Plugging For a Friend

Greetings-

It's been a bit since I last blogged as I've been feeling a little ill these past few days.  Sorry about that.

Anyway, on to the reason for today's post.  From time to time, you've seen me post about my favorite social game, FarmVille.  Well here's a blog by a good friend of mine that is dedicated to the game.

The Blog is titled The Intelligent FarmVille blog.  Be sure to check it out and give him a follow as well so that you can stay up to date with his entries.  Thanks everyone.

Until next time,
-Bill-
 

More Maintenance on FarmVille Today

Surprise!-

Some of us tried to log into our farms today and got surprised by downtime for maintenance again.  The only thing that wasn't surprising about this week's maintenance window was the fact that things were all sorts of screwy once everything came back online.

I'd really be interested in finding out what the folks at Zynga are doing behind the scenes when they pull the game for these maintenance windows.  Are they busy cleaning up code?  Are they optimizing the coding that's there in order to clear up some performance issues, or are they simply piling more bad code on top of the bad coding that already exists?

If there's anyone out there in the interwebz that knows what the heck these maintenance windows are fixing, please feel free to let me know..

So, what do all of you think was going on behind the curtain today during the downtime?  Let me know down in the comments.

Until next time,
-Bill-

In all seriousness, I complain because I want Zynga to hear me.  I complain because I want this game to continue to get better.  I complain because I love my farm and I love to share with my neighbors.

FarmVille Update: 01.26.11

Greetings-

Tonight on FarmVille we saw the release of another round of Valentine themed items.  Here's the screen shots from my market.

What a boring update.  Still no Valentine mailbox and even more importantly, no 28 x 28 expansion for coins.

Way to go FailVille.

Until next time,

-Bill-

Ducklings Released!

Greetings-

In an attempt to appease players that are still angry over the feed reward limit and lack of a coin option for the 28 x 28 land expansion, Zynga released the new ducklings feature onto our farms tonight.

When you harvest your duck pond, you now have the chance to get a duckling.  Once you have a duckling, you will need to get 7 friends to help you raise your duckling into a new feathered friend.  Now, here's the catch.  The quicker you get your friends to help raise your duckling determines what kind of a duck/swan your little dude will grow into.

So, now it's up to you folks out there reading.  Does this in any way, shape or form make up for the lack of a coin expansion and the feed reward limit?  Let me know in the comments.

Until next time,

-Bill-

Thanks to my neighbor Zeke for the screen shot!

Bad Mood

Greetings-

Sorry everyone.  Just not feeling it today, so this will be a very short entry.  I'm frustrated, disappointed, and more than a little bit angry at the Zynga team.  

Yesterday afternoon I logged onto Facebook and was looking forward to a wonderful day playing and chatting with a few hundred of my favorite people on earth.  As I read through the news feed, a rather disturbing piece of news from FarmVille Rant caught my eye.

It seems that Zynga has decided to limit our bonus collecting from the news feed for FarmVille to 125 items per day.  Here's what they had to say about it over at FarmVilleRant.com:

This will upset Farmers and will most likely make the few who are left close their barn doors and call it quits. Farmville has OFFICIALLY limited the amount of gifts you can now collect from your news feed in an effort to curb online cheating bots like the GU Snag Bar.

You can read the rest of the article at the link above.

Once again, a few noisy whiners have ruined the experience of the game for everyone else.

I'm trying to get a small protest going over on Facebook.  Here's what I'd like people to do.  "Unlike" all Zynga applications and official Zynga pages.  Perhaps watching their numbers fall will wake them up to the fact that without us, there would be no Zynga.  I also encourage all of you out there that usually buy Farm Cash to stop doing so until they remove the bonus limits.  We need to hit Zynga in the wallet.  When we affect their profit margin, perhaps they will begin to listen to us.  We are farmers; we are everywhere; and we have the power to take a stand and force Zynga to change.

Until next time,
-Bill-

This Week in FarmVille

Greetings-
It's been quite an interesting week in FarmVille.

This past week FarmVille took the servers offline completely for maintenance.  This was a first for Zynga.  A lot of people had been suggesting this for quite a while, and frankly it probably needed to be done.  However, in typical Zynga fashion, they managed to screw things up.  They should have given themselves more than an hour to perform their maintenance, because when they came back online there were more problems than there were before the scheduled downtime window.  Gifting was a complete mess for up to at least 12 hours after the maintenance was over.

Also this week, we saw yet another week go by that the 28 x 28 land expansion NOT released for coins into the market.  According to sources, Lexilicious (Head Community Manager) gives the excuse that Zynga is still trying to figure out what kind of hoops they are going to make us jump through in order to get the expansion.  Here's a great idea;  release the expansion for coins without any other kind of pre-requisite.  No one will expect it and it might gain Zynga some much needed respect.

Another clusterfark this week was the Poo Sheep fiasco.  Zynga wanted us to bother our non-playing friends into helping us get a free poo colored sheep and lamb.  In order to get this sheep and lamb we had to reunite the two by performing certain tasks.  The first task was to "like" FarmVille...okay no problem...second task was to play the game 3 days in a row...alright no big deal, I'll be doing that anyway.  The third task is what got under a lot of people's skins.  Third task was to get 5 friends to help you reunite the poo sheep with her poo colored baby.  You might think that wouldn't be a problem, except for the fact that the 5 people you could get to help you had to be non-players.  Take notice Zynga...we are not your marketing department!

Anyway, that's all from me for now.  Let me know in the comments what has ticked you off about FarmVille this past week.

Until next time,
-Bill

Consistency

When you are a parent, you learn very quickly how important rules and enforcement of the rules can be.  However, rules and enforcing the rules means nothing without consistency.

These same principles can be applied to an online community as well.  Being a moderator or administrator of any large online community is a lot like being a parent.  The online community needs rules in order to establish what is expected of its members.  The online community needs enforcement of those rules in order to establish some sort of order within the community.  Most importantly the online community needs consistency in disciplining its members that chose to break the rules.

Without consistency of enforcement and discipline, the online community will collapse in on itself.  Without consistency the moderators and administrators of an online community will lose any semblance of respect that they may have garnered in the community.

The official FarmVille forums are a prime example of what happens when administrators and moderators lose respect from the members of their community.  Overmoderation/enforcement of the rules is also a sure fire way to lose valuable members of a society as well.

You need to walk a fine line when it comes to being fair yet firm when you are a parent, and I believe the powers that be over at Zynga need to learn how to walk that line without falling either way, or I fear for the future of the FarmVille community.

The Story of the Nursing Student and The Placenta

Doyle Byrnes wins her case against Johnson County Community College!

I suppose by now many of you have heard the story about the nursing student that was kicked out of nursing school for posting photos of a placenta on Facebook.  That nursing student, Doyle Byrnes, sued the school and won her case!

A Federal judge overturned Ms. Byrnes' dismissal from the nursing program at JCCC and basically told the school to go screw themselves.

In Melgren’s ruling, he found:
•Photos are taken to be viewed, and if the students were given permission to photograph the placenta, it became irrelevant what they did with the pictures.
•There was no violation of any patient’s privacy because there was nothing in the photos to identify whose placenta it was.
•Byrnes was not allowed a fair hearing on her dismissal.
Melgren acknowledged that the Facebook element of the case mystified him, but he said: “Today’s generation of students is today’s generation of students and I don’t know that what they did was disruptive. I think the college’s reaction was disruptive.”

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/01/06/2566180/facebook-placenta-photo-case-goes.html#ixzz1AKrInum7


Chalk a win up for common sense.


Until next time,
-Bill