A Slow News Day for Mafia Wars

 ...and thank gawd! I've had my head buried in text books much of the day. I managed to stay plugged in to Mafia Wars nonetheless, but I wasn't very engaged. It was very nice and appreciated to not have 10 million new things in the game to deal with, for once.

I saw earlier today that they have brought back those lame group sales. We haven't seen one in awhile, and last I checked, participation wasn't that great. I guess Zynga thought otherwise, as there's another group sale in the Mafia Wars marketplace and also the home page banner, for the Rivet Leather, AND this one is going to last a whole week ::yawn::. The idea is, the more people buy the item, the more its stats increase...but so does the cost for anyone who buys later rather than sooner. Supposedly this is meant to prompt you to buy quickly, but this tactic hasn't ever worked on me. I think their prices are laughable for a loot item that isn't that great and will be quickly outdated.

Speaking of over priced, Zynga is still trying to push these "collector's edition items" on us. Not surprisingly, they aren't faring any better than they did last year. Not even 1500 sold on this round of the Scion Heavy Machine before it was finally yanked from the home page a short while ago. I've always mocked their pricing, and reducing their prices in order to gain more sales is apparently not something within Zynga's scope of understanding. I am not gonna pay 35 reward points for a piece of loot. But what do I know?

Oh, I finished mission number 7 in the End Of Days mission event awhile ago--Armageddon, and had a funny thing happen. The New Year's Resolution screen popped up again out of the blue, right underneath the Mission Complete drop-down. I'm pretty sure I saw someone post about this a day or two ago; you'd think Zynga would have already fixed that? And no, sadly, I wasn't able to claim more Ms. PAC Partys :(

Although, predictably, the option to waste reward points to buy more votes was still there. Go figure.

And it would be a day at Zynga without some bug or problem, right? Apparently the Draw button wasn't working for some players, and some winning hands weren't winning--well, I did say the house odds would probably suck!

I haven't personally, encountered any problems with the Mafia Poker, at least not that I noticed, and I did play a few dozen hands. In fact it crossed my mind that this was a rare 'win' for Zynga. An easy ingame 'feature' that doesn't completely suck, doesn't force us to BUY BUY BUY, yet still prompts us to send Facebook requests in the form of Poker Cards--Zynga makes money when we send those requests.

Anyway, Zynga is blaming whatever issues people were having on the players using scripts and multi-tabs. I guess that could be the case, but my money's on it being a Zynga bug.

Hello Mafia Players,

We are aware that some of you are experiencing the following issue:

Mafia Poker Issues

Issue: Some players report that their "Draw" button goes missing. Others report that, even after understanding that we consider the Ace the highest card, not the lowest, they will sometimes lose with a winning hand, such as two pairs vs. the dealer having just one.

Status: We have determined that most, if not all, of these issues are the result of playing Mafia Wars in multiple tabs/windows and/or with scripts. Please try disabling any scripts you may be using and playing the game in only one tab or window. If, after doing this, you still experience any issues with Mafia Poker, please add your details to this Bug Report.

Workaround: Disable scripts and play Mafia Wars in only one tab/window at a time. If you know of another workaround for this issue, please Submit A Workaround.

Thanks,
The Mafia Wars Team

One last thing--two, actually. Earlier today when I was accepting gifts from my ZMC, the gifts weren't disappearing after I accepted them, which I found much to my liking. It's easier to pick and choose which gifts to accept when the whole dang ZMC screen isn't jumping around due to previously accepted gifts going poof. It was like that for a couple of hours and I'd thought it was something new. But now the gifts are back to disappearing again after I accept them. Doh!

I've had a comment here and a couple of emails from people asking what I mean when I refer to the ZMC. By ZMC we mean "Zynga Message Center". It's the little envelope in the upper right of your Mafia Wars screen that holds your gifts. And now you've learned something today.

Have a great weekend!