You know you are addicted to Mafia Wars…

 

We at Mistyfied recently lost an excellent admin, and the game of Mafia Wars lost another player. No, Marlena didn't die; she joined millions of other players in quitting her Mafia Wars habit. And sadly, it seems that she means to stick by it. This is a final Mafia Wars transmission from our Dr. Wurst.

• when your job advisor from your local (un)employment service tells you they can’t add you to a real mafia
• when that same guy asks you to amend your CV because apparently ‘Mafia Wars player’ doesn’t look good as your current work experience and also advises you to remove ‘Brawler’ & ‘Link-A-Nator’ from your computing knowledge

• when you are at a friend’s party & you keep glancing at their computer, eager to use it because you know, you have to collect your properties NOW before everyone steals your Precious Stones because you forgot to activate your Guardian in Brazil!
• when you ask your friend at their party to use ‘quickly’ their computer to ‘check something’ on Facebook
• when you suddenly realise it’s daylight & you’re still sitting in front of your friend’s computer while everyone else passed out or left the party.
• when you are not allowed to use your friend’s computer on their party again because they discovered ‘Brawler’ in their bookmarks & you secretly hope they’ll never notice that little monkey face icons on their browser which you forgot to delete
• when you bring your own laptop to your friend’s party & ask for their wifi code
• when your friends don’t invite you to their parties anymore because they think you are a geek
• when you don’t want to go to those stupid parties anymore because you think your friends are ignorant selfish bastards for refusing to give you their wifi code
• when you wish you could afford an iPhone or Blackberry to be able to play MW everywhere, even on the toilet!
• when you go only on holidays where you know for sure they have internet access
• when you have to wear sunglasses to weapon yourself against this fierce daylight to pop quickly outside for some shopping because it’s too early for pizza delivery (only during a long brawler run in LV of course)
• when ‘Brawler runs’ also become your toilet & fridge runs
• when you drink your coffee only from your MW mug
• when your friends & family have to address you by your MW name  to catch your attention
• when you are sending virtual death threats to operation slackers
• when you are late for everything in order to do those last clicks on MW (e.g. appointments, dates, work, weddings, Christianising, burials etc…)

All copyrights reserved to me aka Dr Wurst unless you are called Mistyfied! =D

free "bloody knuckles" for next week's boss fight

From the Mafia Wars fan page: 

You gotta use brute force if you hope to pound Roughhouse Rafael into submission in the Boss Fight next week! Get a head start with FREE BLOODY KNUCKLES, then come back tomorrow for FREE CRACKS OF THE BAT!

http://zyn.ga/5Gh <-- Get 1 to 5 FREE BLOODY KNUCKLES for use in next week's Boss Fight!

 So now we have an ETA on the boss fight event (next week). 

survey from Zynga

A new survey from Zynga.

Me and some others have wondered, what's the point with the surveys?

http://survey.confirmit.com/wix2/p1725809003.aspx

 You lost me at "ways to play without imposing on friends".

Gods but there are so many on that list that mean a lot the game.

But will the votes even count?

Thanks to "The Tank" for the link. 

awesome promotion reward

You got: 3000000 CASH

Yay rah? It's so awesome that they forgot to put in a graphic for it.

Brazil fight loot issue

Many players are now reporting issues with receiving correct amounts of loot when fighting in Brazil. Be mindful of your inventory numbers if you're fighting there, and let me know what you've observed. I can confirm this is the case in my own game also.

 Here I had 6051 animal feeds.

Here I looted 5 animal feeds.

...but I only have one more animal feed than I had.

Thank you Adam Lee for first mentioning this on the fan page!

Fight and Robbing loot updated

 

 The new fight loot is in the game!

 I'm not at all sure why an Arcturion would be considered superior fight loot. I think that should be downgraded, but what do I know? Fighters will be happy about the new superior items though I think.

The "uncommon" items are probably outdated now for most serious fighters, but they'll still be of benefit to many, at least.

 The uncommons still suck, and I don't have a clue why those are even considered "rewards". More like a slap in the face, but that's just me. Maybe someone will want that stuff.

Robbing rewards have also been updated.

I got this from clearing a robbing board. I haven't needed more diamondbacks for a long time, but hey, it's better than brass knuckles.

 

Nice! An Italian Hardwood.

Another Meadow Viper.

I might actually get a stamina refill now!

New Zoo & Armory Levels: Worth the hassle?

With the recent addition of new levels in the Private Zoo and Armory, many players are asking whether the new items are worth the pain of collecting all the parts needed for the upgrade. When my buddy Michael J asked this question on the Mistyfied Mafia Wars fan page, it made me think "that's a good question!"

He wrote: 

Sorry to hog the feed! I'm curious as to other opinions concerning updating Zoo and Armory shops from level 10 to level 15. It seems to me the only advantage is extra parts to collect, but the buildable items don't do anything better than the current ones available at level 10? [Assuming you build Shark for +3 attack, and Full Body Armor for +1 attack and defense, I guess?] Your thoughts will help me decide how important it is; I thank you in advance!

Personally, I utilize these property builds for the items that increase my permanent skills. As you can see, the original +3 attack item, the Tiger Shark, only requires 28 animal feeds and 1 exotic animal feed to craft. The new item requires 44 animal feeds and 4 exotic animal feeds. The new Coconut Crab has slightly better stats equipment-wise than the Tiger Shark. Meh to the eh. 

Same story with the +3 defense items. A significant increase in the needed animal feed and exotic animal feed, and a slight improvement in equipment stats.

 

For the +20 health item, it's again the same story: higher cost in animal feed and exotic animal feed, slight equipment stats improvement. 

For me, animal feed is not a problem. The exotic animal feed is a different story, but I still never have a problem obtaining them. I just post a free gift link for it to my news feed and a few minutes later enough players have taken that free gift and returned it.

As for the item stats, I suppose they're ok. It's fun to have all the "best" equipment, but since skill points account for the majority of your character's strength, I'd suggest building the items that add to your skill points.

Since all of the new Private Zoo items supply equal skills to items that we were already able to build, the trade-up is in the loot stats. Some players care about loot, others don't. I suspect many will just continue with building the animals they were already building, if they were only after the skills.

 As with the Private Zoo, the Armory also saw a couple of items added which do not give you any permanent skill increase when you craft them. 

These skills were available with pre-existing builds:
+10 Health
+1 att / +1 def
+2 nrg / +2 stam
+1 att
+1 def
+1 stam

If you're after skillz, then building the Desert Eye is silly, because there's already a better item +2 energy / +2 stamina that can be built for fewer parts.

Where we do see an improvement is the addition of the +3 attack and +3 defense items, which is considerably better that what is given by the pre-existing items.

So to answer your question Michael J, the armory upgrades do provide better opportunities for building skill points. The Private Zoo offers only better equipment stats, for the same skill increase :)

New BOSS FIGHTS-Coming Soon

I just got this on my Home page about the New Boss Fight Events. You'll get a chance to start stocking up on "ammo" for the boss fights, although knowing Zynga, there may be a limit as to how many we can collect. We'll see.


This is what I got. Misty also got the exact same items when she collected.

For now, there's a 23 hour timer on being able to collect more ammo/consumables, but we don't know how many days we will have to collect them. So far, a date for the new boss fight event hasn't been specified.

new Warlord achievements

The Warlord achievement has been renamed Warlord 1, and 2 additional Warlord achievements have been added. From the wording, I assume there are two more "tiers" of war rewards. That might be nice, because the ones we had were getting pretty tired.

It's worth nothing, with the appearance of these achievements, it seems likely that the war design graphic that we saw earlier may be closer to production than we realized.

 New war loot can also be seen, if you click the little question mark seen on your War Declared screen.

From this image we can assume that there will be yet more war achievements to come. Oh boy. I can't say wars have been one of my favorite features.
 
The timer for how long you have to wait to declare another war has also been reduced.

Thanks for the heads up about the achievements, Hughbert Cumberdale!

Boss Fight Event V2

According to the announcement just made at the Mafia Wars blog, the next boss fight event is going to be a bit different from previous boss fight events. We'll see how it goes, I guess. I actually liked the old boss fights fine - or I would have, if they would have fixed the various bugs that were associated with them. 

But then again, it's previously been said that they would be trying new types of events, so I'll check it out and provide my feedback accordingly. The blog says ""  this is the first of a number of exciting fighting features coming to Mafia Wars this quarter!"

So now we'll not be using stamina, but rather a combination of "ammo" items that come from jobs, fights, robbing, and of course one obligatory free gift item.The ammo is basically "boss fight consumables". The Knuckle Punch will drop from fights, Crack of the Bat comes from robbing, Knife Slashes comes from doing jobs. Shotgun Blasts will come by gift requests.

Presumably, clicking on an ammo item does some damage to the boss, and clicking on them in a certain order (or "combo") will inflict greater damage <my supposition at this point>. As we use the items, the game will show a history of what items we've used, to help us figure out the combos. One combo will be given to us via a 'quest' associated with the event, and others we'll just discover as we play. We are free to share those with each other once we find them, of course. 

It looks like the boss fights will be timed; in other words, they will regenerate health after a certain period of time. It also sounds like there will be different levels of difficulty, so each time you beat the boss you'll get a mastery item "up to gold mastery".  

I didn't see any mention of an event date yet -- "soon", I guess :)

new secret stashes appear...and disappear

The new secret stash feature is appearing for a few players...and then disappearing again for some. My guess is they may be starting to roll this out, or will be doing so soon, so be on the lookout.

This is all I get when I clicked on the posts that I saw. "This feature is not available at the moment".

war design image leaked

 A sneak peek at upcoming war changes? And what does 'Available to play' mean?



The biggest issue that needs fixin' is "The Declare War feature is currently unavailable". Blah blah.

Better notifications is another complaint I've seen mentioned over and over again.

I'm a bit leery at the implications of "invites" with respect to wars, but I'm happy to reserve judgment for now as we have absolutely no details. For all I know this is just an idea being tested and not something we'll ever see.

Terminator dominates Rambo

As Feature Contributor Mike Shay posted several minutes ago, the Terminator vs. Rambo winner was just announced as being the Terminator. Already my news feed is littered with the "Get Down" graphics :) See, I told ya we'd get the reward today!

Terminator Vs. Rambo ends

The Terminator Vs. Rambo event is officially over! Woot! Your unclaimed items should now turn into Mystery Bags whether you were done with the event or not.

This leaves us with just the Thrill of the Hunt mission event, I noticed.

The new secret stashes should be rolling out any time now, so maybe we won't have to deal with another event for a day or two :fingers crossed:

40% off RPs right now

 It's worth noting for some that you may be able to find a 40% off sale on reward points. When I'm able, 40% off sales will get me to make a purchase. I got some a few days ago, but I went ahead and got a few more today since I haven't seen the 40% off offered much lately.

Zynga wants you to take a quick survey. Nothing exciting there.

ANY TIME YOU MAKE A PURCHASE FOR A FACEBOOK GAME:
Make sure you go through your account settings on Facebook and remove your payment information!!

Facebook doesn't tell you this upfront, but any time you make a game purchase on Facebook, your payment information is stored. This is information all those spammers and scammers would kill for. Protect yourself and don't click on stupid stuff, and always remove your payment info from Facebook.

Under Account Settings, go to Credits Balance, then Payment Methods, and select "Manage". At the bottom of the next page, you will see any stored payment information, as well as the option to remove it.

Be smart.

My own graphical tribute to Mafia Wars Live!

Click on the image to view fullsize

Hang around me long enough, and you'll soon realize that I like to dabble in very minor graphical editing. The Mafia Wars Loot Lady's recap of Mafia Wars Live included a couple of humorous graphical tributes to the broadcast, which inspired me to one of my own. I thought the fellas could use a little "roughing up", so to speak. A few Google Images searches later, this was the result. It kinda cracks me up :)

Mafia Wars Live wrap-up

The first Mafia Wars Live session wrapped-up a little while ago. You can watch it here! I'll be rewatching it myself, as there was a lot going on between the chat and keeping up with the video. I'm not sure that any important questions were answered, but I did enjoy Nate and Cole interacting with those in the Ustream chatroom during the broadcast session. Good job guys, and I look forward to the next one! And not a bad turnout, either. The number of viewers hovered around 1,000 for most of the session.


Watch it here - after the first few seconds, it cuts to a short ad on Ustream and then goes back to the video. It's a little over 43 minutes long.

another spam/scam disguised as Mafia Wars

It's an un-clever do-over of one of the ones going around last week, so if you see this image, run like h3ll. Actually, report the page as "spam/scam", and then run like h3ll. Zynga has never, ever directed its players to use a javascript, lol.

Mafia Wars Live! is ...Live!

Streaming live right now, Community Manager Blue-Eyed Nate and Game Designer Cole/Crazy Dragon http://www.ustream.tv/channel/mafia-wars-live1