn't be able to choose my favorits! The laterns are so nice to look at. They are my favorit part of the event.

That being said I think the new concept of only unique winners is a really nice change and helps to give more people the chance to win (I am not biased because I won or anything).

And omg I actually won a shooting star I can't believe I won!!! I don't have one yet and I was always in awe of its beauty. Thank you for the super fun event! I hope it will return next year. Snake collectibles would be fire.

 

[Croconaw]

Congratulations to the winners. I've been active here for the last three years, and think this is the first event I didn't actively participate in. I can't say for sure if I would participate had it been held during a different time of year. I'm usually not in the best mindset during this time of year, and I was hoping to an extent that this event would be a distraction. I didn't end up participating at all, though. Maybe I'm just not interested in the Lunar New Year in general, because I was not feeling it this time.

Disclaimer: Nothing against the staff for this event. This is a big year for the forum and is a perfect time to try different things. It was something new and even if it wasn't my thing, I know that at the very least, a few people had fun with it. I consider that a win.

Still, I'm really fascinated looking at all of the creations for this event. I could never, with those lanterns. They are so intricate and I can't imagine I'd be able to recreate those even if the supplies were given to me. I'm impressed.

 

[Firesquids]

Honored to be featured among such beautiful entries, congrats to the winners! I loved this event so much!
Happy Lunar New Year!

 

[Roxxy]

Congratulations to all winners! Our amazing artists continue to shine Absolutely gorgeous entries

 

[mogyay]

congrats to all the winners!! every single one is so amazing & well deserved !!!!!

 

[Chere.]

Congrats to all the winners! Love the variety of all the entries. I can't imagine how hard it was for staff to narrow it down to their favourites; there were so many amazing entries in each event. It was so fun to experience a Lunar New Year event, and a very refreshing change from the usual Valentine's Day events. Thanks for hosting!

 

[Firesquids]

Oh forgot to mention I like the system for having no overlap winners. In events where winning more than once doesn't award an additional prize, that's better for everyone!

 

[wrenbow]

Congrats to all the winners, and thanks so much for the staff favourite!! I loved how vibrant all of the entries were, there were so many beautiful ones to choose from. Thanks to the staff for hosting yet another fun event!!

 

[rosetti]

Congratulations EVERYONE, soooo many gorgeous entries As mentioned above, this event felt rly refreshing - reminds me of the fire festival from 2015 (???) Looking forward to future events having a similar format, it's much more digestible than camp/ a fair but just as rewarding and fun. Thank you for all your staff efforts as always And incredibly grateful for staff fav! Cheered me up after being a lil 'unlucky' w luck of the dragon lol

However, can't believe I'm saying this, but can u please bring back stardusting events rather than spending tbt events LOL, or a different style for these kinda goal events??

Oh forgot to mention I like the system for having no overlap winners. In events where winning more than once doesn't award an additional prize, that's better for everyone!

I also really like this new format, thank you for introducing it and trying it out! I imagine it's a bit easier to have a handful of staff do picks rather than the majority of the team voting?? Plus more members can get prizes - seems like a win win tbh

 

[Halloqueen]

Congratulations to all of the winners! Great work.

I'll also throw my support behind the no overlap change.

I don't know whether Lunar New Year will be a recurring event moving forward to build a zodiac figurine collection, but if so I look forward to its return in the future. And if not, hey, the dragons are cool, so couldn't have landed on a better year.

Looking forward to the Farewell to New Leaf Online event next week and the Twelfth Annual Easter Egg Hunt at the end of March. See you all then!

 

[.: Meri :.]

Huge congrats to the twelve winners, all of them are super deserving entries!! I hope you all enjoy your new shooting stars!! Especially you @lieryl CONGRATS I know you've wanted one forever!!! pls toss the bouquet in my general direction so I'll be next
And great work to everyone who entered too! Seriously, there were so many outstanding entries this time, I really don't envy staff for having to narrow it down to just four per event. Although twelve winners makes for a very thematically appropriate total!

Speaking of, I think no-overlap is a good way to handle staff favorites! ^^ It's definitely really exciting to win multiple, but when it doesn't award anything extra than just winning once does, I see no harm in sharing the favorites space. And if it's an easier process internally, then I really can't think of a reason why not.

I may not celebrate it myself, but I hope to see the Lunar New Year events continue! This was fun and there's a few zodiac figurines I'd absolutely love to have in collectible form.

 

[-Blue-]

Congrats to all the winners. I didn't really participate that much in this event aside from a mass envelop gifting at the beginning. So I never got around to viewing all of the works. I'll have to check them out soon. The winning pieces all look great. I think this new way of doing the awards/winnings will be a good change. Things were just too messy with the last event.

 

[Paperboy012305]

Congrats to all. Everyone is so talented with their entries, it makes me jealous that I could have such artisan talents as well. But alas, I chose to ignore that factor. Oh well, no use crying over spilled milk.

I was certain that most of the entries I saw were going to win, especially @Mokuren's entry. I love seeing me some fake buildings!

Can't wait for the next event.