FarmVille Special Delivery Boxes Have Arrived

When you click on this icon:

You get this screen:

Your friends see this in their requests:

It ends up in your gift box:

You get something you 'need' on your farm.  Fuel, construction materials, etc.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Protest

It's funny how things work out sometimes.


Last Monday night, after our good friends at Zynga (that's the company that produces FarmVille, FrontierVille and various other 'Villes') put up the Tuscan Wedding Redeemables for insane and outrageous amounts of Farm Cash (Farm Cash is the in-game currency that costs players actual, real-life money), I got mildly insulted.  That's just a notch past annoyed, if you're unfamiliar with that particular scale.

People still had these things sitting on their farm, and could share them out for free, and yet Zynga decided it was time to price-gouge and charge exorbitant amounts of Farm Cash for these items.  It sickened me to think that a company that is just in it's infancy and starting, slowly, to garner some actual legitimacy, would engage in such despicable, predatory consumer practices.

The Dog Days of Summer

I know, I know.  Zynga wanted to call it the 'Seven Days of Summer Event', but you know I tend to think of an 'event' as something noteworthy.  The only thing noteworthy of this 'event' was that it's obvious that most of the FarmVille folks went on Summer Vacation this week.

This week, Zynga 'brought back' several themes: French, Japanese, Tuscan, Island, Adobe, and UFO.  The only one which could even be considered 'nostalgic' was tonight's UFO theme, possibly the most-anticipated and yet most disappointing of the lot.

Aside from the UFO theme, how are we supposed to be nostalgic about a concept like 'a little while ago'?  I know some people who still physically shudder if they hear the word 'Tuscan', so that's still pretty fresh.  They've also filled their "Mystery Dart Game" with 'retro' items (i.e. old crap) which folks may have purchased if they were offered outright...but for a 25% increase in price, nobody's going to take a chance on getting a Jackrabbit when what they wanted was a White Stallion.

Most disappointing of the lot was the UFO theme, launched tonight.  SIX items.  Yes, just six, and ALL of them Farm Cash items...with two of them reflecting price increases since they were originally released.  The Mystery Dart game?  Refilled with items that I'd have purchased if they were offered outright....but again for the price I wasn't going to take a chance on getting stuck with yet another Stallion.

Here's to hoping that next week's offerings will be better.  I can promise you ONE new and exciting thing for next week: The blog I was writing two weeks ago when I had my heart attack.  Should be fun!

Happy Farming...even if Zynga is MIA.

Farmer Brown

Have you done your good deed today?

In another move to compete for your screen space, FarmVille is now reminding you to do your five good deeds for the day.  They'll remind you on your farm (above), and when you click on it, a list of five (apparently needy) friends will appear:

Best I can tell, these are NOT all dormant accounts who don't play very often - so this time, FarmVille is NOT using it's most dedicated, active players to sucker in the ones who have shown enough good sense to quit.  That's a change.

Click on the 'post' button for each player, and it soon presents you with the usual Facebook dialog box to post the gift to their wall (yet another good reason to prevent people from posting to your wall in Facebook!).  Players will have to click on their wall posts to claim the gift.

Once you're done, you're presented with a completion screen.  No word yet on any rewards, but if they keep up their trend, we'll get 'something' for being a helpful friend!

Building a garage? Need parts? Here's how to get them efficiently!

We have another construction project - a garage!  Zynga has given us information on it here.


If you need parts, don't just blindly send them to folks unless you KNOW they need them.  Instead, use the 'Ask for More" feature inside your building - just like all the other buildings and beehive!

Click on your unfinished building, and select 'Look Inside'.


Once inside, you'll see this:

This will allow you to select which part to request, and give you the opportunity to request parts from up to 30 of your friends.  Once you have sent these requests, they show up for your friends like this:

Friends may send you the materials "free" (they don't count against your 30 gift sends allowed every 4-6 hours) with a single click.  Couldn't be easier!

Baaaaaah!

Dear FarmVille,

Thanks for letting me by this 300,000 coin sheep that yields 30 coins a day.  I feel like a schmuck waiting to harvest it.  Just think, in only 9,975 days I'll have made my money back.

Love,
the schmuck who bought it.

I'm Back! (kinda)

The rumors of my death have been exaggerated...but it was close there for awhile.

Feeling better now, but will be slowly working my way back to full speed again.  In the meantime, although you all know how I love FarmVille, today's thought for the day is to make sure everyone knows the warning signs of a Heart Attack.

Not only do they HURT, but it turns out they're very expensive, too.  Not something any of us needs.

Thanks for the good wishes and thoughts, everyone!  Glad to be home and on the mend, finally!

Farmer Brown