New Staff
We are pleased to announced two additions to both of our staff groups, moderators and project staff.
Jake (Jake.) has been a consistently active member of The Bell Tree since 2008 and will be joining the team as a moderator. He has been helpful to other users around the forum and has shown to have an understanding of how the site is run. Jake is also heavily involved in the online Animal Crossing community as a whole in addition to his years of active involvement here at The Bell Tree.
Tom is one of The Bell Tree's long time members, joining the site in 2006. He has shown a thorough understanding of how the site works and has been helpful to other users in Bell Tree HQ threads. Tom's long history with the forum will be a useful asset to the staff.
Laudine has been a member of The Bell Tree for two years and is most famous for creating the winning Pumpkin Cupcake collectible during last year's Halloween event, in addition to winning other art contests here. Her background in graphic design will be a great addition to our project staff team and we anticipate her collectibles and other graphics with future events and site functions.
Peter (Pxter) has shown to be an active and responsible member of the community since joining last year. His creativity and involvement in The Bell Tree will be useful in our events and other projects.
Oblivia has been a moderator of the forum for one year and has shown to be an extremely hard working and helpful community leader. Her commitment to maintaining and improving The Bell Tree has been a very valuable asset in the last year, which is why I have asked her to expand this to the administrator role. As an administrator, Oblivia's attentive dedication to TBT will continue to make it a better place.
Retiring Staff
As you may have seen, Jas0n and LaBelleFleur resigned from the staff last week. They are now a part of the Sage group, for retired staff.
Jas0n joined The Bell Tree in 2008 and was made an IRC operator a couple years later while IRC was just relaunching on TBT. In 2013, he become a moderator of the forum. Since then, Jas0n contributed to site functions, decision making, and events. The two suns and backgrounds you see during our sunrise and sunset themes were created by him, as well as some pieces of The Woods theme. He lead and helped with many events, including TBT Fair 2013, Halloween 2013, TBT Fair 2014, and Fire Festival 2015. Jas0n's sense of humor and creativity made the forum more fun for everyone and we wish him the best of luck.
LaBelleFleur joined the forum in 2014 and was added to the staff as a moderator a year later. She helped with events throughout her time on the staff, including Halloween 2015, Christmas 2015, and Easter 2016, and an unreleased one in 2016. The positive and friendly way she interacted with the community is something that was appreciated by everyone on The Bell Tree.
Thank you to both Jas0n and LaBelleFleur for the time and dedication they put into TBT.
Seashells Now Available
After their announcement during the last Bell Tree Direct, Seashells finally went live last Sunday. If you registered after October 11, 2015, you should have received 10 seashells. If you did not receive either welcome bells or seashells after joining the forum, you can make a ticket in the Contact the Staff board. This new currency will be given to new members and can be used to buy starter add-ons for the forum, sold in the new Kapp'n's Seaside Shack shop. If you joined since October 11th, be sure to check it out!
Now I'll hand it over to Justin for a few more announcements.
Introducing TBT Discord Chat Room
Going as far back as the early days of 2006, The Bell Tree has used IRC (Internet Relay Chat) as our primary form of a real-time chat room for our users. The IRC has been a bit of a roller coaster in activity over the years but it's always remained a part of the forum. In the past year or so though, it's reached a new low so we're retiring it today in favor of a new chat room known as Discord.
Discord is a new chat service introduced in the past year which will be the basis of The Bell Tree's real-time chat for the foreseeable future. It's incredibly modern running either in your browser or a great app available on all major platforms.
Get started with the TBT Discord Chat Room in your web browser by clicking the link below to be invited to our server on Discord:
Once you're in the chat room, it's recommended that you create a Discord account if you haven't yet already. Once you've done that, you can download the official Discord applications and login to them with your account to access our chat room everywhere.
We invite everyone interested in becoming more involved in The Bell Tree's community to join us in the Discord chat room when they can and give it a try, even if you've never joined the IRC before. Everyone is welcome as long as you can have a respectful and substantive chat with others. Our new staff will be keeping an eye on things to make sure they stay enjoyable.
It's also a great opportunity to get to know members of our staff as real people, not as a mysterious colored username that's gonna whack you with the ban hammer. We'll be hanging out in the Discord regularly!
Revealing The Next Flower Collectibles
Last month in the previous Bell Tree Direct, we launched the beginning of our expansive new flower collectible series. As we announced then, new flowers will be added to the Shop while the past flowers are removed approximately every two months, with the new flowers announced in Bell Tree Directs when possible.
So here's our second reveal today with the second set of flowers launching in the Shop starting July 1st with the Pansies! Like the Cosmos, these lovely flowers will be available in basic colors of Red, White, and Yellow for the low price of 39 Bells a piece and entirely unlimited stock. And of course, look forward to rarer hybrid flowers in the future!
Here's an updated table:
| Flowers | Availability |
| May 7th - June 30th |
| July 1st - August 31st |
| TBA | September 1st - October 31st |
| TBA | November 1st - December 31st |
Don't forget: You still have until the end of June to pick up the current Cosmos flowers before they cycle out of the Shop for almost a year! Expect the Cosmos to removed and the Pansies to be added alongside the monthly Birthstone swap at the first of the month.
E3 2016 Approaches!
The largest gaming event of the year is now less than a week away! Just like the past few years, a new temporary E3 2016 board has been opened under the gaming category. We encourage you to use this board for the next week to discuss the live events and latest announcements from the show. After E3, the threads will be moved back into their appropriate boards. We'll also be hanging out in the new Discord chat room -- come watch the live streams with us there!
While we welcome all gaming discussion, the focus for most of our forum is Nintendo of course! So here's the low down on what Nintendo is doing this year:
press.nintendo.com said:
That's all, and look out for an announcement about the next TBT Fair soon!
