Zynga Tests SMS

Zynga’s massively successful moneymaking machine is about to get another way to reach its millions of avid users. Today, the company is starting to test SMS notifications, allowing a small number of users to receive updates directly to their mobile phones. The first 50 TechCrunch readers to sign up here will be able to try it out for themselves, though it’s limited to Mafia Wars only for now. It’s a feature that’s going to be good news to the game’s millions of addicts and also represents a very important strategic move for the company. Because it’s one more thing that Zynga won’t have to rely on Facebook for.
Zynga’s ties with Facebook run deep. They now share some of the same investors, including Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies which has poured as much as $400 million into Facebook and just led a $180 million round in Zynga. Zynga is rumored to be Facebook’s largest advertiser. And Facebook’s viral features have played a huge role in helping Zynga rise to prominence. But despite all of this, it’s in Zynga’s best interest to keep as much control over its own games as possible.
The reason why became very obvious last October, when Facebook announced it would soon no longer let developers push updates to a user’s Facebook Notifications. This is a big blow to all developers, as the notification channel is one of the best ways to keep users engaged over a long stretch of time. Zynga in particular has become particularly adept at using the channel to keep users coming back for more. Their tactics haven’t always been Kosher and sometimes border on downright spammy, but they work. Now that Facebook is killing off this channel, Zynga needs to find another way to connect with its users.
Developers are going to start getting access to Facebook users’ Email boxes, so that’s a start. But Emails don’t generally instill the urgency as a Facebook Notification. SMS messages do, and then some. Zynga will have to convince users to hand over their phone numbers of course, but they’ll get a strong hold on anyone that does. For now messages will only be able to provide notifications, but in the future users will actually be able to respond to them to execute in-game actions while they’re away from their computer.
Read more at crunchpad

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The 501 Mafia Members Secret

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Haitian Drum

The Haitian Drum is a new limited edition loot piece available for 25 godfather points. As an armor item it has very good stats.


According to Zynga 50% of the sales of this item will go to charity.
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Blow Out Sale

Mafia Wars is now having a Holiday Sale over the next week, similar to the Black Friday sale. The format is the same - consumables now cost 20% less godfather points and you can buy a variety of previously released limited edition items for 20% less godfather points than they were originally offered.

In addition to old limited edition pieces, there are three new pieces available:

Knuckle Trimmer (31 attack, 23 defense)
Red Boa (19 attack, 38 defense)
Trio Mesa (16 attack, 34 defense)

Furthermore, there is a "special Holiday Sale Reward" for buying 10 items during this sale period. The reward is a Cherry Picker, a weapon with 36 attack and 13 defense (I think):


Nothing special IMO - though I suppose some people buy 10 items anyway throughout the course of the week and will just end up getting the free item.
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Gift Safe House Guide

With the recent Mafia Wars holiday update came the addition of the Gift Safe House. At the Gift Safe House, you can give and receive presents to and from your friends. After doing the limited time "Bring the Family Together" job for the first time, you are greeted with this message:


Your Gift Safe House can hold up to 50 gifts from your friends. However, getting gifts is a bit backward this time - you have to send a request to your friends, asking for them. When your friends accept your request, you will get a gift. Since you can only send out 20 gift requests per day, you will not be able to get more than 20 gifts per day.

Make sure you pick who you send requests to carefully; your friends have to accept your gift request in order for you to get your gift, so make sure you pick well!

How it Works

You can ask your mafia for gifts (send in game requests found on the Gift Safe House page). When they respond, your gifts will appear in the Safe House. You can open up 50 gifts total - 25 on the 5th and 5 more each day until the subsequent gifts are open. Alternatively, you can pay 2 godfather points to open up each gift early. There is also a link posted in the comments section of the blog post below this one that will let you open gifts for free, but do that at your own risk.

It really gives no advantage to open up your gifts early - you can't open more gifts if you open them early, you just get them earlier.

When you accept a gift request from your friend (i.e. send them a gift), you will get the option of selecting one of three bonuses:


The XP is variable based on your level. On multiple accounts I have seen 50 energy and 10 stamina though (but others have reported different numbers). What I do know is, is that if you are a high level like me, a 427 XP bonus is really sweet. I can get a few extra levels each day thanks to that! For me, this XP bonus is certainly much better than any free gift I could get.

Bonus Item

If you open up 10 gifts from friends, you can get a gift wagon (vehicle; 18 attack, 29 defense):


Not really worth anything, but it is something to do while we patiently wait for Mafia Wars Bangkok!

Gift Contents

Gift contents are completely random and the loot pool it draws from seems to very large. I would guess it would be close to 50 gifts since you can open up up to 50 gifts. I ended up getting an Impression from my first gift (35 attack 15 defense), which was originally from the Moscow Loot Preview event over the summer!


Here is a list of items people have found so far in boxes from this forum post, let me know if you have anything to add:

Fruitcake
Dragunov
El Tigre
Nunchucks
Garza 12 Shotgun
Pretty Boy Floyd's .45 Cal.
Economy Pack of Socks
Tora Assault Rifle
Liger
Galea
Cooked Goose
Gravity Gun
Lump of Coal
Food Coma
Gladius
Ornamental Tommy Gun
Balloon Boy
Low Rider
Kamas
PPSH 41 Submachine Gun
Samurai Sword
ATV
Lever Action Rifle
GrowPet
Bobble Head
Saturday Night Special
10 Gallon Hat
Impression
Nail Gun 28/12
Sawed off Double Barrel Shotgun 35/15

New Items

There are a few new items that have been found so far:

GrowPet (27 attack, 12 defense)
Fruitcake
Economy Pack of Socks
Lump of Coal (22 attack, 14 defense)
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Bring The Family Together Guide

With last night's Mafia Wars update came the addition of a new limited time job - "Bring the Family Together":


Here is the progression for the job:

Step 1: Bust a Wise Guy Out of Jail. Reward: Tommy Gun Ornament (weapon; 20 attack, 13 defense) and you unlock the Safe House (more details on that in a later post) and 20% job mastery.

Step 2: Sneak an Exile into the Country. Reward: Getaway Car Ornament (vehicle; 6 attack, 23 defense) and 20% job mastery.

Step 3: Help Shake Police Surveillance. Reward: Grenade Ornament (weapon; 19 attack, 10 defense) and 20% job mastery.

Step 4: Settle a Family Dispute. Reward: Nutcracker (weapon; 25 attack and 12 defense) and 20% job mastery.

Step 5: Obtain a Governor's Pardon. Reward: Holiday Star (15 attack, 20 defense) and 20% job mastery.

For finishing the job, the final reward is a Decorated Tree (4 attack, 26 defense).

Thanks to Mayor of Wingville for the picture!

About the "Bring the Family Together" limited time job:

The job is on an 8 hour timer, which you can now spend godfather points on to lower the timer:


If you click on the "Want to do the job faster?" button, a pop-up menu will come up asking you if you would like to spend 1 godfather point to lower the timer by 1 hour, 4 for 4 hours, and 8 for 8 hours (i.e. reset the button).

In other words, for 8 godfather points you can do each step in succession. For 32 godfather points, you can finish the limited time job instantly.

After completing the job, instead of staying at 100% like before, it restarts back at 0%. Not sure if this is intended or unintended! We will find out if it stays like that in a few days.

While the items are not exactly the best ever, you can get some free godfather points out of this deal. With each item you get, you can post a link to your news feed which your friends can click on for 2 free godfather points. The limit is 10 free godfather points.
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Free Gift Wagon Cheat

I was just sent this Free Mafia Wars Gift Wagon Cheat link by a friend and tested it on all my accounts... it works!

FREE GIFT WAGON EVERY TIME YOU CLICK!!! http://apps.facebook.com/inthemafia/index.php?next_params=YTozOntpOjA7czo5OiJzYWZlaG91c2UiO2k6MTtzOjE1OiJjb2xsZWN0X21hc3RlcnkiO2k6MjtzOjA6IiI7fQ%3D%3D&_fb_q=1

Update: Looks like Zynga nerfed this. Sorry to those that missed out.
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Holiday Cheat Link

To open holiday gifts early without spending reward points, copy and paste this link into your browser: http://mwfb.zynga.com/mwfb/remote/html_server.php?xw_controller=safehouse&xw_action=open_gift_free&xw_city=1&cb=1000000038339821261403665&box_num=0mwfb.zynga.commwfb.zynga.com

Update: It appears that Zynga has fixed this cheat. Was fun while it lasted though =P
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Spy Tech Crates

There is a new crate available in Mafia Wars: Spy Tech Crates. Here is the loot list:

Weapons

Radio Controlled Detonator 23A 16D
Explosive Watch 29A 12D
Motion Sensor Explosive 39A 25D
Remote Controlled Sniper 35A 20D

Armor
Bugged Cell Phone 19A 19D
Infrared Scanner 9A 22D

Vehicles
Loose Caboose 17A 30D
Rigged Model Airplane 13A 41D

I will have additional pictures up for the spy crate items later tonight!

Holiday Gift List

There are some new free gifts available in Mafia Wars. As usual, these are vanity items for collection purposes, so don't worry about collecting them in large quantities.

Weapons

Ice Skates: 16 attack, 20 defense
Snowballs: 11 attack, 18 defense
Black Roses: 20 attack, 14 defense
Mistletoe Launcher: 23 attack, 13 defense
Candy Cane: 20 attack, 12 defense


Armor:

Holiday Scarf: 13 attack, 24 defense




Vehicles

Bobsled 15 attack, 24 defense
Surprise Mobile 11 attack, 23 defense
Snowboard 8 attack, 22 defense


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Zynga Receives $180 Million Investment

Zynga, the creator of popular social games like Mafia Wars, FarmVille, and Cafe World recently received an infusion of cash to the tune of $180 million from the same Russian investment firm that gave the developer of Facebook $200 million according to the NY Times.

Given the explosive growth in social gaming on Facebook, most of it from Zynga games, this is seemingly a wise investment for the firm that has also invested in social gaming companies from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Asia. Zynga's annual revenue is estimated at $250 million and growing fast.

At the same time, Zynga will need additional capital as video game giant Electronic Arts recently purchased an up and coming social gaming group called Playfish for $300 million. There are also numerous other social gaming start-ups popping up across the country as the social gaming craze grows in the United States. Zynga is also facing numerous controversies over support and changes they make for their games and the selling of advertisement.

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Ugly Sweater

There is a new loot shipment up - the Ugly Sweater:

You can try force starting it with this link:

http://mwfb.zynga.com/mwfb/remote/html_server.php?xw_controller=index&xw_action=initiate_vloot_job&xw_city=3&tmp=41d6109ec33b036d9d400c0d1c0d12d7&cb=17853309231261135917
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Bangkok Loot Preview

Here are some "pictures" of some new loot items from Mafia Wars Bangkok.


I drew a red line separating the weapons, armors, and vehicles - as you can see it's just text so far, there are no graphics. The pictures you see are just vehicles/armors/weapons from this account - there are no Bangkok pictures yet. However, this was accessed live on Mafia Wars, so they are at least in the process of adding Bangkok to the game very, very soon. I'd bet within the week.

Weapons

Attack Cobra
Komodo Dragon
Jade Inlaid Pistols
Forest Scorpion
Hung Fa RPG
Cleaver
Tanto
Type-103 Machine Gun
Scalding Hot Tea
TAR-21 (rename? maybe this will change)
Harpoon Cannon
Typhoon Cleavers

Armor:

Muai Thai Bodyguard
Silk Scarf
Monk's Robe
Royal Thai Army Beret
Optical Camo Suit
Ronin Armor
Tiger Sak Yant

Vehicles:

Riding Elephant
Royal Thai Army Jeep
Dirt Bike
Lloyds Spectre
Bosozoku Convertible
MalayMobil Helang
Seua Daao Sub
Kage Jet
Armored War Elephant
Royal Thai Police Tank
Fugama Kame SUV


So there are our prospective names for new loot and items in Mafia Wars Bangkok. I suspect that a lot of these will be items simply available in the store - I'm betting there are still items out there that are not on this list (i.e. from the equivalent of "Episode 6" in Bangkok).
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Mafia Wars Fighting Reverted

Good news: the developers have heard the complaints and decided to revert the change to fighting loot drops. Read about it here - thanks to the poster for this link.

Random loot drops from fighting will be back next week. Hopefully Mafia Wars Moscow items will be included here, considering that Mafia Wars Bangkok is right around the corner.

I'm interested to see if Bangkok will really be out so soon considering that Mafia Wars is running so poorly at the moment. On one hand, they really need to hunker down and try to fix this code (or revert back to the old host). On the other hand, Mafia Wars Bangkok could shift the attention away from all the server and coding problems they are currently having. We'll just have to wait and see!

Other Bugs

Thanks to Dave for this picture showing the Surveillance Camera boost, which will purportedly offer +154 robbing defense:


That isn't the actual item he received - it was just a bug that made it pop up. This item is currently not available in game currently as far as I know. There are two other items, the Hobo Lookout (+55 robbing defense) and the Reinforced Door (+106 robbing defense) that are randomly popping up from time to time.
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Mafia Mike's & Bangkok Update

So, since some of you have been asking about Mafia Mike's:

Yes, the Mafia cap is off of Mafia Mike's (the property in New York - assuming you have property and not rackets).

However, the price has gone up significantly. At around 600 Mafia Mike's, it will take around 100 days to get a return on your investment, so make sure you calculate that before dumping a bunch of money into them:

Cost of Property
___________
Pay per hour * 24

Ex:

Mafia Mike's #600 costs ~$30,000,000. Pays 12,000 per hour. $30,000,000 / ($12,000 per hour * 24 hours per day) = ~104 days.

Mafia Mike's are now worth no more than Valu-Marts (or even less) in terms of the time they will take to pay you back for having them.

Note: They didn't reduce the price output of your Mafia Mike's, but rather significantly increased the cost. So if you had 1,000 Mafia Mike's before, this change does not negatively effect you in any way.


Mafia Wars Bangkok

In other news, looks like a few stealth changes (or maybe I just did not notice the first time around) to Mafia Wars: Bangkok.

Now, when you are in Moscow and you go to fly to Bangkok, the "New" tag is gone (at least on my version of Mafia Wars).

Additionally, as expected, there will be a new type of currency for Bangkok, the Baht, which you can see at the top left of the screen by the "bank" screen. Clicking "bank" just leads back to New York for now.

Mafia Wars Bangkok could really be just a few days away!
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Secret Stash

As many of you have already noticed, you no longer get random loot drops from fights in Mafia Wars.

Now when you win a fight, you have a chance to find a "secret stash". However, you can't loot it yourself - one of your friends is randomly selected and you can ask them to help you out with it.

When your friend finds your post on their wall, they can click the link on the link. If you click on a friend's secret stash link, you will go to a screen like this:



And you and the friend will both get a few pieces of rather unspectacular loot. It's really weird that you win items that you can buy from the store for New York cash.

The problem with this new secret stash feature is that the majority of the players don't like it. The issue is not really the loot drop loss but rather the fact that you now have to spam.

Between calls for help for NY, Cuba, Moscow jobs and bosses, laundering money, wishlists, leveling-up boosts, limited edition loot pieces, and now even energy packs, the last thing Mafia Wars needs is another function that requires spam. Even worse, you have to post it on your friend's wall rather than your own. Most people don't want other players Mafia Wars posts taking up their personal wall space.

In theory, I'm sure this looked good on paper, it just did not play out well. I don't simply want to be a critic though, so here's my suggestions:

1. Bring back random loots and make finding the "secret stash" much rarer (like a 1/200+ fights).

2. When you do find a secret stash, you should post it to your own wall/feed rather than on some other person's wall. Anyone should be able to help out - first come, first serve.

3. Due to the rarity of the event, increase the loot drops in both number of items and quality of items.

With these simple changes, Mafia Wars would cut down on the spam due to the rarity of finding the secret stash. Posting on your own wall would reduce spam complaints as well. Additionally, it's something people actually look forward to because the loot is better.

Oh well, at the end of the day, I don't count on fighting for loot drops as it is.

Hopefully I will have some news about Mafia Wars Bangkok soon!
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Mafia Wars Bangkok Preview

The preview for Mafia Wars Bangkok is now up! Looks like they are intent on getting it ready for the holidays. You can now "fly" to Bangkok (although you can not access any of the jobs yet).

To do jobs in Bangkok once it is released, you will have to collect 4 items first: a Triad Coin, a Yakuza Sake, a Thai Note, and a Thai Passport.


For now, you can get started on the first three items:

Triad Coin: In the soldier tier, the "Museum Break-in" job is now "Asian Museum Break-in. This job drops the Triad Coin.



Yakuza Sake: The Repel the Yakuza job in the Hitman tier drops this item. Thai Note: The 2nd job in the Enforcer tier is now "Smuggle Thai Gems". This job drops the Thai Note.



These items were all very easy for me to get. I got on one the first try, one on the fifth, and one on the second try. Looks like the Thai Passport will simply be given out once Bangkok comes out.

Yakuza vs Triads

Just like with Mafia Wars Moscow, there will be two sides to choose from in Bangkok - the Yakuza or Triads. I am sure it will play out in a similar fashion to the way Moscow is set up.

While there is no official launch date, at this point I would say we're likely to see Bangkok within 2 weeks. It will be at least a week - it definitely won't be launched during the Public Enemies Crime Spree limited time job. Stay tuned for updates.
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Seeing All Your Friends Posts

When it comes to helping out people on Mafia Wars jobs via your News Feed, most of you probably are not seeing all of your mafia members' posts on your feed currently.

If you are like me, then you have at least the minimum of the 500 friends needed to have a full mafia in Mafia Wars (in my case it's over 2,000 and I know others have even higher than that).

However, by default, Facebook only displays 250 of your friends in your newsfeed. The ones that get displayed in your newsfeed are the ones who you interact with the most on Facebook.

To change this, scroll down to the bottom of your news feed and and in the right hand corner click the edit options link:


Now, a window will pop up for your newsfeed preferences. Notice the "maximum friends allowed" limit in the bottom left hand corner:



Change this number to something higher (I did 2500, but the sky's the limit!) and you will be able to see all of your friends' posts.

While this might be annoying if you are playing Mafia Wars on your real Facebook account, if you are playing on an alternate account (like me), you will definitely want to be able to see all your Mafia friends' posts so that you can help out more frequently for more xp and items.

This is a useful strategy for any Facebook game. The great thing about this is that if you play several games like I do, it's easy for updates to get lost. I interact more frequently with my Mafia Wars friends, so I am never able to see my FarmVille friends' posts (since the cap was on 250). As a result, I was never able to see premium egg posts, but after raising the cap I am able to see these all over the place!


Other News

Loot Shipment:

If you are into collecting limited edition loot, there's a new shipment of items - Modified Tommy Guns:

Find the loot shipment button on your Mafia Wars home page.


Public Enemies Limited Time Job

Still no sign of it. The Public Enemies loot event is going to end soon though so this job has to be coming any day (or hour) now.
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Public Enemies Event Guide

The Mafia Wars Public Enemies loot event is now live. There are 8 items in the set (you can and will get more than 1 of each item). Since these items randomly drop from jobs and fighting, if you really want to collect to be sure to get all 8, as usual, you can repeat the Mugging job in the Street Thug tier over and over again (since it only costs 1 energy) until you get all 8 pieces.

Here is the Public Enemies loot list:


Weapons:

Dillinger's Wooden Gun (see yesterdays post)

Dillinger's Pistols and Holster (36 attack, 18 defense)

Agent Purvis' Rifle (44 attack, 29 defense)


Armor:

Fur Coat (12 attack, 28 defense)

"Public Enemy #1" Newspaper (6 attack, 30 defense)

Prison Stripes (15 attack, 24 defense)

Locket of Billie (10 attack, 36 defense)


Vehicles:

V8 (13 attack, 26 defense)

Along with the loot event, there is a new limited time job, but it is not live at the time of this posting (will update as soon as I can).
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Public Enemies Announcement

Starting December 6th (that is this Sunday) at 12:01 AM, there will be another Mafia Wars loot drop weekend - this time themed around the movie Public Enemies.

Just like with the Halloween event and the Raid the Docks event, there will be a limited time job associated with the Public Enemies event in addition to the 8 random pieces of loot that will drop.

From the looks of it, Dillinger's Wooden Gun (12 attack, 45 defense) will be once again one of the loot drops associated with the event (1 defense higher than the Zmeya Carbon Blade):



In other news:

- Mafia Wars Moscow is now once again rewarding skill points for mastering jobs.

- The new "loot a shipment of" item is Dentist's Drills - weapon, 21 attack, 11 defense.

- There are a new set of crates - "Best of 2009" - which contain:

Weapons

Cane Cutter
35 attack 5 defense

Siberian Tiger
36 Attack 14 Defence

Vortex Ring Gun
12 attack 33 defense

Pearl-Handled Revolver
40 attack 10 defense

Armor

Lorica
18 Attack 32 Defense

Ghillie Suit
16 attack 42 defense

Vehicles


Tiger Tank
18 Attack 48 Defense

Chariot
48 Attack 12 Defense



I'll have updates on the Public Enemies loot reward items and job once it is released!
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Mafia Wars Game Bar / Toolbar

As part of Zynga's new use of the Facebook Connect Integration feature, you can download a toolbar called the "Mafia Wars Game Bar":


The Game Bar displays your current Health, Energy, Stamina, and Energy Pack Timer on a toolbar on your internet browser so you can check on your Mafia Wars status at any time. This could be pretty useful if you were a very active fighter so you can easily see changes in your health if someone is attacking or hitlisting you.

As an added bonus, if you install the Mafia Wars Game Bar, you will get the Utility Belt (armor - 30 attack and 30 defense).
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