What Features Would You Like To Have Added To Mafia Wars?

I know that many of you are like me in that you love playing Mafia Wars and have ideas that you think might improve the game. Today I am going to share some of the ideas that I think would enhance game play and I hope that you will leave comments sharing some of your ideas as well. Once we have put together a list of ideas I will be sending them to Zynga and posting them on the Mafia Wars Forums.

Here are some of the things that I personally thing could be added to the game to make it more fun and less frustrating at times.

Energy Roll Over

I think that if you reach the end of a level and do not use all of your energy it should roll over and be added to the new amount of energy you receive upon leveling up. If telephone companies can roll over minutes surely it would not be a big problem to do so in Mafia Wars.

12-Hour Stamina Packs

Stamina packs available every 12 hours would be great both for Mafia Wars players and Zynga as well. Think about this. If your business model is based on players buying Reward Points to monetize your game would it not make sense to bring them back every 12 hours instead of once per day?

Mafia Auction House

A feature that would allow players to place items up for sale not for real money but in game cash would be a wonderful addition. Nearly all MMO games have this feature and it develops a thriving player driven economy. If you want 1,000 Satellite Phones just buy them on the auction house. This feature would give players a way to equip their mafia and something to do with the billions of dollars that go to waste when an expansion is completed.

Foreign Exchange Center

When we travel to foreign lands in the real world we can simply visit an exchange center at our destination to exchange our currency for native currency. When we do this we pay a fee but have access to the common currency of the area. Why can we not do this in Mafia Wars?

Weekly Jobs

After a player has competed all of the expansions there is really nothing to do and many players become frustrated and either leave the game permanently or go into hiatus until a new expansion arrives. If Zynga wants to keep these players active and thus be able to earn income from them they need to come up with something for them to do. All they need to do is set up a special tier of missions that offer advanced rewards for loyal players. This tier or “hidden expansion” could offer special loot that does not upset the game balance but gives veteran players recognition for their loyalty.

These features would enhance the game for all. Tomorrow I will continue the list and at the end of the week I will condense all of our ideas and send them off to Zynga. If you have an idea please leave a comment or send me an email so I can get your ideas integrated into the message. Perhaps between us we can make Mafia Wars even more enjoyable.

Mafia Wars Rollbacks?

Lately it seems that Mafia Wars and Zynga have been having problems with many of their accounts. This morning I logged in and found that even though I completely finished Moscow weeks ago I am somehow back to chapter 1 in episode 3 Brigadir. I find it odd that every other episode is completely done except this one. Has this been happening to any of you as well?

Recently Zynga released the following on their Feature Updates/Release Notes page.

“User Account Issues: Some players may have been affected by a technical issue that happened at about 2 am PT on January 5th. We are extremely sorry for the difficulty caused by this issue. We’ve identified the affected users and are working to appropriately compensate everyone touched by the January 5th rollback, and we hope to resolve this issue within 48 hours. We will update you on after we’ve resolved the issue. Please don’t hesitate to contact Customer Support about the issue at http://zynga.com/support. Customer Support will have the list of users we have identified that have been affected by this issue. Thanks for your patience, and we apologize for the inconvenience.”

In this release they are speaking about a problem on January 5th. Evidentially the problem is not fixed since it is now January 11th.

On the release page they further stated the following.

“Bangkok Beta Coming Soon: We are happy to announce Bangkok will be going into beta very shortly. We will be asking some of our players to provide important feedback and make improvements for the final release. Please stay tuned.”

While that is all fine and nice it would seem to me that Zynga should be concentrating on getting the problems fixed in the current version of the game before shoving out another expansion. This has been a problem with many of the major online game developers over the years and many have suffered because of it.

Completing an expansion and then discovering that the developer has rolled back the game is a very frustrating experience. Zynga in my opinion needs to get the obvious problem fixed and restore all affected accounts to their previous state before they shove out the next expansion.

I urge anyone who has suffered a roll back to start a thread on the official Mafia Wars forums demanding that their account be restored before Zynga releases the Bangkok expansion.

Is Your Mafia Wars Account In Danger Of Being Suspended Or Even Banned?

Mafia Wars is arguably the most popular of the myriad of social networking games that are available today and it was only a matter of time until Zynga took a harder line when it comes to suspending or even banning accounts.

The buying and selling of intellectual property is one of the biggest concerns for internet gaming companies. While the practice has been around for years many companies turned a blind eye to it because of the expense in prosecuting those who traffic in currency, accounts, and items.

In the last year or so many of the bigger gaming companies have done one of two things. First they have cracked down not on the sellers of such items but those who purchase them. Second, many have opened up their games for free play while requiring players to purchase the top items or even the all but bare necessities with micro-transactions using real cash. Some have done both.

Zynga has not missed what is going on in the industry and has started to follow suit by targeting those players who participate in the buying and selling of intellectual property. Presently they are suspending or banning accounts quite regularly. If you are a player who has purchased items or entire accounts do not be surprised if you try to log in one day and discover that your accounts is no longer accessible.

Leveling and acquiring the best items in Mafia Wars is too easy to put your account at risk. With a proper plan you can level to level 200+ in mere days and will be rolling in cash along the way so there is no reason to participate in such shenanigans.

Recently I have come across a few Mafia Wars “information” sites that are blatantly trying to sell items and accounts right on their front page. While I will not name these sites for obvious reasons I find the practice to be unethical. It is one thing to write a guide or sell a report detailing how to master the game but selling items and accounts crosses the line.

All of the site that I have visited which are doing this are also making use of graphics and logos from Mafia Wars and other Zynga games. I predict that somewhere in the near future the publishers of these sites will receive a nice letter from Zynga which will in essence order them to cease and desist in using the intellectual property of the company.

I will make one promise to all of my readers right now. You will never see accounts, items or currency from any game for sale on my sites. The only disclaimer I will make to that statement are those sites that earn revenue from Google AdSense since the end user has no control over which ads are displayed.

In conclusion, if you are buying or selling the intellectual property of any company and get your account closed, you have nothing to whine about …you brought it upon yourself.