Is it fun or a gaming addiction?

So the Question is: Is it fun or a gaming addiction?

Well, that's complicated.  If you spend more of your personal time playing than living, I think it's safe to say that's an addiction.  Everyone that plays has some form of a real life, no matter what their circumstances.  So if you are neglecting your real life, the real people in your life, your relationships, your job or family and not practicing some type of moderation then it's time to re-evaluate where you stand.  There are lots of players looking at the game and wondering where their time went and whether zynga really cares that they are driving players off in droves because of the excessive everything.

A simple thought is this: If Mafia Wars causes you stress in any way, it might be time to think about if you are playing a GAME or addicted.

For the addicted who know they are addicted and still enjoy it, I'm offering an anti-stress kit below.  For those that are still not sure, see the list after the anti-stress kit so that you can contemplate where you fit in on the addiction scale for Mafia Wars.

In the past jokes have been passed around as status posts on fb that are similar to the list below.  In this instance, these were created by me (in humor) so that you can see how many you identify with to determine if you might just be an addicted Mafia Wars player. 

• It’s safe to say you are probably at least mildly addicted to playing mafia wars if you can identify or relate to more than say, 5 of the following:
• You have logged into the game more than twice a day to make sure you have built from your properties
• You know what speed building is and have tried it more than once
• You have “Mastered” a Spam Event all 3 times
• You have or have had more than 3 tabs open with all tabs running a different script/bookmarklet in the game
• You know what Chucker is and the first thing you think of is not a tv show about catapulting pumpkins
• You *care* what your “worst item” Attack/Defense stat is
• You know what a Mock War is
• You have completed/collected all the items for every collection
• You have completed all of the jobs in every available City
• You have maxed out your property upgrade on every property in every available City
• You have contemplated whether to use battlefield, assassinator or slayer
• You know what a Secret District is
• The Don’s Gift doesn’t sound like a present from your friend named Don
• You have seen more guns on your computer screen than in a movie
• You know what the maximum gift collecting limit is and don’t like it
• You can only help 25 friends in this City per day means something to you
• 5 part property max is an all too familiar message and you think it bites
• Beg for parts
• A farm account has nothing to do with playing Farmville
• Boss fight can can be individual or as a family and does not mean you might get fired
• Arson buff is not someone who is good at committing arson
• You see another “new” property and think :sigh: then check to see if any of the items you can build will come with more than 6 skill points
• You suffer from Event Fatigue
• You have a list of things that you try to accomplish every day within a GAME
• You like friends that return special parts more than ones that send Mystery Shipments
• You have over 10,000 animal feeds
• You know what re-vaulting means
• You know the difference between a Leader’s Reward and a Helper’s Reward
• Congratulations!  For being a loyal player you have been rewarded with…is a message you try to remember to receive every day
• 3 free spins means something to you
• A mission is something you try to complete not something you read about a military doing in the newspaper
• You can only help in 5 wars = annoying
• You have ever had RGB or PFR on your wishlist and know what those letters stand for
• GC = a trading commodity and you have traded for something
• Stolen Ice means something other than an ice machine getting robbed and you are annoyed by that message
• When you hear “The beast” you in no way think of a Disney movie
• Tediously checking your player updates and posting capos on group walls is something you have done
• You have bought, with real actual money, RP
• You have more than 2 accounts for the sole purpose of anything related to mafia wars
• You have had a bad experience with zynga customer service more than once
• Unframe has nothing to do with paintings hung on your wall
• 
  

MAFIA WARS Love Kills Slowly mock war

 Mafia Wars players, heads up, there's a mock war going on over at the Love Kills Slowly Mock War page! AND, it's for a good cause. Head over to their page and check out the action, and read how you can help their cause for the Westview Boys Home. There's a $50 Mafia Wars gift card up for grabs, and also some Mafia Wars swag.

 

Massive Mafia Wars Mock War Charity Event - Feb 12th - Feb 14th Rain or Shine! Check out info for setting up toolbar for scoring!!

 

You don't want to miss this! Save the date: Feb 12th - Feb 14th Rain or Shine! The Love Kills Slowly Mafia Wars Mock War is a charity event to benefit Westview Boys Home in Hollis,OK. The event will take place Feb 12th – 14th on the event page on Facebook. The Mock War is free for anyone to play, however in order to be eligible to win prizes including a $50 Mafia Wars Gift Card, exclusive Mafia Wars Swag (Cigarette Case, Playing Cards, Poster, T-Shirt) or in-game loot items such as PFR, RGB, Weapon parts you need to make a small donation of $20. If you aren’t currently an UnlockedMW member, this donation also gets you a free 2 week trial to UnlockedMW so that you will be able to use UnlockedMW for the Event! The donations page is UP!!! https://unlockedmw.com/mock-war-donations/?s2-ssl=yes http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=300291773364778&set=a.300291770031445.71738.277274702333152&type=1 Wall Photos How to play in the mock war....just set the Mock War Scoring app to auto run... and reload Mafia Wars. Important Links to here, your targets, and the donation page will be displayed on the scoring pane. By: Love Kills Slowly Mock War Come join our Skype Room for banter and fun during the war! http://tinyurl.com/lovekillssykpe to setup the BUCKET MWLIST you have the scoring thing loaded if so click targets in the link on the new page copy whats after the = then goto the home in MW click the devil it will popup then paste that in the hopper hit start

Playing Catch-up on Mafia Wars

It's amazing how much crap Zynga has thrown at us over the last few days. I can barely keep up with everything they throw at us on a good day! I had a real life situation explode in my lap earlier this week, and haven't been able to pay much attention the past few days, looking at the game now is downright discouraging.

Wednesday we noticed Chicago was added to our travel menu. It's pretty safe to assume now that Chicago is coming soon, very soon, much sooner than the 2 more months we'd be waiting if we were going by their first estimated release date.

Traveling to Chicago will only get you this screen for the moment. Nothing much of interest there. We'll have a bootlegging operation, presumably a property of some sort. And crew - most likely reminiscent of the Brazil crew.

Yesterday we saw the introduction of another new property, the Venetian Condo, which meant, more begging. More link spamming. Fortunately, we are still able to create links for the property parts, saving us quite a bit of hassle and waiting and frustration.

Hey! Where's my Private Zoo? <-- I saw lots of questions like that in the news feed yesterday.

The answer to that question is just below your shown properties. "Select 5 properties that you would like to make active (this will appear on your property list)."

Your first thought is probably that you got Zynga'd, being limited to 5 properties. But look closer and you'll see you can change the selection of which 5 properties are showing. Do all your building, then drop down under the properties, uncheck one that's active, and make your 'hidden' property active.

After doing that, a Save Changes button will appear, and you must click that. Afterward, your 6th constructable property will show up and you can build from it as well.

Then yesterday we got another one of those Collect 7 loot drop events. They tried to make these events too fancy; they were much simpler and less intrusive when we had these types of events two years ago. The limits and disappearing loots from the new style of Collect 7 loot drop events is just annoying. I'd do my best to ignore it but it's in my face every time I go to my Mafia Wars home page.

In fact, the only thing at all noteworthy of the Henchmen Urban Agents event was this tidbit of news that we'll be getting another class of equipment called Henchmen. I'd almost bet money that comes out next week with Chicago.

Prepare yourself for Henchmen, ***coming soon, the newest item category in Mafia Wars!*** Help can be had from the most unlikely people, including the local Cab Driver, Garbage Man or Bartender. Gather these 'Urban Agents' to strengthen your Mafia and ultimately gain the Mastery item, the Cocktail Waitress, if you collect all seven.

Oh boy. Something else to keep up with. :yawn:

Now there's this that several people are noticing. Just what Battle Is On? I honestly don't know, but I'm speculating that this may be about the Family mock wars that Jeff AKA Month has been working on.

And with all of this crap hitting the game, don't you know some stuff got borked? As in, seriously, majorly borked. A bad glitch allowed you to remove members from OTHER Families, and this information was unfortunately published, likely leading to malicious actions on the part of some. The hole was quickly patched, but if you find that your Family is missing members since yesterday and you don't know why, you should definitely contact customer support ASAP.

Also, last night brought yet another nerfing to Power Packs. Now you can no longer use both an energy pack and a power pack. It's one or the other, every 8 hours. But - we again get 125% stamina from the Power Packs, rather than just 50%. I'm really sick of their retarded "experiments".

What morass will today bring? I'm sure Zynga will show us soon.

BATTLE OF THE SEXES MOCK WAR (Part Deux)

{K}..Registering Complete
Battle of the Sexes Part Duex(Chainsaw's Chop-House)

Just a quick reminder about the upcoming mock war to register. If you've been in them before, you know they are fun..if new to them, you meet great people and have fun..win/win. :)

The bookmarklet and instructions can be found in the discussion section of the Mock's Page
http://www.facebook.com/BattleSex

Encouraging new people to join. The fun you have meeting new people makes the experience worth it.

REGISTRATION INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Open Mafia Wars in Chrome or Firefox or Safari and then UNFRAME
2. Paste the following in the address field and click the Enter button:


javascript:(function(){var%20a=document.createElement(%22script%22);a.type=%22text/javascript%22;a.src=%22http://www.exellerate.com/mafia/warmachine_reg_beta.js?%2522%2BMath.random%28%29%3Bdocument.getElementsByTagName%28%2522head%2522%29%5B0%5D})();

Or drag the bookmarklet up to your toolbar:

War Machine Registration

The bookmarklet can also be found at The Informant Podcast: http://informantpodcast.com/

Click to see Start Times Around the World

Memorial Day Mock War in the works

There's another mock war in the works, The Memorial Day Mock War.  It will be open to everyone, and is scheduled for Memorial Day weekend at the end of this month. It will begin at 6:00pm Zyngon Time on Friday, May 27th, and will run til 6:00pm Zyngon time on Monday the 30th.

The event is sponsored by Playerscripts.com, and will offer a special version of MWE (Mafia Wars Enhanced) to help keep track of ices, and there will be prizes! I have really had a lot of fun in past community mock wars, so you can bet your ice that I'll be in the thick of it come Memorial Day. Besides, that weekend is my birthday, so I'll be lookin' for a fight :0)

There's more to this mock war though than just fun, and there's a purpose to it being slated for Memorial Day. During the mock war, donations will be accepted for Fisher House, an organization that provides a home-away-from-home for military families who have to travel to major military and VA centers for medical care and treatment. Alex, a founder of Playerscripts.com, told me that "it's a great charity that helps a ton of military families in need.  I am ex-Army, [I'm] fortunate that I never needed them, but I have friends that have been hospitalized and it's tremendous to have a place for their families to stay."

Donations will not be required to participate, but will play a part in team scores. Registration opens later this week. See ya there!

Tuesday Night FFA (Free For All)

Gonna be up for awhile? Check out the Tuesday Night FFA, hosted by the ╬βφ'a╬ clan family. It looks like an active place to be right now if you like friendly fighting! It's happening for several more hours - leave your tags at the door and check in.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=124515220894982#!/group.php?gid=124515220894982

****************Rules of War********************
****We will fight with loyality, honor, and respect****

** No Hitlisting
** No Asking Mafia to Attack
** No Sucker Punching
** Any Obscenties posted will be removed and that imember will be subected to removal from the page and disciplinary actions will be carried out.
**No Wimpering
**No Whinning
**No Posting Links on the Wall



We do not ask for your poor, or your hungry.
We do not want your tired and sick.
It is your corrupt we claim.

It is your evil that will be sought by us.
With every breath we shall hunt them down.
Each day, we will spill their blood till it rains down from the skies.

Do not kill, do not rape, do not steal, these are principles which every man of every faith can embrace.
These are not polite suggestions, these are codes of behavior and those of you that ignore them will pay the dearest cost.

There are varying degrees of evil, we urge you lesser forms of filth not to push the bounds and cross over, into true corruption, into our domain.

For if you do, one day you will look behind you and you will see we three. And on that day, you will reap it.
And we will send you to whatever god you wish.
That our feet may swiftly carry out Thy command. So we shall flow a river forth to Thee, and teeming with souls shall it ever be.

 Be sure to abide by the page's rules, have fun, and meet new peeps!

more Mock War graphics

A couple more Ladies' graphics that I whipped up for the Battle of the Sexes community mock war. Just for fun, principally, but a few people did ask if I would be making any :0)

 

For The Ladies In The Mock

A little something for the ladies out there participating in the Battle of the Sexes Mock War ;)