i miss randomly getting added to the BTs of people i spoke to like once. if that's not a sign of site popularity then idk what is

pinkcottoncandy was iconic. to this day i still think her stories were 100% real.

"i miss randomly getting added to the BTs of people i spoke to like once. if that's not a sign of site popularity then idk what is"

This! Everyone was just way more social and not stuck up. Like people actually wanted friends. Now everyone just keeps to themselves and their few friends.

so hey let's be friends
i'm dying to see how this one ends

I agree with a lot of this... while overall I value quality over quantity when it comes to forum activity, when there's hardly anything going on then it's difficult for me to really judge it's efficiency...

I think it's good that ACC is trying to promote itself elsewhere ie twitter and facebook to try to bring in activity, but trying to expand on that (possibly tumblr?) could be a good idea as well.

I feel that Miiverse has made a difference as well as it's easier to just post questions on there or browse through what people are doing.

I miss the Aussie PT, not sure if it's still in existence.

And I know this sounds bad but I miss the old ACWW seeding gangs. They gave us something to fear I remember watching videos of them seeding people on youtube and getting so angry. I can't remember what they were called but there was this one seeding gang that always had white spikey hair, a hockey mask and I think a skull shirt, that was their uniform.

"And I know this sounds bad but I miss the old ACWW seeding gangs. They gave us something to fear  I remember watching videos of them seeding people on youtube and getting so angry. I can't remember what they were called but there was this one seeding gang that always had white spikey hair, a hockey mask and I think a skull shirt, that was their uniform."

It was Z0diac. I remember watching those videos years ago. At the time, I remember feeling bad for those people. But now I find it amusing, especially the comments.

Let's make a new friends PT.

"pinkcottoncandy was iconic. to this day i still think her stories were 100% real."

OMG I totally forgot about her LOL. Those old ACC spammers were pretty amusing. XD

Oh man. 2006/2007 was so great, I really miss it and I don't think I'll ever forget it. I have to thank Animal Crossing and ACC for getting me through a really bad time at school, and now I'm 18 it feels like the end of an era. I had so many buddies on here, my PT's were buzzing, and when I lost my old account it felt like I'd lost all my friends too I have NL now but it doesn't feel the same, I think ACC died when City Folk came out tbh.

When I first got ACC and typed in AC Characters to see which ones there were, this site popped up and I remember being so fascinated with this site, I used to dream of joining it.

"I think ACC died when City Folk came out tbh."

Actually I'm pretty sure the sharp decline is more of a recent thing (the past 2-3 years or so). 2008-2011 were still very active years. Maybe not as active as the WW days, but still.

I miss my friends from 2004 & 2005, I miss going on wifi with them. Most of them just disappeared..

I just found this thread, and read pretty much the whole thing. And thought I would weigh in my thoughts, if for no other reason, as a thanks to you guys that are still hanging out with us, and for sharing your thoughts.

For what it's worth, I've seen the decline in ACC's activity happen over the years. But the trending is fairly predictable, and has seemed to recover with the release of each game. The problem, and the trend I've noticed, is that after each game is released, the longevity of the spike decreases with each new game -- and drastically so with AC:NL.

When AC:CF was released late 2008 (about the time I started tracking traffic with Google Analytics), we saw a peak of about 17k users per day. But the decline in activity was gradual, and we never saw activity drop below 3k users/day.

Fast forward to the AC:NL release just a year and a half ago (middle of 2013), and we saw a crazy spike -- peaking at over 28k users/day, and staying above the previous peak of 17k for almost the two months of June/July. But just a little over a year later, we dropped below 3k users/day for the first time since tracking analytics.

As you guys pointed out, there are several factors involved: the state of the web and social networks, how we handled things on ACC, and the state of gaming and the short-lived enthusiasm people have for games these days vs. 5 or more years ago.

And just for the record, I and ACC will be here as long as we have people that want to hang out. But if I'm honest with you, I'm not sure what can be done to get things back to where they were. The world is moving to more fast-paced and less focused styles of communicating, like Twitter, FB, Reddit, etc. Doesn't seem like many want to hang out on sites specific to a single video game much lately.

Even once we get the long-overdue bell shop in place, I'm not sure how much it will help generate and keep active members.

I'll continue watching this thread for feedback, but thought I would drop in and do a quick brain dump for those interested.

That's an interesting read, thanks for posting it. I love looking at analytic information. Out of curiosity, how big WAS the drop-off after COPPA went into effect? That really seems like when things started trending downward.

Also, I never would have known that NL brought that many people here. They certainly didn't show it ver much heh.

Bear in mind that these numbers account for all visitors -- members + non-members -- not just members. It's hard to tell how much of this splits into the two. However, I do remember the signup numbers going way up around then too, so I don't think it was just visitors.

Re: COPPA, looking at the numbers, we may have lost *some*, but looking at the overall picture, I can't see that it hurt us long-term. We were in a natural state of decline already before COPPA, so it's hard to tell how much of it was due to COPPA just the natural progression. For example, the month before COPPA went into effect (12/2010), we had about 86k users/month, then dropped as low as 57k after COPPA, but we shortly bounced back to 73k.

And again, once AC:NL came out (6/2013), we were killing it at 358k users/month. But we just couldn't maintain that level of activity very long. By 11/2013, we were back down to 95k users/month.

Right now, we have about 68k users/month (12/2014), which is about where we've been during off-peak seasons, but our daily count is slightly lower than usual.

In the end, I will say that we're far from a ghost town. Some of you remember the way things were shortly after a game was released (always when we're at our peak), so you're basing your experiences from that. But still, each game release will see shorter and shorter peak periods, unless we figure out a way to keep members engaged -- both in Animal Crossing, and in ACC.

Personally though, I find that the decrease in numbers is something that will definitely occur for a while. However, whether or not that is permanent, I don't know. You see, younger members (preteens mainly) lose interest fast not just in the site, but in just about anything. I'll use my little sister as an example. She's 11 right now so she falls into the age group that I'm talking about. If she were to put something down for a week or two, she won't pick it up again for quite a while. Often times, it will be more than a year before she remembers it. Now, considering that around this time school seems longer and more important, people of that age group tend to put things down even more. In this case, ACC is being forgotten quite a lot. However, correct me if I'm wrong, kids tend to remember things if they involve little games here and there. Perhaps small little "achievements" for them would be helpful. Now it would take a mind other than mine to figure out how to incorporate this, but it is something worth trying. Then all we need to do is wait for the next Animal Crossing game, assuming there will be another.

Nothing, because I haven't really done anything here in ages.

I doubt that I'll ever really be able to get back into this site, but it was a huge part of my younger self's life, so I have no regrets of anything.

Because I'm kinda new to this site, what are BTs?

^BTs are buddy threads. People just add all their buddies to a private thread.

Th-thanks for commenting on my thread, Jader!

I miss having a lot of friends in 2008-2009. Now none of them come on. I haven't made any close ones since, lol.

i miss the activity on this site, back when I was on everyday around 2009-2011ish the OT board had around fifty pages. the site has really seemed to slow down, i remember as this happened people talked about NL 'reviving' the site but i guess that didn't really happen

i miss BTs and RPGs i was in and all the friends i made on here. it honestly made me really happy i had my own somewhat active BT hahah. i remember that ACC fic one of the mods made way back when (manekineko?), basically summed up the internet microcosm that was ACC. most of my friends have just stopped logging on, i think a small umber got coppa kicked, the ones that still hang around here probably don't remember me much

this is the first i've logged on in months, i think. not much has changed really except for the inactivity and the new emotes it's cool to see some of the 'popular' members from the old days still on here, and i see the bell shop still hasn't been finished, hah

I miss how active this site used to be. When I joined it felt like there were a lot more people to connect with. I had a lot of great conversations. I'm guilty of taking a hiatus from the site, but I always came back. Now it seems like a majority of AC activity is on FB groups, and most of those people are young.

I miss all the friends I used to play city folk with. I miss that game.