Et tu, Brutus? A FarmVille Bedtime Story

Once upon a time, in the far off Realm of Zynga, there lived a mighty and wise king.

King Pincus I, Ruler of all Zyngadom

King Pincus had many kingdoms, but his sentimental favorite was the Kingdom of FarmVille, for it was the very first one he'd conquered, stealing it like candy from a baby from the weakened Duke of Farm Town.

Lady GaGa Infects FarmVille

This series of entries, The Chronicles of GaGa, will be located at Sharing Foals and Calves.

The Crying Game: Zynga Caps Gamefeed Collections

I have to click now? With my hand? Noooooo!!!!!!

In a move which was fully expected, Zynga (via Lexi) announced on Wednesday that they're placing limits on the number of items which you can collect from the game feed for FarmVille every day.  While this won't actually impact most players, it does seem to have impacted the most vocal ones - the ones who claim to need to collect more than the newly-imposed limit of 125 items per 24 hour period.


Oh, the tears!  From posts on Zynga's forums to GU to the various Facebook pages which have sprung up in opposition to the 125 item limit, it's clear that many people assume that this limit is on everything, and from the tone of some of these things you'd think the world was coming to an end.  


A few of these mouth-breathers making the most noise about the limit are some of the same people who tend to get confused while going through the checkout line at the grocery store - I end up behind one or two of their ilk every time I go shopping, it seems.  Lexi could put up illustrations and nudie photos and a LOT of folks just aren't going to get it.

Still Can't Load FarmVille...? Here's what you missed this week!

If you're one of the 850,000 others who can't load your farm at all, or can't load it much past the immediate Out of Sync, here's what you didn't miss this week:

• Zynga rolled out the 28x28 expansion, for Farm Cash Only ($120FVC). Coin price has yet to be set, they're still working on it.
• Tuesday's update was bungled.  They put Poinsettias and the Gingerbread house (buildable) in the market and OOS ran rampant until they pulled them off.  They came back within the last day.  Aside from that, there wasn't much rolled out Tuesday at all.
• Thursday night's update was nonexistent.  No word from Zynga on why they skipped a day. Rumor has it that there is a huge upheaval in their Product Studio area, and some are speculating that this is the very first death knell being rung for FarmVille.
• The Winter Workshop has started appearing, although it's unclear as to whether it's a legitimate release or something Uncle Charlie has helped everyone with.  So far, it hasn't broken anything yet.
• CityVille was released this week.  Think FrontierVille, except with a City theme.  So far, it's moderately playable despite requests not working correctly, rampant disconnects, and buggy Flash code that causes spontaneous system reboots for more than a few players after several minutes into the game.
• Facebook changed the way game requests are handled across the board, and as usual it was done with little notice.  As a result, most of the tools used to 'accept all' or 'ignore all' aren't working correctly, and they aren't working at all well with the new CityVille game.

All in all, it was a good week to be Out of Sync - you didn't miss much.  I've actually started removing FV completely between farming sessions to avoid people sending me things, posting pigs, etc., since I'm one of the 850,000 impacted by a time limit of about 3 minutes on my farm before I hit OOS.

Farmer Brown
FarmVille Curmudgeon

Bushels, Bushels Everywhere...and not a bite to eat!

(Originally posted in the Zynga Forums, but I can almost guarantee that like all the rest of my fair and reasonable complaints, it'll be removed shortly.)


This has been going on for over a month now, folks. I have literally hundreds of friends on my list with the same problem. Yes, I understand it's a known issue, but it's also a chronic and epidemic issue. Those of us who have been the most faithful customers, spending real cash on additional crafting cottages, mastering all the crops and leveling up above and beyond have little else meaningful to do except work on Crafting Good Masteries.

Seriously, Zynga? WTF?

Hi, Mark!


It's me again.  I know I promised to give you a little time to get your act together at Zynga, but I really didn't mean for you to take care of all those laundry list items and screw up FarmVille at the same time.  That's a joke, by the way, because the silence coming from Zynga on ALL of these issues is all we get from you.


Let's review, shall we?

• You rolled out the long-awaited Farmer's Market.  Millions could not access their farms for a week, and when they finally got into their farms, the sound of that awful theme song for FarmVille was drowned out by a collective, worldwide yawn.  

We get what out of that exactly?  A few XP? Some gas? There hasn't been a bigger disappointment since Geraldo opened Al Capone's safe.