2010: A FarmVille Odyssey

WARNING:  Unlike fan sites, there will be no fond trip down memory lane here.  The opinions here are strictly my own, your results may vary.  It's all based on the past years' worth of compiling opinions, reactions and other various data from several select mega-farmers: those, like myself, who have the Facebook limit of 5,000 friends, all relatively dedicated FarmVille players.  While some choose to orally copulate Zynga for everything they spew forth, here you're only going to get honest reaction and analysis - the good (Fertilize All!), the bad (pigpens), and the ugly (me).Oh - there may also be the occasional 'adult word' in here.  Most of us can't play FarmVille without uttering or at least thinking a few of them anyway.  It may be safe for work (depending on where you work), but it's probably a little too cynical for your kids to read.  Fair warning, right?

So....maybe by this time I should have titled this "FarmVille Remembered".  Is this a Eulogy?  It may be, folks.  If Zynga continues to lose players by the boatload as they've been doing for months now by alienating their strongest advocates - the advanced players - they risk losing not only their gaming crown but the position they've coveted for so long: the premier social gaming producer.

We saw a vast number of milestones and notable 'occurrences' in FarmVille in 2010 - here are just a few of the more notable ones.  They aren't in any particular order.

I'm sure I've either missed some, forgotten some, or intentionally blocked some of them out of my brain in order to maintain my own sanity.  Feel free to remind us of those in the comments section.

Yes, it's a long read, but in retrospect it was a VERY long year.  Get yourself a cup of coffee, or maybe bring the whole pot.  Just be careful, there may be spots here where you'll end up spraying it out of your nose.  You've been warned! Enjoy.

"Zynga, we have a problem here...."

The three words that most farmers fear the most dominated most of 2010 - Out of Sync.  "OOS" was caused by various factors, including: 

• Having something you shouldn't on your farm (like more than one Red zLotto animal).
• Having something you can otherwise have on your farm (White Apple Trees accepted via the Message Center).
• Having two feet.
• Breathing.

It was also generally caused by Zynga making ANY type of material change to the game, including 'rollouts' of new features, storage or building expansions, etc.  We could ALWAYS tell something was in the works by the number and frequency of OOS complaints on the newsfeed.  OOS was probably the single thing that was most responsible for things going missing on the farm, from the gift box and elsewhere.  This should be at the very top of the 'to fix' list for 2011.


Seven Days of Same-Old

The highly-touted "Seven Days of Summer" event saw Zynga rolling out items from previously-released 'Limited Edition' themes.  Most of us figured that it was their way of taking a vacation from actually producing anything new, but little did we know that this would be a recurring theme itself: re-releasing things that players purchased earlier in the game on the good faith understanding that they would, indeed, be 'Limited' and therefore unavailable in the future.

It seems 'Limited' in the Zynga world means 'available when we decide to roll it out again', and not as generally accepted anywhere else.  We pay premium prices for items for their exclusivity, their rarity, and the fact that they're truly 'Limited' Editions....and then Zynga offers them again (often for a higher price) later on in the year.

A perfect example of this is the continual re-issuance of the Unwither Ring.  When this item was first introduced, many of us coughed up over fifty bucks to own one, and we were lead to believe that it would never be offered again.  "When it's gone, it's GONE" was something they said repeatedly.  Turns out, not so.

People make buying decisions for things like the Unwither ring based on a good faith representation by Zynga that if they don't act NOW, they won't be able to get one in the future.  A lot of folks might even consider this type of nefarious, predatory consumer conduct actionable under various statutes. Just sayin.

While it may have been 'nice' for some of the newer players, most veteran players decried the move as lowering the relative 'value' of their previous purchases, and further proved to us that Zynga not only has a callous disregard for their customers, but treats us with levels of contempt and disdain previously reserved for public utility companies.

Greed is Good

Love was most certainly NOT in the air when Zynga decided to price-gouge its customers by charging serious farm cash for redeemable items which were free for the giving.  The $18FVC Wedding Cake was originally available for redeeming 2.5 Tuscan Wedding Favors (2 for 5), at a cost of merely a few clicks, as opposed to nearly $10US.

Another complete SNAFU by Zynga was the offering of  past 'redeemables' for Farm Cash at the end of their 'Seven Days of Summer' retro event.  Basically they offered to sell items which, until previously, were free to share by collecting things during previous events.  At the time when these items (St. Patrick's Day Gold, Valentine's Day, etc.) were being offered for OUTRAGEOUS amounts of Farm Cash, still others raced to our rescue to share them freely on the game feed.

Offering the free redeemables for Farm Cash was the last straw for many players, and among others it spurred the now infamous 'Seven Days of Silence' protest in which many folks made NO FarmVille posts on the feed.  Despite the comparatively minuscule numbers, the event WAS noticed by Zynga.

They even made it easy on us by making many of our farms Out of Sync for nearly the entire seven days...undoubtedly caused by the consecutive rollout of several features at once. We had just recovered from the month of massive OOS caused by the Crafting Cottage rollout, and now this new OOS epidemic was caused primarily by the rollout of Underground Cellar Storage, which was quickly followed up by the rollout of Pigpens.

Zynga could've used a little Dolores Umbridge therapy.

This took place, of course, after their July 23 Podcast in which Lexi (one of the Community Managers from Zynga) assured us that they would slow their rollout schedule to ensure that things actually worked before they rolled them out.  Of course, this commitment was short-lived, and it was then that many of us learned to never take Zynga at their word again...for anything.

More unapologetic Zynga Greed would surface later in the year, when they 'rolled out' 28x28 land expansions for $120FVC only - with a teaser 'To Be Determined' coin option, due out sometime in 2011.

Can you see me now? Can you see me again?

Who didn't love the 'cloning' glitch during the summer?

We would remove horses and cows from their buildings, one stayed in the stable and one stayed on the farm.  Many of us ended up with loads of premium horses and cows, and even during the post-glitch clean up, we kept many of them as a result.

Charles in Charge

2010 was an excellent year for the 'underworld' of FarmVille.  From free gifts of $200FVC to Unlimited Bushels to obtaining just about anything you wanted, released or unreleased, on your farm, it was a banner year for these creative tinkerers who were generally always happy to share their secrets.

These exploits gradually crossed over into the mainstream of game play, with players who would normally balk at the idea now scarfing up Unlimited Bushels of their favorite crop for as long as they could refresh their screen.

It was not to last, however, due to the proliferation of morons who publicly declared their prowess helped alert Zynga to these holes and they quickly became patched.

Ironically, it's these same jackwagons who STILL openly flaunt the system, offer to sell farms and services, boast of their thousands in Farm Cash, and other 'achievements' who are still tipping their hand to Zynga.  Seriously, some of you need to review the rules of Fight Club again.

It's rumored that 2011 will see Zynga launch an all-out offensive, spearheaded by their Loss Prevention Unit.  The end result will hopefully speed up the game and maybe even get the ability to place Eggs and Mystery Boxes on our farms again!

Halloween @ 50% Off!

One of the more bone-headed moves by Zynga this year was to offer Halloween decorations at 50% off - a first in their brief history.  While this was good news for those who chose to save their Farm Cash, it was met with outrage from many who spent theirs to purchase items at full price.  Predictably, this was one of the events which lead to the sharpest decline in active players during 2010.

Of course, this happened not long after the 'Great Halloween Catastrophe of 2010', in which Zynga rolled out the Haunted Houses and allowed us to collect candy, yet gave us no Halloween Basket in which to store it.  This caused many players to exceed the (then) 200 item limit in their gift box, causing an inability to get into their farms, massive OOS, loss of items previously in the gift box, etc.

Trouble in Tuscany

WARNING: Looking at the image of the Tuscan Wedding Tent may cause temporary insanity.

No year-end review of FarmVille would be complete without at least mentioning one thing that we really never, ever wanted to hear again: The Tuscan Wedding Event.  This obnoxious thing was one of our first glimpses at Zynga being 'creative' in their approach to the whole 'gather and redeem' aspect of FV.

We had to gather Olives, Goat's Milk, Truffles and Eggs on a rotating basis (another bad idea) to redeem for things that nobody really had room for or wanted anyway (another recurring theme this year).

Despite publicized end dates for this promo, it went ON and ON and ON and ON and ON.  And on.  And then they reduced the 'price' of redeemables....so it could go on some more.  And then they increased the number of things you could share at once.   Finally, the event came to an end several weeks later, and we were able to burn the Wedding Tent - although some brave souls chose to keep theirs.

The Craft

No, not the movie about the hot witches.  This craft refers to the rollout of Crafting Cottages in July. 

Accompanied by its own round of OOS and data loss, The Crafting Cottage was a brilliant addition to FarmVille.  The cottages allow you to create goods from grown and collected bushels, to purchase goods from your neighbors, and to turn those goods in to much-needed fuel.

Few or no bushels (above) have been available to many farmers since September.

Sadly, the implementation of this feature has been second only to OOS in terms of failure.  The vast majority of farmers cannot see or collect bushels from many people on their Facebook friends' or neighbor lists.  Unless you're going to grow your own, this makes the crafting of goods not only difficult, but time-consuming and stressful.  Asking for bushels is a very limited function, and works as well as the wish-list (barely if at all).

This needs to be the number 2 priority on Zynga's 'fix list' for 2010.

Got an itch? Scratch THIS!

In August, Zynga introduced the zLotto.  zLotto was purported to be a virtual 'scratch-off' lottery ticket in which you could 'win' red animals for the farm (and other prizes for other Zynga games).

Turns out it was anything except a game of chance.  Prizes were invariably located on the top two lines of the ticket, and you only won in a predetermined manner.  Once you'd maxed out your prizes in all games, the final "prize" you could win was an "Exclusive Invitation" to their newest game coming out in the fall.

We're all pretty much still waiting on that invitation, even those of us who have maxed out the aforementioned 'new' game (which takes about two weeks of dedicated playing).

Initially introduced as a way of establishing 'Zynga' accounts for all of us, this feature also briefly disclosed the Facebook-linked email address of people sending and receiving zLotto tickets - hence their responsibility for putting thousands of Facebook accounts at risk of being hacked.

Free Farm Cash? What Planet Are YOU From?!?

Probably my favorite scam page.

We saw greed beget greed in 2010, and Zynga wasn't the only one trying to wet their beak a little.  Many nefarious (and just plain foolish) people have profited and continued to fund their criminal hobbies by preying on the average weak-minded, gullible FarmVille player.  Scam pages, groups, events and applications produced more offspring than any Breeder on a good day, and human nature being what it is, people fall for these things left and right.

Volumes have been written on this topic, and it seems that the effort of many has paid off, yet there are still people who post these things on the feed, noting 'I'm just seeing if it works'.

I wonder how these people test to see if something's poisonous....

Why'd you post that Ugly Foal?

July saw a major change to the way Horse Breeders generated foals for everyone with the introduction of the One-Click Harvest.  No longer were breeders able to remove 'seeder' horses from their barn prior to harvesting it, so instead of producing only premium foals, occasionally the 'seeder' got lucky and produced a regular brown or grey foal.  Although this move was bemoaned and protested by thousands, Zynga stuck to it's guns and kept the change, implementing it for everything from Chicken Coops to the Beehive.

Naturally, this change brought on the normal end-of-the-world rumormongers who decried that Zynga was doing away with manual horse breeding, and that this would be the end of that activity since 'it was never intended to be played that way'.  As usual, those rumors ended up to be nothing more than virtual road apples - Zynga makes a lot of money off of those cute little horses and they're well aware that breeders are among their most active, dedicated and cash-rich players.  They're not going to cut that off just to reduce the foal population, or they would have already done it by now.

It's thought that the recent breeding change of not having to empty your stables between attempts was tossed in as a compromise feature for the loss of the ability to remove seeders.  This is entirely possible since no other harvestable buildings carry the same feature (the last animal in = % of readiness for the whole stable).

The Gamers Unite! (GU) Wars

The thaw from the huge snows of 2009 thawed quickly this spring, as tempers heated up after the release of the Gamers Unite! Snag Bar.  This little device allows you to capture just about any bonus (and initially, ALL bonuses, although this was later changed to not be so 'greedy', whatever that means) posted to the news feed via normal game posts.

Predictably, this single gizmo caused as much division and strife in the FarmVille Community as possible.  To be completely fair here, it's not the snag bar itself that causes such drama, but the completely irresponsible way in which many players use it.

Rumors circulated that this Snag Bar could do everything from steal things from your farm (not true) to impregnate your teenage daughter (unproven).  Thousands picked sides - those who were pro Snag Bar and those who were anti Snag Bar.

Although there has been no clear winner, my experience has been that by and large it's the anti-GU crowd who rolls out the most noise.  They've used fearmongering and scare tactics, intimidation, gone on witch hunts for players, still make outrageous false claims, blacklist people and in general make life miserable for their targets.  In fact, their tactics seem to have been taken directly from a page from the [fill in your least favorite political party here - I'm letting YOU pick since I think they're ALL garbage] playbook.  The only real difference here is that they're applying these tactics to a..um...a game.

They also tend to throw out the 'cheater' label, although you have to snicker just a little bit when these high-moral-grounders don't have any hesitation in clicking on a link for the latest foal (a TOS violation, technically) and many of them can also be found on the 'likes' section of just about any scam page offering free Farm Cash.

Despite reason, explanations, and even good old fashioned Tough Love, this controversy still rages on.  Many people still act like you mentioned Voldemort's name out loud when you mention Gamers Unite!, and it comes from complete ignorance.  Generally those who choose to educate themselves on the matter come away being completely indifferent about anyone's membership in the organization.

Although it would be quite easy to stop the war and the nonsense by allowing gamers a way to 'opt out' of the 'snagging pool', the good people at GU still continue on, and have even (albeit inexplicably) added FrontierVille to their snagging options.

I don't see this foolishness dying down anytime soon.  They like the publicity, it drives revenue, and like so many 'fan sites' in operation ("DCMA Dan", Farmvillelatest, etc.) they have only the almighty dollar in mind and not the game or the community...and despite repeatedly pointing this out, they have largely failed to prove otherwise.


(By the way, if you consider my little blog here to be a 'fan site', please go shoot yourself now.  A fan site promotes Zynga despite the idiocy and catastrophe that it spews forth from time to time.  Here we only hope to entertain and inform, and perhaps offer some constructive criticism to Zynga via tough love and offering an honest perspective of exactly what it's like to deal with playing their games on a daily basis.)

Is that an iPad in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

• October saw the launch of the FarmVille for iPhone Application.  
• December saw the application get close to being able to load anyone's farm.  
• Perhaps 2011 will reveal the app to be actually working and useful.

Sharing Foals and Calves

2010 saw the rapid proliferation of the concept of sharing FarmVille bonus links via Facebook groups.  Done mostly to keep the news feed clean and to prevent the snagging of bonuses by the various snaggers out there, many of these groups have turned into virtual communities in which players share everything from foals and calves to to bushels and bonuses.

One such group, Sharing Foals and Calves, started out with about 30 members on day one back in April, and today boasts nearly 5,000 members. Over 70,000 links have been generated and shared by its members, which translates, depending on your formula, to nearly half a million critters shared.

Originally founded to give players a chance to collect rare foals, the group also assumed the mission and purpose of driving out of business those cretins who actually sold pink pony foals and the like for real cash.

Today, it's estimated that there are over 10,000 such link sharing groups for the FarmVille Community.

For awhile, the most highly coveted critter in the news feed or in a group was
the mighty Black Stallion Foal.

Due to a calculated glitch in the marketplace, a Black Stallion was briefly available and in turn, it's foals actually produced a working Black Stallion, so players did not need to rely on Wandering Stallions any longer.  These foals were among the most sought after animals in all of FarmVille, and the shortage of them was worsened by several idiots who claimed you had to have 12 of them in a Nursery to produce the Black Stallion.

This specific segment of the FarmVille community was vehement on their methods of creating the Black Stallion, and yet curiously quiet when their formula was proven to not only be incorrect, but socially irresponsible as it encouraged pointless hoarding of the rare foals. Nursery births were randomized at the time, and you stood just as good a mathematical chance at creating a Black Stallion with one foal as you did with 20 of them.

Oh, Thank Heaven for 7-Eleven!

Summertime saw many of us flocking to our local 7-Eleven convenience stores for FarmVille branded products which contained codes redeemable for decorations, animals and ultimately $200 in Farm Cash.  These codes were not available internationally or in many areas where 7-Eleven Stores were not located, and many people took advantage of that to sell these codes to people for actual cash.

Just goes to show that some folks will do anything for a buck, and some folks will do anything for something they think is 'free' - including pay for it.

Spam, Spam Everywhere, and Not a Bite to Eat!

Is it REALLY necessary for dozens of people to simultaneously post information
that's already been published by all the other major fan sites?

The Newsfeed Spammer of the Year Award goes to the "informational" website Farmvillelatest.  This site has a cute little feature set up so that when they decide it's time, they make their own spammy posts from your account.  Not only is their information usually inaccurate, but the site openly offers 'services' for the game, and they're the kind of services which put your account and your farm directly at risk.

The site's so heavily monetized that getting decent information, if any exists, from it is near impossible, and every time they decide they want more traffic they just roll out some more babbling random posts, all in your good name.

The problem with their posts is that they almost never post anything original, and all the auto-publishing feature does is spam the news feed, sometimes 10 times a day with the same information that usually makes the rounds on all the other, 'credible' fan sites.  While I applaud their creativity, what this accomplishes is that it makes YOU an annoyance by proxy.

Make your New Years Resolution this year to reduce news feed spam and remove this website's ability to auto publish in your own good name.  Here's how to remove an application from Facebook.

The Curse of the Double Mastery Weekend.

Memorial Day.  Labor Day.  Thanksgiving.  All holidays, and for most bring fond memories of family, food and fun.  During 2010, they also bring back the memory of Double Mastery Weekend.

Few words bring more terror to the heart of a true FarmVille Junkie than "Double Mastery Weekend".

Invariably, Double Mastery Weekend (also known as The Farmpocalypse and Farmageddon) has been an event where, predictably, you'd achieve double mastery points for crops (and now, trees!) harvested during that period.  Sadly, now this has become synonamous with OOS, the White Screen of Death and other anomalies which keep many farmers from being able to access their farms at all.  This is usually caused by rolling out other major feature changes at the same time (Labor Day/Truffle Hunting, Thanksgiving/Chicken Coop Expansions).

A Hazy Share of Winter

Sometimes, it almost seems like Zynga couldn't win for losing during 2010, and despite their many positive developments both in the game (Fertilize All, new Chickens and Eggs, many others if they actually WORKED correctly) as well as on a Corporate Level (huge venture capital influx, FrontierVille and CityVille launches, etc.), at times I wonder if they actually stop and think before they roll out a new feature.

The end of the year brought forth several other blunders which only served to cap of the year in grand style.

The buildable snowman was an awesome idea, with poor implementation.

It's great that we can build a constant source of water for all these seedlings we get from the orchard, but when you tell me I need 10 piles of snow, but can only ask three people for them (invariably NOT my best friends, either), the math just doesn't add up.  In this case, 10/3 = $20 FVC as a consolation prize for even having tried this feature, and possibly as an apology for the way the snowballs lagged out the game.

Invites to the New Years party may gain you bonuses, but
it also proliferates in-game use of what most players consider 'wall spam'.

Presumably a test-bed for using Facebook extended permissions, the New Years Party Barn (and subsequent party invites) brought a whole new round of OOS to FarmVille.  Even when 'fixed', the promised Fireworks bonuses for accepting RSVP's never show up in the gift box, and clicking to get into the barn itself to check the status of your progress is a risky proposition at best.

Despite a rocky start, the Winter Countdown has great potential for future features and promotions.

The Winter Countdown, when originally rolled out, didn't work, but to Zynga's credit they got it fixed pretty quickly.  While it may seem pointless to gather 12 items in order to get a premium prize, consider the technology that's being implemented, rather seamlessly, here:

• You're posting a wish for an item on the news feed.
• Those who help you out also get one.
• You're limited as to the number of items you can collect, but you can continue to help others.

I don't know about you, but this sounds suspiciously like the new model for the Make a Wish feature to me.  It also sets interesting precedent in limiting the number of times you may collect a certain class of bonus in FarmVille.  Look for more of this as we enter 2011.  With limits like this, you'll see far fewer insane snag bar users and people being far more choosy on which bonuses to collect during the gaming day.

Our current Make a Wish Function means you wish
you could to collect the things you're asking for.

Two very enthusiastic thumbs up if they decide to implement this model in the game!

And lastly.....

Has Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend Mustang?

The concept was supposed to be simple.  Give Zynga your email address, and sooner or later a Wild Mustang would show up on your farm.  You'd be able to wrangle this little horse for yourself if you managed to get 5 other friends to respond to system-generated emails and help you out.

Sadly, it seldom worked correctly, and few people even got the email messages at all.  Despite promising to fix it, Zynga never brought this back, nor offered the horse in the marketplace instead.  Now it seems to be one of the truly Limited Edition items on the farm...and a prime example of their repeated failure to go back and FIX things as they've promised to do, before they roll out more stuff.

The Future

Zynga has seen a steady decline in the number of monthly FarmVille players, from a high near 80 million to a recently-quoted 56 million.  This 30% drop-off rate is no joke, and I'm sure it has CEO Pincus climbing the walls.

The way to correct this, of course, is relatively simple: make the game work, be kind to your customers and partner with them because in the end, we're all in this together.

The dedicated FarmVille players among us will continue to give you feedback and advice, all you have to do is give us a positive gaming experience.  Number one in achieving that goal is to make the game work, followed up by restoring the sense of community and cooperation that's so vital to socially-connected games.

It's like we've always said: "It's not the game, it's the people who play it.".  Take advantage of that, Zynga...before you give MORE of us heart attacks.  :-)

Wishing you and yours a wonderful, healthy, and prosperous 2011 and beyond,

Farmer Brown
The Faux Farmer

PS - Want to be part of something bigger than FarmVille?  A number of us are participating in The Farmer's Foundation, a group of people who are chipping in to help out a fellow farmer and his family as he battles a terminal illness.  Won't you lend a hand and make a difference in someone's real-life crisis today?  Click here to Chip-In and help!

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