The Death Of Mafia Wars.

 

We are experiencing the slow death of Mafia Wars. What used to be the most beloved Social Gaming experience on FaceBook is in its last death throes. The only people playing now are those who had a more vested interest in the game or Fighters & Clans.  New  players who are enjoying the game do so until they hit the shark tank and game-play becomes a never ending series of heal and bank sessions.
The game is not about the Mafia any more. 

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It has become an HTML based PVP or  Clan vs Clan game.

When I first started playing Mafia Wars three years ago I was hooked and playing the game as much as my time allowed. The game had so much to offer. You had to know how to use your energy for completing the content in a timely manner while building your character. Stamina was at a cost of 2 skill points per every one stamina point. You went through the fight list and did your homework. You sized up your opponent then decided to attack or to move on. 

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We used to receive what was called “Passive Experience” looked at your in-game update window and saw YOU FOUGHT as SO and SOs Capo you received a certain amount of experience. So the drive to have a big family was huge because you could level up overnight just on passive experience. As the game grew Zynga realized people were building huge mafias to exploit this. This led to Zynga removing Passive Experience, the first painful Nerf. We took that on the chin. They were not changing or “nerfing” the game very much in those days. The game was like other HTML based RPGS. Play for free, pay for premium services to further advance your character faster than through regular play or free play. Skill point giveaways were unheard of. That was a cardinal sin! The hit-list was a vehicle for some players who built their characters as tanks. A lot of skill points in defense with which they would level up with the people attacking them and losing. Meanwhile the big hitters worked the hit-list looking for those tanks and getting sadistic pleasure out of stopping these experience runs. Even worse they prided themselves on stopping a person from getting the BULLETPROOF achievement just as the timer  was about to hit the mark for the achievement. Man my ass would chap at that!

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Working through NY was a test of one’s resolve. Consumables were thin and their drops rates were nearly nonexistent. When you finished Boss you were doing back flips because now you have 2 energy points regenerating a bit faster depending on your character class, Maniac, Fearless and Mogul. It was a challenging and fun.

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Moguls were more popular in those days. Mogul players prided themselves on the amount of money sitting in their NY Bank. Achievements that were business driven were a badge of honor for them! Maniacs and Fearless class players would scoff at the thought of playing a Mogul character. But when it came to rounding out their TOP MAFIA bonus slots, these Moguls always provided the best bonus when it came to Safe Crackers and Bagmen. People would post ADS in groups searching for the top Moguls to get the highest monetary bonuses possible.

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Trade was growing becoming a new way to experience the game and a great way for the fighters and clans to get the best available job drop loot that they could without having to worry about energy looting. The growing trade groups were learning to manage the large amounts of loot being traded. The top trade groups developed Scripts that could tell you if the person you were trading with was trustworthy. The individual trader worked hard at getting the Trusted Trader Status. Eventually the trading became a game within the game. Traders and Collectors played the game and spent money on the game in order to get the next best loot item for trade. Lotto Sets were like gold in those days. Clans would gather as many Lotto pieces as possible to acquire 501 of the latest loot.

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As the relationship between traders and fighters grew so did the importance of this part of the Mafia Wars social experience. Yes, a few people saw dollar signs and started selling  loot. The trade sites responded by developing rules against loot sellers trading on their sites. Early on it was a sort of a golden age for the loot sellers because the items were so hard to work for. Let’s be honest if you have a loophole in a game that prides itself on social gaming one that created its very own paradigm, people are going to cheat. There will always be those looking for the shortcut.

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Things began to decline with the release of Bangkok. This hugely anticipated City Release came with its very own loot market. Entitled Faction Store, the module was DRIVEN by a money system. BAHT was very hard to stockpile. In this Faction Store sat the BEST loot items available. Blogs all over the internet pleaded with Zynga to increase the amount of Baht available. It would take five years or never to acquire enough BAHT and to get allied with EACH faction in the module in order to buy 501 of these items.  This created player frustration. The talk was Bangkok was designed to make you pay through the nose to finish or to get 501 of the faction loots. So a few enterprising coders realized the banking system in Mafia Wars could be exploited. They created a Script that could deposit money into the NY account while speed switching between NY and Bangkok. What would happen is people using this script who had Billions in NY cash the script would switch cities fast enough for the game to deposit billions in BAHT into the Bangkok account.

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Within days of this exploit becoming widely available the trade rooms were flooded with Moscow Loot as all these would be traders cast off their Moscow items in favor of 501 of the Bangkok loot. Lotto still reigned supreme and now those would-be traders could get their hands on this loot they envied which was not available to them and their limited resources. Not having to work for any of the new loot they reveled in their new found digital power and wealth. Smart traders held onto Moscow loot and Lotto. The script was out of control and it would not be long before Zynga realized there's a huge problem in the game.

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This led to the first serious witch hunt and roll back in the game. Many accounts were rolled back. All faction loot was stripped from the game accounts that could not show they worked for it.  People were given warnings about their accounts and were now being watched for illicit activity.
With this Zynga began to look at the traders in a different light. Some digital rent a cop with delusions of grandeur decided that these traders were akin to loot dealers. In this sense, if you can go to your favorite trade site and trade your lotto or latest collections for the items within the game you will not spend money on loot or resources to play the game to acquire said items. Money is being lost. The rent a cops bonus was being threatened. With this logic the rate at which items would be gift-able became less and less.

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Once again hitting frustrated these stringent deadlocks created by Zynga those industrious coders figured out that along with the banking speeds, the gifting speeds could be exploited. So they created scripts to sends items at such a speed that it would clone the loot items. Lotto became nearly worthless virtually overnight once these scripts got into the hands of those would-be traders who like shortcuts to the top. Cloned lotto and items were being removed by Zynga and many people were scammed into trades for this worthless cloned loot.

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More rollbacks took place, bans were handed out. Meanwhile the mass population of Mafia Wars daily players saw this as a result of loot being gift-able and thought it was the traders fault all these rollbacks and changes were taking place and upsetting the game. This is understandable. We all know how telephone works and add that to the internet rumor mill and you have legitimate and honorable traders being blamed for all the problems concerning loot within MW.

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So enter our digital rent a cop and his delusions of grandeur again. Let’s lock up gifting even further.  Fighters were complaining loot was available everywhere and the balance of play was being upset. They did have a point. Hey they weren't cloning loot nor causing any upsets within the game that people were truly upset about. The game started to shift towards fighting accounts.

For a long time they asked for more options to be available to them and gifting became what is. More stamina driven options were added to the game. The shops were added, skill points became easy to get. Energy accounts started to see this shift as more and more fighters were growing powerful with the gobs of skill points available. Statistics became worthless. Collectors began to leave the game. The traders were leaving the game in droves. So much so they boycotted the game last year to try and get Zyngas attention. What happened with this was the DAU 9daily average user) dropped 2 million in one weekend. Still no one wanted to listen to the honest traders, collectors and energy players.

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More restrictions were put on gifting and loot was now a random drop in the new cities starting with Las Vegas. The honest traders and great sites they run stayed around and shared what they could and kept things alive for those few who were engaged in the trade scene. But it was and is dying out. With this death goes 2/3's of the Mafia Wars community. Now, not only are the Traders/Collectors leaving the game or have left it, the balanced players and the Moguls are going. Some energy players are still around for the content, once that is finished it is off to something else. What we have now is a PVP driven game, with events slanted towards it. The folks at Mafia Wars development are under the gun trying to keep the game financially viable. There are some of us out there who have spent some money on this game and we are invested. Marketers know this. That is why the game still has its lights on. What will happen when this game we have all come to grow and love truly stops bringing in the dough? This is happening now and things are getting worse every day.

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What is being lost is the symbiotic relationship and social experience of Mafia Wars. I used to be able to help my mafia by passing down my old loot. By the time I can do that now the loot I am sending is worthless. I used to engage the clans and fighters, hey everybody needs protection! It doesn't matter anymore. The fight list is always dark. A new player comes into the game and builds a fighting account. He does hardly any jobs and levels off of stamina building the shops to exploit the loads of skill points available. The fighter can get their loot in fight drops which happen so frequently they have 501 within week. Yes, fighters and stamina payers had a right to be heard and deserved the features available now. But it has cost Zynga big-time. The money spent on this game was from the Daily Players those ladies and gentlemen that were working towards specific collection stats and loot pieces. It is no coincidence that the DAU (daily average user) is off by 2 million.

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We have nerfs anytime we like something but the RP sales do not show stamina players buying refills. A feeble attempt to bring back collectors or to inspire new collectors was made in Limited Edition Loot. That is an experiment in futility. The game is losing the last vestiges of interested or invested balanced players and now the fighting and clan communities are getting tired of being badgered constantly to buy RP.

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As this game takes it last breathes I am still optimistic that some enterprising young person at Zynga will listen. See that the destruction of the trade scene has had an enormous impact on the game and the DAU.  Then do something about it and listen to the men and women who are offering suggestions on how Zynga can allow the trade by lifting restrictions and make money doing it!

Then there is that part of me, the logical part, which knows that the digital rent a cop with delusions of grandeur could give a rat’s ass. So long as Zynga keeps making games so he can live in his digital castle and dictate his little bit of power in this world while making his fat bonus.

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Thanks for reading this and if you take one thing away from it I hope it is that the reality of the trade scene was an important part of Mafia Wars and a symbiotic one. Not a load of cheaters with cloning scripts. I hope you can see that every part and every mistake had its impetus in Zyngas failures and players frustrations. That there will always be cheaters and that with the right systems in place balance of this game can be restored and we can have our beloved social gaming experience back, with the help of open ears and action on our part. Mike V (Game Name: Billy H. Bonney)