FarmVille... don't pay real money for "beta" games...

Its a week since I've been able to access my farm on FarmVille. Zynga's support has been very unhelpful - only suggesting that I turn everything on and off again. When the problem I have is rather more universal than that.

Firstly, Jim, who has been farming alongside me can easily load his farm on my computer, using my software.

Secondly, none of my neighbours are able to access my farm either. Jim is fed up with the way FarmVille sends him off to "help" on my farm but won't load it. None of my other neighbours have been able to get in either. The nearest anyone has got was this:

She left a note on the empty space that used to be my farm but when she returned the note had gone too.

What most people see is this:

Some of them have complained that it then hangs and they have to leave farmville and come back in again, others haven't had that problem.

What I see is this:

There are other people in the same situation. And we have something in common.

We had all thoroughly overstuffed our dairies.

There a was a bug that made it possible to put in more than the notional limit of 20. I thought it hilarious to put in lots of alien cows as well as a full compliment of the normal ones:


Jim had been more restrained, he'd only put in one or two more and the day that I was unable to load my farm his slightly over-filled dairy was showing just the 20 it ought to have, not the 21 or 22 he'd had the evening before.

Zynga had clearly "fixed the dairy bug" but in doing so had made some people's farms unloadable. Mine included.

One of the replies I got was:

"Please be informed that we do not ban any players for gaming bugs. All the issues you specified may just happen because of the loading problems so kindly follow the steps below"

And then they proceeded to tell me, yet again, to disconnect from farmville completely, log out of facebook, clear my browser's cache, quit the browser, restart the computer, etc.

They also suggested downloading the latest flash player - I looked I already had the most up-to-date version - but for the sake of completeness I did it any way.

At no point had it occurred to me, before they said this, that I might be banned... as a programmer I'm aware that fixing bugs often has side-effects that are in effect new bugs... I still think its more a technical issue than a political one.

But there was one strange thing.

One of the other people with an over-full dairy had put a post up much like this one on the Zynga forums. I'd replied and said I had the same problem. Several others did too. I was watching the thread so when I got an email saying there was an update I went looking for it. The whole thread had been removed. This does not seem like a technical issue, but more like a political one... I've been unable to find any official reference to this being a "known problem".

I'm now regretting that I spent real money on this game - it is possible to play it for free - but if you want any of the pretty things, like the flying saucer at the top, you pay using farm vouchers - you only get a few of these slowly through game play. I was happy, at the time, to pay real money to Zynga as I know how expensive such games are to develop. Now I'm less so because I cannot play with my toys even though I paid for them.

I have asked for any of these:

1. My farm as it was, presumably with dairies reduced down to 20 cows each, and playable.
2. A new, empty farm, credited with the FVs I'd purchased.
3. My money back.

They have not replied to this.

Here is one last shot of my farm as it was for Halloween:



Update: Zynga finally fixed it. My farm was dead but I am able to play again. However the support did not contact me to tell me it was fixed - one really does have to attempt to get in to find out...

FishVille

If you read my previous post you might be expecting me to completely break down and post about FarmVille - but instead I bring you FishVille!

After writing that post, Jim got our connection to the web back up so I could publish it - unfortunately I was then unable to get into my farm and haven't been able to since - I'd thought it hilarious when I'd got 27 green alien cows into a dairy that was only meant to be able to take a maximum of 20 cows in total.


From browsing the web it appears that they have fixed the bug that allowed this to happen but that those of us who had seriously overdone the stuffing have not been able to load our farms since. Whilst searching for more help on the issue than was coming from the makers of the game (Zynga) I discovered that they had just launched a new game on facebook - FishVille.

So rather than sulk too much longer I thought I'd play with fishes instead. And it is very relaxing - just like watching a fish tank - well almost.

I didn't take any really early screen shots - but here is one when I'd got to level 3 and my first neighbour had joined me:



The idea is to buy fish eggs and feed the hatchlings enough that they reach maturity when they can be sold - in fact they can be sold as soon as they stop being babies - but for some fish that in itself takes a day - for others it takes as little as 3 minutes. - you get more for them if you keep them growing and sell them as full grown adults - provided you can keep them alive!

They let you know when they are hungry like this:


But they start clamouring for food like this well before they actually need feeding... I did notice one neighbour had a fish with a red bubble asking for food - presumably it was really hungry. If you don't feed them in time they die and you have to clear up the dead fish.

Neighbours I hear you ask?

Well that's a concept from FarmVille and being fairly closely modelled on FarmVille, FishVille also has neighbours. People who are your friends on facebook and playing the same game can become your neighbours.

You can visit each others tanks which is fun in itself also your neighbours (or rather neighbors as its an American-written game) can send you gifts to decorate your tank:


What you are able to send increases as you go up levels.

The variety of fish eggs you are able to buy also increases with levels:

My goal yesterday was to get to level 8 so I could buy the clown fish. I managed that (just) and got up to saleable clownfish overnight:
The image at the top of this posting was how my tank looked when I started to write. Now after writing all of this the fish have grown:


Oh oh... no matter how intriguing I've made this sound I must also tell you that the screen is now saying:

Update: I was suspicious from the wording of the above notice that the issue might be political rather than technical and it appears that facebook has pulled the plug on the fish tanks because of advertising violations. At least that's what they are saying at techcrunch.