NEW: pick which order to use your boosts in

Some players will now have a new option to choose the order in which to use their boosts. Not all accounts have this yet. You'll notice a yellow down arrow underneath the boosts on/off display on the fight list.

That will let you click and drag the boosts to be used in any order that you see fit. I like this!

There's also an ordering filter that can be used if you like.

What is a "Sneak War"?

Every time I see a reference to a 'sneak war' I hear this in my head: "Oh, I'm sorry I didn't message you in advance and let you know I was going to declare war on you, my bad"

It's even led some people to suggest that you should only be able to declare War on another person if they are ON-LINE! Quite how that would work (especially if they are sat on the toilet at the time) is beyond me.

The point is, unless it's the same person coming back again and again, don't think of it as a "sneak war" or even personal. It's most likely just them declaring war on you from the fight list or the "Declare War" page (which shows a random selection of those on the fight list). It may even be from their recent attackers list but really, it's nothing worth getting upset about and easily avoided if you declare war yourself as close to every 8 hours as you can.

Happy hunting all

This & Next Week 7/8

The weekly update has been posted as the Mafia Wars blog. As usual, I'm mostly interested in what's coming next week. ALL I SAW WAS STAMINA PACKS!!!!!!  

Coming Next Week*
*As far as is currently scheduled, but things can change.

• Icing Seasons

Earn reputation badges and new mastery items each week by icing opponents in Icing Seasons!

• Assassin Boss Fight: The Raven - ROUND 2

The Raven returns! Ice players on the fight list to pick up the Assassin’s trail. He’s very hard to find, but when you get close you'll discover special Ammo with which to fight him.

• New Mission Event: Ties That Bind

You’re taking on a newly-elected state governor in Brazil. Keep your head down and power through a major smear campaign to earn a Glamour Helmet (62/150).

• New Ruby Mastery Loot in Brazil

Finished your Brazil districts to Ruby Mastery? Go back and complete Brazil jobs in any ruby-tiered district to earn new red-hot loot!

• Stamina Packs!

We've saved the best for last: You’ll be able to send and receive free stamina packs for a limited time!

Mystery Boosts are here

The Mystery Boosts that we've been hearing about are finally here.

I'm not entirely blown away by these, but at least you get multiple boosts. I guess we'll see how useful they will be. Has anyone gotten anything awesome from these yet? I've got a few more to open...

Updated Request Window announced

 A post on the Mafia Wars blog announces an upgrade to how we send free gifts.

It says we'll be able to send 50 gifts at a time. To reduce clicks, we'll be able to skip this Send Requests Facebook confirmation to "the exact same group of recipients in the future", and it sounds like we'll be able to have multiple groups. It doesn't say exactly how we select the group each time we go to send gifts though.

Only about 10% of players have the option right now. Yay, another freakin' slow rollout. ETA on complete rollout is "a few weeks".

They also have this to say, "while the Request window appears in all the places mentioned earlier, the upgraded Request window will initially only appear when you request Brazil Crew. You will know you've been added to the new Request window experiment, then, when you return to the game and discover that your Brazil Crew Request window looks more like the one pictured above."

Jet Hare-ear

Another piece of news that I woke up to today is that apparently Zynga has decided to do another round of Limited Edition items. If history holds true, we'll see a new item first at 2AM Pacific time with a quantity of 2000, and the same item repeated for a quantity of 5000 at 9AM Pacific. I haven't seen any official announcement to that effect yet, so we'll see.

There are currently a little over 3000 of these available in the marketplace for 35 RPs each.

Wiretap Devices are giftable!

Wiretap Devices and their counterpart items from the Enforcer tier in New York have been made giftable, forever putting to rest the noob question of "how do I add wiretaps to my wish list?"

Looking for the items in your inventory, you'll now see the little gift icon indicating that they can be gifted, and the green plus marks to add them to your wish list.

These are consumable items, in that they will be used up when doing the jobs that require these items. They are also referred to as 'prep items', and you'll notice it says "some crimes require prep work to make sure the job goes down smoothly".

Serial levelers may be happy about this, as the job using wiretaps gives one of the best job ratios in the game. Although, with the job only giving 27 experience, it would take ages to level up that way I'd think.

upcoming Mafia Wars Live

Another episode of Mafia Wars Live is scheduled for this coming Wednesday, July 13th, and 3:30pm Pacific. You can submit questions to be answered during the broadcast in this forum thread.

I missed the last Ustream broadcast, but I'm going to try to watch this one, and maybe even ask a few questions myself.

The Mystery Behind the Mystery Bonus

We have Red Mystery Bags, Blue Mystery Bags, Mystery Animals and yes, we have Mystery Bonuses. The Mystery Bonuses look exactly like a Red Mystery Bag in your ZMC with the exception that they say Mystery Bonus. It is easy to overlook if you are not reading what they are.

Typically they have better pay-outs than their Mystery cousins. If you haven't seen them while doing jobs or in your gifting area, don't get worried. They can only be found while doing Operations. Today I had to do a ton of operations to get one of these to drop.

If you have seen them while doing operations they are not Red Mystery Bags like you may originally think at first glance. I would send these out before sending Red Mystery Bags. I don't get them too often so I can expand upon what is inside them exactly. Keep your eyes out and try to send them when you can. Your Mafia will be grateful.

Death By Ice winners

Two-Headed Snake (165,165)

The winners have been announced, here they are:

Place/Rank	Family	Ices Achieved During Family Mastery Event: Death By Ice
1	ƒ๏ям๏ѕÂ 歡樂ƒůn團	881,248
2	Mafia Wars Gods	784,193
3	Assassin-a-Nators	621,940
4	Another Primate Entity	524,588
5	Hungarian's Arrows	196,398
6	Top Family	111,996
7	Strength in Numbers	101,096
8	Loot Collectors	98,409
9	●яο●╬●яσмάήĩά●	94,695
10	Tactical Support Group	88,881

According to the Mafia Wars blog, the top three families have received the two-headed snake shown above.

Congrats to all of the winners, and most especially congrats to all the good sports, and all the groups that stuck it out to hit 30k ices!

Customer Service Improvements Are Needed Badly

The issue of Zynga's lack of quality Customer Service has been on my mind for quite a while now. Since I wrote up the blog post about Zynga's Q&A #12: Customer Support Availablity and seeing some of the comments and posts around the web lately, a few things have really been nagging at me.

I like to think that my fellow MW players are aware that there are plenty who attempt to contact Zynga's Customer Support with every little gripe about the game they can in order to get the RP apology. Personally I can't stand seeing people bragging about this. To me it is akin to cheating. Zynga opened the door for players to abuse the system in this way, and I have to say I think it is about time they close that door.

Being a Customer Service Representative is not an easy job to do. It takes a special type of person to be able to deal with upset people day in and day out. I would never think to treat another person with such disrespect as I have heard some people in my friends list have done when trying to get something resolved in the game. I would like to remind those out there who do treat these CS Reps in such a way, you are not 'getting back at Zynga' by being a dink to those that are just trying to help you and you more than likely won't get very far with your complaints as they would be written off due to your attitude.

As far as the current state of Zynga's Customer Service, there is much that can be done to improve upon it. There may be plenty of complaints that there are not enough live support agents available, but if e-mails were handled better than what they currently are people would feel that they are getting just the same satisfaction as those who are able to use the chat feature when it is available.

Overall there still needs to be better procedures, consistency and standardization in how the customer issues are handled. If there are wide-spread issues all revolving around the same 'glitches' in the game, then those who do contact CS should expect to receive the same treatment and 'apology loot'. Of course this can be dependent on Loyalty Tier. I haven't spent much on this game, and I don't feel the need to. I do believe, however that Platinum players have earned the right for better compensation because of the money they have spent.

As it stands there currently is no standard in place that can be seen in the compensations. This is why so many players feel they are entitled to RP apologies each time they contact CS, and then proceed to get huffy when this does not happen. If you have two players and neither have spent any money on the game, or perhaps both are Platinum players, if you give one 5 RP for the same issue that the second person has, that second person should be getting the RP as well.

There is also the fact that many CS Reps don't seem to understand what a player is talking about or having an issue with. It may be harder to do, but what about having separate 'teams' within the department? One 'team' may help with only issues revolving around missions/boss fights and another may deal with Jobs and another with Fighting or however they can best divide them up. This way each 'team' is familiar with that area of the game.

Whatever it is that is going on in Zynga's Customer Support Department, it needs some major addressing from within. I am not saying that they are not working hard, but I am saying that the reps are not all on the same page, many don't understand what the exact issue is and everything varies depending on who is spoken with. All of this has put the company's reputation in the garbage disposal in the eyes of the players. It is time for Zynga to take care of this.

Death By Ice: Good Riddance!

When I first heard about the Death By Ice icing event for Families, my curiosity was piqued. Now though, the last couple of hours can't possibly go by fast enough, and I'm not at all sorry to see it end. I hope it never comes back. It SUCKED.

And Zynga, this one isn't on you. It was a good idea, but the players utterly destroyed this one. Some players felt that this event should only have been open to existing families, which would have excluded a huge amount of other players. Since it was open to everyone and thus the formation of new groups, some players participated in targeting of the new groups--not out of competition, but maliciousness. Some players even lied and exaggerated to support their opinions. And that was only one of the issues. It was ugly. I am very glad this event is over.

Zynga, don't ever bring it back.

Zynga wants feedback on Freedom Fighters

Zynga would like some feedback from players regarding the Freedom Fighters gifting event in Mafia Wars. It can be found HERE.

The poll contains several choices. You can choose multiple choices, but you can only vote once, so be sure you click all statements that you agree with when you visit the poll. These are the choices it has:

1. I Enjoy These Events
2. I Still Do Not Like Gifting Events
3. Boosts Were Useful
4. Boosts Had Minimal Effect On My Fighting
5. This Gifting Event Was Appropriately Spaced From The Previous
6. We Need More Gifting Events
7. Freebie (whatever that means)

These are the results thus far. The majority (so far) still doesn't like gifting events period. While a few people think the boosts are at least moderately useful, far more said the boosts have little effect on their fighting. Several players acknowledged that this gifting event was spaced apart from the last gifting event...but in some of the comments on the poll thread, I think some of us still think there are too many events in general.

Be sure to vote!
http://forums.zynga.com/showthread.php?t=1079139&page=3

Clickable Gift Links in FB Notes (again)

Due to recent changes in Facebook Notes where http links are no longer clickable by default and just appear as regular text. This tip is for all those who are posting their gift links in Note and using Link-a-Nator (v2.12 beta) to generate those links.

Normally, one would copy+paste the links from the second results window, labeled TinyURL Links. Just change to copy+paste from the last results window, labeled Notes Links instead. By making this small change your gift links in a Facebook Note will be clickable once again. This is because the Facebook Note still honours the <a href> html element tag.

You can even use the following template to make any http link clickable in the main body of the FB Note. <a href="http://your.link.here">Name.of.Link.Here</a>