The Bell Tree - 10 years ago

[Alolan_Apples]

Although this site has been active for a lot longer than that, it’s now been 10 years since the modern era has begun, which was accelerated activity on this site. While we have the older members who joined the site back during TBT 1.0 and 2.0 before New Leaf, most of us have joined in 2013 or later.

I have a question for all of the older users on this site (not just the even older ones, but also the ones who joined between 2013 to 2015). How different was this site back during the early modern years compared to TBT today? As time went on, much of the content and features, as well as social issues like the collectible craze, have changed. Please refrain from bringing up past drama (at least the specific issues), and instead talk about the memories and features from TBT from the first three years of ACNL.

 

[amemome]

Joined in 2014!

One of the biggest changes is definitely the visuals. I remember there was a time when lineups were 6x2 (edit... not 6x6 my bad homies).

Language on the whole trended on the crasser side (in my opinion) and likewise, the memes were very 2014 appropriate (and maybe not 2023 appropriate). There was also a feature where you could pay to see posts if I remember correctly.

ACNL: There was a huge demand for the region-locked unorderables such as 7/11 set, afternoon tea set, and holiday exclusives. I think there were a handful of shops that offered these exclusives and I always appreciated the members who provided these services to everyone! (sorry idk why i stopped mid sentence... i finished my thought)

And finally... I miss getting interest on my ABD deposit...

 

[Alolan_Apples]

One thing I remember best was how seriously people took collectibles. Back then, with so much TBT into circulation and so little variety in collectibles, people rush to the TBT Shop every time a Bell Tree Direct occurs. Peaches, apples, and chocolate cakes, which are now cheap and easy to get, were among the most coveted collectibles. There was even a time when chocolate cakes sold for 4,000 TBT. At the time I joined, I was too poor to afford one, as it was the one collectible I wanted most. But now there are so many collectibles in multiple varieties, people have calmed down over collectibles and would only spend much on limited time ones like the eggs, glow wands, and balloons.

There was also the candy craze from October of 2014, where some of the most valuable collectibles that sold up to 4,000 TBT at most became worthless after the event.

 

[Trundle]

I joined back in 2010. Back then, TBT was still using Zetaboards, and City Folk was the active game. The 3DS was still a year out.

To put it simply, the forums back then were a lot more wild. Flame wars were very common, and the idea of having a community to chat with regularly online was still a novel idea to many of the young folk who found TBT (including myself). It felt like the community was just more unique and varied than it is now, but maybe it is nostalgia talking.

City Folk "clubs" were popular - ie you would join a group of people who you'd regularly chat and WiFi with. I was in Zap Heroes (run by Phil and ashwee). JasonBurrows owned some fat cat "rich players only" club.

New forums popped up seemingly daily. Everyone wanted to run their own forum, with the success of TBT, Smashboards, etc. After AXA fell, many communities were splintered and found homes here, or new places entirely.

Minecraft was also just gaining popularity at the time, so that was the fun new thing.

Skip ahead to 2011-2012, we are in TBT 2.0 (vBulletin), and the forums were very dead. As far as I can remember, they were much more dead then than they are now, but I could be mistaken. A lot of the core members aggregated on the IRC for chatting and some shenanigans. We had Mario Kart Mondays, where we played Mario Kart 7 and chatted.

Lastly, collectibles and special forum events were not really a thing back then! One time there was a signature contest back in 2012 where I got the snowglobe. It wasn't until ACNL came out that we got the dobutso no mori house collectibles, and things started heating up. People just hung out to hang out, to get to know one another, and play games with their friends. Good times

 

[Alolan_Apples]

@Trundle

Wow! I may be an older member, but I didn’t realize how active and wild this forum was before I joined this site. From my experience, this site was at its worst in 2015. Was it worse than it was in 2015?

 

[Trundle]

@Trundle

Wow! I may be an older member, but I didn’t realize how active and wild this forum was before I joined this site. From my experience, this site was at its worst in 2015. Was it worse than it was in 2015?

I was just a kid, but back in 2009 I remember being linked a flame war on TBT from AXA, and I specifically remember typing a post out like "I will never go on TBT again as long as I live". I think they could get pretty aggressive

 

[LateGamer]

Well. I was putting good thought into this and then..uhm, uh...You weren't actually talking about older members...I would fit in that category but I'm new to the forum.

 

[Croconaw]

You can look at my join date and assume I'm an older member, but I wasn't active at all back then. I only started becoming active in 2021. My activity gradually increased. I'm happy with the person I am on the forum right now. I'm not happy with some of the decisions I made over the past two years. I feel like a few members have certain views on me based on my last two years here, but there's nothing I can do about it now. I can only allow time to pass and show that I'm a better person.

 

[Alolan_Apples]

I also remember back in my early months on this site, there was this one user that I rarely interacted with. All I knew about her at the time was that she won a contest and an event. Now she’s one of the administrators, and the two best things I can remember about her was the Coco head avatar and when she changed Jeremy’s username just for fun.

 

[Venn]

I joined back in 2013 and one of things I easily remember was the Pixel Villagers signature trend. Everyone had them.
They were all pixel backgrounds with our town names, rep names and other informations and then we had the ever so popular pixel villagers to show off who we had or who we wanted. So many shops opened for it too. Now a days, everyone has their own style tho I still see some from time to time.

 

[Seastar]

I wasn't very active back when I joined in 2014 and I don't remember things too well. One of the things I remember best was when several users, including staff, had Frozen-themed avatars and signatures.
I also remember there used to be default avatar options of a couple of villagers and NPCs, and we had little Gyroid emotes.
There were events going on like the egg hunt but I wouldn't end up participating in any of them until 2020.

 

[Midoriya]

I was here 10 years ago. All I remember is that it was like the wild, wild west compared to now. Things are much more laidback on the site these days.

That being said, the old site had more charm to it, imo. Not to say this updated version doesn't, but sometimes it just feels like there's something missing...

 

[Belle T]

Bell Tree in 2023: Let's all partake in a cozy little arts and crafts project to celebrate the precious diversity of life!

Bell Tree in 2013: Let's all go down to the nearest construction site and knock over a porta loo while a helpless worker is still inside!

That's the impression I get whenever I'm browsing and see that someone has bumped an ancient thread from over a decade ago.

 

[MiniPocketWorld]

Why was the interest done away with for the ABD anyway?

 

[King koopa]

Why was the interest done away with for the ABD anyway?

I wasn't around during that time, but if I had to guess, maybe people were abusing that feature to get lots of tbt so they had to remove it to prevent that

 

[Croconaw]

I wasn't around during that time, but if I had to guess, maybe people were abusing that feature to get lots of tbt so they had to remove it to prevent that

It was being abused, so they got rid of it altogether.

 

[King koopa]

It was being abused, so they got rid of it altogether.

Dang, that's sad, is that also why they removed birthday bells? I'm not quite sure what that was, but apparently that was also removed as well?

 

[Croconaw]

Dang, that's sad, is that also why they removed birthday bells? I'm not quite sure what that was, but apparently that was also removed as well?

I’m not sure why birthday bells were removed, since you can’t really abuse that feature.

 

[Kitsuragi]

Dang, that's sad, is that also why they removed birthday bells? I'm not quite sure what that was, but apparently that was also removed as well?

i think birthday bells being removed was after the removal of the interest feature, i vaguely remember getting birthday bells a few years ago but my memory is hazy on when it was exactly.

I joined back in 2013 and one of things I easily remember was the Pixel Villagers signature trend. Everyone had them.
They were all pixel backgrounds with our town names, rep names and other informations and then we had the ever so popular pixel villagers to show off who we had or who we wanted. So many shops opened for it too. Now a days, everyone has their own style tho I still see some from time to time.

oh yeah, i had a shop making these, haha. so did ariane, i think...?


not necessarily 10 years back, 8 years at most, but when i first started using TBT i remember there being a lot of drama. i was a part of quite a bit of it too because i was an annoying teenager lmao. also that one confession blog on tumblr which im fairly certain is long gone. it's MUCH different now.

 

[Alolan_Apples]

I wasn't around during that time, but if I had to guess, maybe people were abusing that feature to get lots of tbt so they had to remove it to prevent that

Two reasons:

1. Some users have been pooling in TBT Bells to collect more interest sooner.
2. The interest system only benefitted richer users and had no use for the poorer users.

There used to be a lot more ways to make TBT without posting, but a couple members abused the systems because they were too greedy. We once had Welcome Bells, where you get paid TBT for simply creating a new account. There were also referral Bells and birthday Bells. But they abused these systems, so the staff had to take them away. Birthday Bells, they used to pay 100 TBT plus age, but they took out the age bonus and lowered it to 70 TBT. Welcome Bells, there were too many alternative accounts to collect more Bells. Even poll creation Bells have been wedged down due to the declining quality of polls. And it was all because of greed.